Volvo XC40 Recharge long-term test review

What is the reality of living with an electric car in 2022? The government has signalled an end to sales of regular petrol and diesel cars from 2030, with only electric cars to be sold from 2035. We all have to make the switch to electric eventually, but what is it like making that move now?

We are going to find out, by living with a car from a company that itself will only sell electric cars from 2030. Meet the Volvo XC40 Recharge. 

Volvo XC40 Recharge long-term review: intro

As a motoring journalist, I cover a lot of miles. Driving to and from press events in the UK, slogging to and from airports for international drives, as well as meeting clients and – although it’s no longer on a daily basis – driving to and from the office.

I drive way more miles than the UK average, and this going further than most people do in a day. The maximum range of an electric car is thus of paramount importance. So too, when the battery is exhausted, is the public charging infrastructure.

Switching to an electric car as a daily-driver is a big step, then. I used to err towards diesels with big fuel tanks, to minimise the amount of time I spent stopped and refuelling. How will I cope with the world of electric motoring? Reader, recharge your popcorn bucket, because we’re going to find out…

Our Volvo XC40 Recharge: price and specs

I’m running a Volvo XC40 Recharge because I know it’s a great car. Volvo’s premium small SUV is a favourite with UK car buyers, and it’s easy to see why. It looks great, has a practical and premium interior, and is upmarket to drive.

‘Recharge’ is Volvo’s branding for its plug-in hybrids and electric cars. Our model is an XC40 Recharge Twin Pro, which has dual electric motors producing, wait for it… 408hp. That’s good for 0-62mph in just 4.9 seconds. This is a sports car disguised as an SUV.

It has a 78kWh battery, which provides an official range of 256 miles. It also has an onboard charger that means I can use public rapid chargers at rates of up to 150kW. The charge socket is on the rear left-hand side, underneath a standard-looking fuel filler flap.

I chose the Glacier Silver colour as it’s bright and modern, and shows off the green flash on the number plate. The 20-inch wheels are standard – with one eye on range, I’d have preferred smaller rims, but admit these look fantastic – as is a heat pump to warm and cool the cabin more efficiently.

As electric cars run silently, I thought I’d indulge, so I made sure I chose an XC40 Recharge with the Harman Kardon premium sound system as standard. Other features include a vast array of Volvo safety assistance tech, a panoramic opening roof and vivid LED headlights.

It also has Volvo’s new Google-based infotainment system. I’m still learning the intricacies of this, but I already love how you can sign in to Google Maps and have your desktop search history at-hand in the car. It also hooks into the battery charge, so you can see how much range you’ll have remaining when you arrive.

What I haven’t yet worked out is how to use Apple CarPlay. It’s listed on the spec sheet, but doesn’t seem to pop up when I plug in my phone. I also can’t yet sign into the Volvo smartphone app, as I don’t have both sets of keys. More to come later on that.

Of course, due to the semiconductor shortage, I’ve had to wait for delivery. Since I ordered, Volvo has rejigged the range: our car is comparable with the £57,350 Ultimate range-topper, but you can also get a cheaper £54,300 Plus version with the twin-motor, four-wheel-drive setup. The single-motor XC40 Recharge costs from £43,550.

So, that’s the platform for my introduction to living with an electric car. Come back soon for first impressions from life on the road…

Our Volvo XC40 Recharge long-term review: month 1

In my first few weeks with the electric XC40, I religiously plugged it in pretty much whenever I had chance. I’m lucky enough to have a wall box at home; even if there was 80% charge remaining, I still plugged it in each and every time I got home.

This helped take the sting out of 200-mile-plus trips. If I found a 50kW charger, I could take a quick pit stop, check up on emails, then carry on with range to spare when I got back home. Even better if it was one of the high-power Ionity chargers they have at Milton Keynes, Beaconsfield and others.

But getting home at 11pm, in the rain, and having to plug in started to lose its allure. It’s lovely to have a full tank every day, but if I’m not going anywhere the next day, why wake up the entire house by messing around with a charging cable?

So gradually, my charging routine has become less fervent. The XC40 Recharge is more often sitting with 40 percent in the battery than it is fully charged. Oh, sure, if I am going somewhere the next day, I’ll plan ahead and plug it in. But just as you don’t keep your petrol tank full all the time, so I’m becoming relaxed enough to drive around on ‘half a tank’ or less.

This is easier on the batteries, anyway. If it was my own car, which I was planning to keep for several years, I’d be particularly mindful of this. Treating batteries kindly is, I guess, something we’ll become more mindful of as EVs start to take over – 100 percent charges will be the exception rather than the rule.

