Volvo EX40 Review: Smooth Operator

What we like:

Excellent road manners

Well-packaged

What we dislike:

A little dull to drive

Dated interior tech

The predecessor of the EX40, the XC40 Recharge, was Volvo’s first electric car. With a name change, it can get a little confusing, but all you need to know is that the EX40 is Volvo’s mid-sized SUV that sits in between the 7-seater EX90 and the smaller EX30.

With a longer production period than either of those two cars, the EX40 admittedly feels a little bit dated. Its design hasn’t changed all that much since the XC40 was unveiled in 2017 (a whopping 8 years ago), and although it still looks good it looks a little too familiar and unexciting. If you had stepped into the EX40 from the EX30, you’d think the former is clearly a last generation vehicle.

At least the fundamentals are still solid. The XC40 was designed from the start to be easily converted into an electric vehicle, so the EX40 presents no compromises even though it also has ICE siblings. There is a reasonably sized frunk, a practical boot with hooks for shopping bags and ample interior space.

On the inside, material quality is high as you would expect from Volvo, with a mishmash of soft-touch materials, chrome and fabric. My favourite feature has got to be the ‘mountain’ topographic ambient lighting that glows subtly at night. Very classy.

It’s the interior tech that feels a bit of a letdown, like the vertically-oriented touchscreen. It has all the functionalities you could ever want with its Android-based system that integrates seamlessly with Google, but it is a tad laggy and visually dated. Same goes for the instrument panel. If it were updated with the EX30’s screens, it’d be very welcome.

The EX40s we get in Singapore are 175 kW / 420 Nm single motor versions set at the rear axle, which can get the car from 0-100 km/h in 7.3 seconds. Honestly, power isn’t lacking one bit and it makes the dual motor version simply superfluous for our road conditions.

The car is calm and collected as it goes about its business in a very Volvo-like fashion, which is great news as many EVs don’t tend to get its ride quality right. Not even the large 19-inch rims can unsettle the EX40. Shocks from road undulations are damped away easily, while wind and road noise levels are pleasantly low too. The downside is that for keen drivers, the sleepy steering feel makes the EX40 a cruiser and nothing more.

With a claimed range of 479 km on the combined WLTP cycle, the EX40 is about on par for a typical EV today on that measure. On AC, you get 11 kW of charging power while on DC you get 180 kW - which means 26 minutes from 10% to 80% in the best case scenario.

I think the last thing to note is that the EX40 ($264k) is priced $16k less than the ICE XC40 B4 ($280k). That makes the electric version very enticing indeed. So long as you can live with the slightly dated looks and interior tech, the EX40 is a very fine everyday EV.

Photos by James Wong