The Volvo ES90 will be revealed on Wednesday 5 March as the brand’s most technologically advanced car to date.

The company said the electric saloon – which is closely related to the existing EX90 electric SUV – will pack two Nvidia computers said to be capable of combining to complete around 508 trillion operations per second. For reference, that makes them around 50 times more powerful than a PlayStation 5 games console.

The punch of the computers will allow Volvo to gradually quadruple the size of the information bank for its artificial intelligence, using data collected from cars already on the road.

This should yield improvements to the car’s collision avoidance and autonomous driving systems over time, according to Volvo.

“By combining the power of core computing and our Superset tech stack, we can now make safer cars more efficiently than ever before,” said Volvo tech chief Anders Bell.

Bell added: “The Volvo ES90 is one of the most technically advanced cars on the market today and is designed to be improved further with time.”

To that end, the saloon also gets an array of sensors, including a lidar box, five radars, eight cameras and 12 ultrasonics.

The ES90 will be the fifth series-production electric Volvo model to be offered in the UK – following the EX30, XC40/EX40, C40/EC40 and EX90 – but it's the first that isn’t an SUV. (Volvo also offers the EM90 MPV in China.)

That reflects the current sales dominance of SUVs but, speaking recently, Volvo boss Jim Rowan said the firm will continue to offer a diverse line-up in future. “We have MPVs as well as sedans [saloons] and wagons and of course SUVs,” he said. “We’re in a nice position as a company that we have that spread.”

Rowan added that even though SUVs are likely to continue to make up the bulk of sales, there was enough profit to justify launching an electric saloon. “We’re 1% of the car market and we’re in premium,” he said. “There is still a demand for premium saloons in the electric age. We see more of that [demand] in China, but there’s still demand in other parts of the world.”

Rowan noted that Chinese premium buyers prefer saloons with “really long leg room” in the back and said the ES90 will be developed with that market as a core focus.

Volvo’s preview image of the ES90 confirms that the model will feature a similar side profile to that of the current hybrid S90 and it will also take styling cues from the EX90, including the closed-off grille, ‘Thor’s hammer’ headlights and upright rear lights.

The ES90 will sit on the bespoke electric SPA2 platform that is used by the EX90 and therefore will be a close technical relation to that model.

Information leaked last year shows that the model has been developed under the codename V551 and will be produced at a plant owned by Volvo parent Geely in Zhejiang, China.

The leak reveals that the ES90 will be 4999mm long, making it marginally longer than the S90, and have a wheelbase of 3100mm to maximise interior space. It will be offered in single-motor rear-wheel-drive and dual-motor all-wheel-drive forms

Power outputs are likely to match the EX90’s, suggesting that the all-wheel-drive model will be offered with 402bhp as standard and 502bhp in Performance form. It is also likely to offer many of the EX90’s safety features, potentially including the lidar scanner, and have a similar, near-£100,000 price.

Power will come from a 111kWh battery that will offer up to 373 miles for the single-motor model. As with the EX90, the vehicle will be built around an advanced Volvo Cars Superset ‘tech stack’, which effectively comprises all of the software and hardware for the drive, infotainment, autonomous functions and other systems.

That set-up will be used on all future models and offers over-the-air updates. The goal is that it will eventually allow updates to be rolled out across all Volvo models.