Boulangerie
While I was defrosting the Volvo at the charging station near the hotel, still connected to the power supply, I checked my diary. There was nothing scheduled until the evening, so I indicated to turn left at the hotel exit; to the right would have been the motorway and the most direct route home. The route took me through dark gorges and sparse forests, uphill on the finest, beautifully winding lanes, with no traffic and sometimes a little slippery because it was a few degrees below zero. But at the top of Mont Sainte-Odile, the first rays of sunshine warmed my little detour. Then it went down again on the other side, in a little village there was an awful café au lait and a greasy croissant, to the south, to the west, over passes I had never heard of before, through places I didn’t even know I didn’t want to visit. At some point it became more specific, Route des Crêtes, once again, once a year you just have to ride it. But it was closed for the winter, so there were a few more detours: Alsace and the Vosges are a dream for anyone who likes driving. There is a road up almost every hill, every other village has a winemaker or distillery, and there are wonderful bakeries. By then it was well past noon and I had covered more than 200 kilometres, quite quickly, with plenty of breaks. The sat nav now indicated that I would arrive home with just 3 per cent charge left, but that should be enough.

The Volvo EX30 Twin Motor Performance has been on test at «radical» for a little over a month now, and we already have more than 7,000 kilometres on the clock. The Volvo, I call it ‘Dwarf’, is sometimes a bit software-stubborn, but that’s not what this is about, we’ll come to that at a later point. Here I want to praise it first of all, that starts with the above statement that I set the turn signal on the left – it’s a lot of fun to drive for an electric car. Well, 428 hp, 543 Nm maximum torque, all-wheel drive, you can expect something like that. It feels like a slightly oversized toy to me, it goes like a rocket, it has a highly pleasant, very smooth but sufficiently precise steering, it brakes really decently despite a good 2-tonne kerb weight, and it handles the road well. Logically, the driving performance is very sporty (3.6 seconds for 0/100, perhaps a little optimistic), but of course it is not a sporty vehicle, but it guarantees fast and very comfortable progress – perhaps these well-motorised E-SUVs like the EX30 are the Gran Turismo of modern times.



We can already hear them shouting, the enemies of electricity and opponents of e-cars: Gran Turismo means long, drawn-out journeys, not constant charging and the eternal search for a charging station. Well then, on this little trip, the Volvo, which with its 69 kWh battery is really not the largest, managed a little over 350 kilometres despite the freezing cold. Of course, a modern diesel can do more – but a Porsche 911 Turbo with its 67-litre tank and with the right driving style probably not. We didn’t have to look for a charging station, because, well, it was enough to get us home – and if it hadn’t been enough, there were plenty along the way. The arguments against e-mobility are becoming fewer and fewer, especially with a Volvo. The manufacturer really does its best to be as environmentally friendly as possible, even in production. You can read about it here. Oh yes, we are currently at an average of 18.4 kWh/100 km, with a lot of German motorway driving (mostly cruise control at 150 km/h), and it was also cold this late autumn.



Now, charging. It’s good that the more expensive variants of the EX30 can draw up to 22 kW at the wall box. At home, ‘radical’ has 11 kW, and a full charge from 0 to 100 percent takes eight hours and 40 minutes (yes, we’ve driven the car to 0% SOC several times; it’s almost a bit of a hobby). We don’t know how much reserve is left in the battery at zero, but the 69-kWh battery then wants 72 kW to be full; so the charging loss is limited, unlike other products. What is not so good is that the maximum charging speed at the fast charger is 153 kW (or 157 kW, the information is different at Volvo), so the Volvo is currently more in the middle of the pack. However, we repeatedly encountered the problem that the EX30 – despite a visit to the charging station being ‘registered’ via the satnav – could not exceed 60 kW. We are still trying to determine the cause of this; unfortunately, there is no manual preconditioning, which we consider to be a fault.

When the Volvo EX30 came onto the market, it was available from 36,800 francs – a real bargain. Meanwhile, the entry-level version costs 38,250 francs, which is still a very fair price. The twin engine is available from 48,350 francs, and with the best equipment it costs 51,100 francs. This may not seem particularly cheap for a ‘dwarf’, but hey, this is a Volvo with driving performance that the Swedes have never seen before. And apart from a few weaknesses in operation – we’ll come to that – the EX30 is definitely an asset to e-mobility.





You mention “a few weaknesses” in your report with the EX30 withoit mentioning what they are??? I am.seriously considering buying one.
software. but it is getting better daily.