Volvo EX30 - long-term-review - report 1

A man holding a small child is pointing at me and smiling. He is directing his child to smile at me too. It is a drab, grey day. We are adrift in a sea of silver, black and grey homogeneity; the tide threatening to slap us out of this probably awful metaphor.

But wait! Through the mist and fog of Everyday Britain there arrives a handsome, tall-ish, sustainably built electric thunderbolt! The dad’s really smiling now. Not at me, but at the car. Because lord almighty is this Volvo really, really yellow.

Look at it! Look at all the yellow! Week two into custody of this luminous EX30 and I have never once misplaced it in a supermarket car park. Astronauts on the International Space Station can probably track my movements without too much difficulty.

Of course, the dad – or the kid, for that matter – isn’t aware that this luminous yellow is inspired by something very particular to Volvo, and Volvo’s Swedish homeland.

Daniel Fidgett, Volvo’s head of colour and materials, said of this rather excellent ‘Moss Yellow’: “The colour hails from the forest outside our showroom here in Torslanda, Sweden. It’s inspired by the yellow reindeer lichen, or polar moss, that grows on the rocks.” MOSS, people. Only Volvo could make moss a selling point.

It also happens to be a similar yellow to the glorious and gloriously unmossy T-5R. And yellow, apparently, inspires ‘joy’ and ‘hope’. Well, there’s joy alright, because the kid’s smiling.

But what about hope? Top Gear is running the single-motor, extended-range version of the EX30, which means… a single motor and… an extended range. It’s quick alright – 268bhp and 0-62mph in 5.3s means rolling out the obligatory ‘it’s as quick as an old M3’ quote.

Volvo itself quotes 295 miles of range available via a 69kWh battery (same as the twin-motor range-topper, bigger than the entry-level car’s 51kWh unit, making this the Goldilocks EX30 – literally), so actually there’s very little hope required.

Using a fortnight data set on my specific use case – in and out of London, lots of town and a flash of countryside – I’ve only charged it twice, and I’ve been hovering around 3.6mpkwh. That’s not bad, because I’ve really not been trying to drive economically.

So not once have I had to worry about that dreaded range anxiety. I’m lucky enough to have home charging so it’s an easier sell, but even so, the EX30 accepts up to 175kW so find one of those hoses and 10-80 per cent would take you 28 minutes.

Enough time to take in the details. I think it’s a really smart design. The ‘Thor’s hammer’ headlights wink at you as you approach. Its upright stance is nicely resolved – nothing awkward or ungainly about it, it’s just a pleasing, well-designed and simple hatchback. A tall one.

But not an especially big one. While Volvo has pared back the interior – more on that in the next instalment – and treated it to recycled materials and given it a sense of space, the rear bench is a little cramped. Boot’s not huge either, but there is space below for the charging cables.

Being small has its advantages of course. Which we’ll uncover as the months roll by and we discover what this really, really yellow Volvo is like as a daily...