Public charging

Do I have public charging nightmares to report yet? Of course I do, be it joining a slow-moving queue of EVs to use the paltry two slow-speed chargers at a motorway services, to finding a promised 120kW of charge was delivering a mere fraction of that.

I’m fully expecting to witness my first example of charger rage at some point; the etiquette isn’t fully formed and, short of taking tickets to work out who’s placed where in the queue, it’s hard to figure out where you stand in an eight-deep of cars waiting to charge.

And while the Volvo’s Google-based sat nav helps you dynamically find EV chargers on the move, it seems less good at telling you if they’re working or not. I’ve already had a detour and two hours added onto a trip because of this (thanks, Shell).

The secret is planning ahead. I religiously find out where the high-speed chargers are located on each journey. Unlike at home, if I’m travelling long distances, and stopping en route, I’ll always plug it in if I can. And I’ll always work out a plan B and plan C, just in case.

Haven holiday heaven

We recently enjoyed a few days away at the coast – good old Devon Cliffs. The three-hour holiday getaway is one of the biggest barriers to EV ownership: people look at the high-mileage exceptions, rather than the everyday drives.

But can it easily be done in an EV? Turns out, it can. On the way there, we stopped off at Gloucester Services and plugged in; on the way back, we did the 185-mile journey in one hit, and got back with miles to spare.

I admit, I was worried. Holiday drives with kids and dogs on board are stressful enough. But it genuinely was a breeze – and made even easier thanks to Haven installing electric car charge points at the holiday park. I was able to plug it in and top the battery up without drama, so we could go out and about in our EV without being anxious about range (or spending half the day trip searching out charging points).

The family are now converts. They’ve actually stopped even thinking about the fact it’s an EV, that might go flat, and has to be charged all the time. It’s all proving very seamless indeed. Let’s hope it continues this way: sounds like I need to step up the challenges I subject it to…

Volvo XC40 Recharge long-term review: month 2

Big news: Apple CarPlay has arrived to the latest Volvos running the Google Automotive OS infotainment system. It’s been a glaring omission since the system was introduced, but finally it’s here – and current drivers, like me, won’t have to visit a dealer to have the update installed.

This is thanks to the magic of over-the-air (OTA) updates. Tesla’s been offering them for years, adding functionality (and ‘easter eggs’…) at the press of a button. Volvo’s now able to do the same too, which is why I was so excited to spy an alert advising the latest software update had arrived.

It’s called Software Update 2.2 and the headline addition is Apple CarPlay. But it includes other goodies too, such as a long-overdue ‘Hold’ function when stationary, meaning you don’t have to keep your foot on the brake pedal. Volvo also promises drivetrain optimisation adjustments – I’ll come back to that later – and also the ability to use video apps when stationary (they’re coming to the Google Play Store later as well).

What’s the process? A simple one: simply click the touchscreen a few times to accept the update, then lock it and wait up to 90 minutes for it to be installed. Sounds a long time, but it probably won’t take that long: less than 20 minutes later, I had a phone alert advising it was complete.

And sure enough, once I’d accepted a few more terms of service and plugged in my iPhone, there it was! CarPlay on a Volvo.

Rather brilliantly, it’s full-screen CarPlay too, rather than the ‘window within a window’ seen on most models. It even has my chosen smartphone background, with all the apps eligible to be used while driving on display.

Of course, it works perfectly. Apple CarPlay always does, as does Android Auto for, er, those with Android devices. Car manufacturers may prefer to keep us within their ecosystem, but when all our life is on our devices, it’s a tricky sell. Until OEMs can seamlessly integrate into our devices, Apple CarPlay and Android Auto will be the conduit.

Where Volvo has been smart is to make it super-easy to switch from CarPlay back to the core Volvo OS. You simply press the ‘home’ button at the bottom of the touchscreen, rather than having to press an icon within the CarPlay setup. You feel less like you’re ‘locked’ into CarPlay and are more willing to toggle between the two.

Maybe perfecting this is why it took Volvo so long: it’s certainly one of the best Apple CarPlay experiences I’ve encountered.

More range

The Software Update 2.2 summary mentioned “drivetrain optimisation adjustments”. I thought nothing of this – until I noticed that the 200-mile nearly-fully-charged range previously shown had instantly jumped to 250 miles.

An over-the-air update that instantly adds 20 percent to the range? Could it be real?

