Volvo's electric high-wire act

Volvo calls its all-new EX90 SUV the safest and most technically adept model in the company's 95-year history, which includes such achievements as the world's first three-point automotive seat belt in 1959. Even before this luxury EV logs its first mile on global roads that take more than 1 million human lives every year, Volvo asserts the EX90 will eliminate up to one in five serious injury accidents, and one in 10 accidents overall.

That claim is based not on fuzzy math, said Lotta Jakobsson, a 33-year company veteran and specialist in injury protection, but on Volvo's industry-unique accident database that's been a wellspring of company safety innovations since the 1970s.