With the third-row seating deployed there’s 249L of cargo space, which expands to a family-friendly 615 under the cargo cover when you fold the third row, and a capacious 2,427L with all seats down. Folding the seats is easy to accomplish thanks to the self-flipping rear headrests, although I found that the nylon strap for folding the second row’s middle section could be a little hard to reach at times.

With the minimalistic interior design eliminating all but the most essential (and legally required) few buttons, the XC90 instead includes a huge vertically-oriented touchscreen in the centre of the dash, which is used to control almost all of the car’s functions. The truth is I’m a bit old-school and would honestly prefer a few more redundant hardware switches, but I’ll give Volvo credit for ensuring that the Sensus system’s interface is reasonably intuitive (especially if you already own a smart phone or iPad) and has enough processing power to keep up with my most rapid swiping and tapping. I was still struggling and cursing a little on day three, but by day six I could find most of the features I needed without taking my eyes off the road for more than a couple seconds (and yes, there’s a certain irony in piping vehicle controls through a touchscreen in an era when draconian traffic laws are being introduced against the use of handheld touchscreens while driving).

In terms of use, the big screen allows for an impressively high-resolution backup camera, and Volvo’s all-around 360 degree camera view is better implemented than other versions I’ve previously seen, making it surprisingly easy to manoeuvre the big XC90 even in tight parkades.

One screen or two? Test Drive: 2015 Infiniti Q50

For those who still find parking a challenge even with the all-around camera to assist, the XC90 offers its “Park Assist Pilot” automatic self-parking for both parallel and perpendicular parking spots, with self-exit for parallel spots only. The system generally works quite well, and my mother-in-law was suitably amazed. However, it only works for parking spots on the right-hand side of the car, and the XC90 appears to make its own on-the-fly determination of whether available spots are parallel or perpendicular, based on the width of the gaps. On a couple of occasions I had to pass by available spots because the system got messed up and insisted that perpendicular spaces were parallel or vice versa. Also, the automatic perpendicular parking bases itself on the position of other cars, not the painted lines of the parking lot, so depending on how the nearby cars are parked you can get some … umm … interesting results.

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