If you’ve been around here for a while now you’ll know that from time to time the good folks who manage the press cars at the large OEMs offer me the occasional vehicle for a week or so in which to drive around.
In the past I’ve had the Polestar 2 and the Polestar 4 and - as a means to compare and contrast - I was lucky enough to be offered time in the Volvo EX40
For those that don’t know, Volvo and Polestar are sister companies. They are both owned by Chinese auto maker Geely. Volvo also used to have a financial stake in Polestar but gave that up a couple of years back.
I, basically, wanted the EX40 because I wanted to see how it stacks up against the sister car the Polestar 2.
There isn’t a direct connection between these two cars on a ‘like-for-like’ basis. The EX40 is not as luxurious as the Polestar 2 but neither is it a direct comparison with the Polestar 2 as that is a saloon and the EX40 is an SUV.
But underneath the skin there are a lot of similarities between the cars - and a number of differences
Overall impressions
I’ll be totally honest with you. I didn’t want to like the EX40. It’s an SUV and I’m not a fan of SUVs, and it has a styling that I don’t totally love - very boxy and almost utilitarian.
But I was actually pleasantly surprised by it.
Over the course of a week I put well over 500 miles on it, covering both motorway, A-roads, B-roads, and hills & dales. I did the same long-distance route I did when driving the Polestars - Hampshire to West Yorkshire and back. It performed flawlessly and - most importantly - it got relatively good efficiency figures AND showed fast charging capabilities. More of that later.
So let’s go through the various aspects.
The Tech
As with the rest of the Geely range of vehicles it runs on the Android Automotive software which is functional and reasonably intuitive. You can also download a lot of apps from the Google store - however I didn't attempt any of this, preferring to stick with the basic apps which were... basic.
The driving experience between the Polestar 2 and the EX40 is very similar. The buttons on the steering wheel work in a very similar way and the OS has a lot of similarities, as I have already mentioned.
Navigation is intuitive - to a point - and it does copy the Tesla model of splitting long trips into smaller segments with charge stops, and it shows the expected state of charge at arrival of both the interim stops and your final destination. Ironically this is much, much more comforting than knowing you'll arrive with, say, 15 miles for some reason. It was also very pessimistic - another trait I appreciate in any battery state of charge calculations
I did have an issue with the charger selection on longer routes. Ideally I'd like to include a list of networks that I either would like to include or exclude in the charger selection criteria.. I know which are the networks I prefer (and those I don't want to touch ) and to be able to ensure only the appropriate ones are displayed would be nice. Unfortunately, the filters refer to payment methods only, meaning you can select all chargers that can be paid by specific payment providers (ZapPay, Octopus Electroverse, Shell Recharge etc..) but not specific networks.
The other thing I'd like to see is the ability to select where you want to charge during a run rather than having to take the software choice. The software will select a default charge stop and there is the ability to modify that within reason. But, for example. I was returning from Yorkshire to Hampshire. I knew I wanted to stop at the AW Energy site at Checkley Wood. The software kept selecting a charger much closer to my departure point. There's no facility to say 'I'm zooming in to this location on the map, show me a list of chargers there.' I can see why the software did it - I was scheduled to arrive at Checkley Wood with 7% SoC which might have been deemed to be too low, so it defaulted to chargers with more headroom in case of issues. But a little bit of leeway would have made this more usable for me. The workaround is to physically add Checkley Wood as a stopping point in the navigation.
The Google voice control worked well - as you can see in the video. Obviously it isn’t integrated into ALL aspects of the car. It couldn’t, for example, turn the adaptive cruise control on and off. But for dealing with air conditioning and media management it worked well.
I connected my iPhone through Apple CarPlay and it worked as expected (although hobbled slightly by the relatively small screen).
The cameras are 360 degree, selectable as required and work well in bright sunlight and at night. I think I actually prefer this camera set-up to the Polestar which had a 360 degree camera that tended to ‘surprise’ you with objects that magically appeared in your vision.
The Ride
My main gripe with the car is the form factor. It's a largish SUV/crossover. As a result it's quite tall and a little wallowing as it corners. The ride is a little squidgy although, conversely, it does tend to feed back a lot of the road surface for you - especially the bumps and the cat's eyes.
My elderly mother liked the form factor though, as it meant she could get in and out without finding herself having to pull herself up from a lowish seat - which she did with the Polestars.
