Volvo EX30 - long-term-review

A key part of car ownership is the classic giving-it-a-look-back-after-you’ve-walked-away-from-it. Because a key part of car ownership is how the car looks. If cars were purely built for function, we’d all be driving aero-honed lozenges. (Hello to the three people who bought a Merc EQ!)

No, cars are built for form, too, and the EX30 has it in spades. Crossovers can never really be sexy because they look like regular cars suffering from some kind of infection, but the EX30 looks cleaner and smarter than most.

(Side note: TopGear.com is now imagining how good the EX30 would look as a small estate. If only Volvo had history in these things.)

Anyway, the EX30 is so clean and smart, it won a design award from Red Dot. Red Dot has been doling out design awards since 1955 and had this to say about the electric Swede: “Overall, the jury concluded that Volvo, as a brand with a long tradition, had succeeded with the EX30 in creating an innovative product for a highly competitive market.”

It said Volvo had reinterpreted “typical design elements” and that it was “clearly recognisable as a Volvo”. We suspect that's because it’s an evolution of a design language Volvo has crafted over many years, not because there’s a massive ‘VOLVO’ badge on the back. Though, that probably helps.

As does that mention of ‘tradition’. Owning something familiar – for whatever reason – is an often unspoken rule of car ownership; that sense of knowing where your car comes from, what it’s a part of, where it belongs. The search for identity is something humans have grappled with for centuries – turns out cars need it too. Just ask BMW. Arf arf.

On a recent taxi run, I had the pleasure of transporting my elderly folks to a wellbeing club. One of their 87-year-old friends took one look at the EX30 and immediately asked ‘is that a Volvo?’ She then regaled me with a story of when she and her husband were younger, they’d take their old Volvo estate on long drives in the country. And it was one of her happiest memories of their time together.

This EX30 takes those old cues and reimagines them with success. The ‘Thor’s hammer’ headlights, flat nose and classic arrow badge, the short overhangs and cliched ‘pared-back Scandi interior’ all point to this being a product of Gothenburg. Despite it also being a product of Geely.

Look! Here it is next to its really, really big brother, the EX90.

And like that car, this little ‘un looks taut, unthreatening and nicely packaged. Even if unlike the big fella, it’s a little cramped in the back and the boot’s not huge. Both have that familiarity of moderately infuriating infotainment, mind.

It's also a car we keep looking back on once we’ve it parked, too.

Mileage: 4,254
Mpkwh: 3.2