So I drove the car, fully charged it again, and confirmed: the fully-charged range, which used to be 210 miles, is now a consistent 250 miles. This is so interesting, I’m speaking with Volvo to find out more, and will report back in due course.

Certainly though, it proves the power of the OTA update with electric cars. As engineers work out new ways to optimise the batteries, so they can deliver these upgrades to every car on the road at the touch of a button. Just as your smartphone gets better with time, so too will your electric car.

It’s got me buzzing to see what the next software update has in store. For the first time in automotive history, our electric cars are going to get better all the time. If that’s not a reason to embrace electric cars, I don’t know what is.

Volvo XC40 long-term test: month 3

I’ve never had a breakdown in a long-term test car. Until now. Yes, the Volvo went haywire. To a degree I struggle to explain even now.

And it didn’t just happen once, but three times – culminating in 60-mile taxi ride back home at 1am from where I’d had to leave it just off the M40 motorway.

The first time, I immediately knew something was up. I got in, pulled the gearlever into drive (it doesn’t have a stop-start button; simply get in and go) and… watched the dashboard light up. Multiple error messages and every single warning light was illuminated.

What’s more, it wouldn’t move. The motors were engaging, and it sat down on the suspension as if it wanted to move forward but the brakes were stuck on. Then, when I lifted off the accelerator, the motors ‘shook’ the car for 30 seconds or so, as if they were randomly pulsing. Haywire indeed.

Thing is, the entire car was frozen: I couldn’t turn it off, lock it, even switch off the lights or disengage the gearbox. As I stood outside, every so often the motors would pulse and it would shimmy on the suspension.

If this were Formula 1, the marshals would refuse to touch it until they saw the green safety light.

I had no such luck; here was a ‘live’ car, lit up like a Christmas tree, that I could do nothing with. Other than call Volvo Rescue.

The guy turned up and told me I was lucky, as he had one of the few diagnostic computers specific to electric Volvos outside the dealer network. He was also one of several such Volvo Rescue people to tell me I was far from the first…

An hour later, it was fixed. How? He rebooted the system, cleared the error codes, and all was back to normal. It was one of the ECUs sending a glitchy message, he said, which caused the entire network to fall over. This did little to reassure me, but I thought I’d see how it went.

A few weeks later, exactly the same thing happened again. After it was eventually fixed, I dropped the Volvo press office a line – it’s not my car, so I couldn’t take it back to the dealer I’d bought it from. They took it back for a few weeks, and returned it, seemingly fully fixed.

Yes, it subsequently broke down again. As I was driving back from Heathrow airport late on Saturday, after a 27-hour flight delay back from the US. So I was not in the best of moods.

This time, it happened while driving on the M40. The first error code flashed up, and my heart sank. But I plugged on, as I was in between junctions, with a charging spot in Banbury my target.

Then another error code flashed up, and another. The dashboard lit up. The car started jerking, and gradually lost power. I crawled off the M40 and just about made it to the charging station – by the end, the car was emergency-braking, jamming on the anti-whiplash seatbelts and violently pogo-sticking forwards. I just about managed to reverse it unto a charge bay before it finally expired for good.

Great.

And then the debacle with Volvo Rescue ensued. Over the course of several hours with me stuck in the cold, they were quite polite but resolutely unhelpful. There were no expert technicians available, apparently, and as the car couldn’t be shut down, or moved, the person with the car transporter refused to come out. And I couldn’t leave the car as, again, it was lit up, wouldn’t shut down and wouldn’t lock. The guy they sent from the local garage couldn’t do anything, either. Catch-22.

Now, I’m a patient sort, but this was ridiculous. Volvo wants to be a premium brand but this certainly wasn’t a premium experience. Eventually, they found someone who’d come out with a computer, and it was agreed I’d leave the keys at a nearby hotel. The car would be taken to a dealer, and I’d be taken home in a taxi. I eventually got home about 2am.

A few weeks later, the car was returned. They’ve found the problem, I was told: a loose wire. Nothing from Volvo Rescue explaining why I’d been abandoned, and no other follow-up apologising for the experience.

I also found a jolly note on the windscreen from a fellow EV owner. Dear passive aggressive motorist (presumably carrying around Post-It notes in the car to spread their views), if only you knew…

Volvo, if you want to be a premium car company, you’ve got to do better than this. And also look into the reliability of your electric cars. Because your customers may not be as patient as me.

But I’ve now drawn a line under it. And, touch wood, the XC40 has behaved itself in the weeks since returning. So, back to life with a (working) electric car – come back for more soon.

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