The Charging
The EX40 arrived at 80% charge with a little over 200 on the GOM miles. I charged it overnight and it went up to 260miles of range when I get in the next morning. This seemed to be around what I expected.
The plan was to put some miles on the vehicle under different conditions so I reset the trip meter and headed off on a 200+ mile journey to Yorkshire.
I know this route well having done it multiple times, with multiple electric vehicles over the years. Normally I arrange a stop somewhere around Duckmanton and top up the battery to do that final climb over the Pennines before dropping down the other side to my destination.
But - despite driving at 70mph (traffic permitting) and having the climate control operating, I realised I could actually do the run without having to stop. This was mainly due to the warm weather of the trip. As I watched the efficiency figure stabilise with my driving and the weather I calculated that 296 miles was the theoretical maximum I could get from this car. Pros like Kevin Booker would, obviously, get better figures than that. But I was happy with 296 miles.
Ironically, I did have to stop but not to charge. I ended up near Sheffield with a bladder that was making serious demands of my abdominal muscles and took the opportunity to try out a new Osprey Charging site at The Common in Chapeltown. Arriving at around 38% state of charge the Volvo jumped right up to 155 kW charge speed immediately and stayed relatively high (but dropping) while I hit the toilet and grabbed a Starbucks. 12 minutes later it was at around 90 KW when I unplugged having added 20kWh of energy
The Rest
There were lots of little quirks about the EX40 that separated it from your run-of-the-mill EV. Some good, some not so good.
One thing that I liked - despite not being able to actually test it - was the second key. The Volvos come with two sets of keys. One is on a black fob, the other an orange one. The reason there’s a difference is that the orange fob can be encoded to certain settings in the operating system.
The intention is to give the key to, say, a newly-qualified young person who has recently passed the test. While the Volvo - as I drove it - is not equipped with dual motors and some serious acceleration, it does have enough oomph under the bonnet to leave someone without much experience out of their depth. With the orange key you can set the car to limit the top speed of the vehicle when it has been started using that key. This was something I would have liked to have tested but, unfortunately I was only supplied with the single key.
The other consequence of this was that I was unable to set up a profile on the Volvo app. To do so required the second key to be present in the vehicle while the app is being linked to the car. Because I couldn’t set up a profile and link it to the car I couldn’t test things like pre-conditioning o the cabin prior to getting in. Not a big issue, but something I love in my current EV.
One quirk I found ‘interesting’ was a small flap located between the seats ahead of the central armrest. It pivoted downwards - on a spring - to reveal a small, narrow, and quite deep compartment for which the use was not immediately obvious. It was only towards the end of the week that I realised - thanks to the investigative work of a friend of mine - that this was actually a small rubbish bin that can be removed and emptied as needed.
The internal manual - like all manuals I’ve seen that are accessed via a screen - was almost unusable. On several occasions I tried to research the ‘Pilot’ functions of the car. It took many levels of investigation and quite some time before I was able to find the specific bit that I wanted.
I wasn't a great fan of the centre console design. It's a screen flanked by a couple of chrome-effect vertical air conditioning vents. The screen is quite small, shows ALL the fingerprints, and the user interface is - consequently - a little fiddly. I saw a recent video of the EX30 which has a much larger central screen and a completely different look and feel to the operating system.
As you can see in the attached video I did have one small issue when filming my thoughts. I climbed into the rear seats to do a piece to camera, forgetting that I had clicked the button to turn on the child-proof locks at the rear. When I came to exit I found I couldn’t. With a little bit of a good fortune (and a hitherto unknown ability to stretch) I managed to reach forward and click the button that released the child locks.
Overall impressions
As I said at the top of this article I was ready to not like the EX40. But it did turn me around. It drove nicely, charged quickly, and was a lot more efficient than either of the Polestars (although good weather did play into that somewhat).
But it does raise the question of whether I would have one of these? Looking at this from a price point of view this is cheaper than the Polestar 4 but the price differential from the Polestar 2 is not that great - around £2000. For my needs I would probably go for the Polestar 2 in preference to this.
I would, however, welcome the opportunity to try the EX30 which has a bigger screen but a smaller battery, or the ES90 - the Polestar 4 equivalent - if anyone from Volvo is reading this…
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