FIRST DRIVE: Volvo EX30: the best small electric car IN THE WORLD? | Electrifying

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FULL REVIEW:

Building a large, expensive electric car is, relatively speaking, a straightforward job. Add the bits that you want, whack on a big price tag and keep the difference. Doing the same with a small car, making it affordable to the masses (and making enough to keep the accountants happy) is harder, much harder. Which is why we’re not exactly awash with options at the lower end of the market.

But just when we were about to give up hope of seeing a genuinely affordable, high quality compact electric car, along comes Volvo and the remarkable EX30. Priced from just under £34,000 (with the promise of an even cheaper variant in the pipeline), the EX30 looks set to offer the best of both worlds. Is it too good to be true? Time to find out.

From launch the EX30 range comes with three different options: a Single Motor version with 270bhp and a 51kWh battery; a Single Motor Extended Range with 270bhp and a 69kWh battery and a Twin Motor Performance with 424bhp and a 69kWh battery.

The Twin Motor Performance version pairs the battery with an additional second e-motor to produce 424bhp, giving it a claimed 3.6 second 0-62 time. That’s 0.1 slower than a Tesla Model Y Performance.

We drove both large battery models on the launch and returned efficiency figures of 3.8 miles per kWh for the AWD model and 3.4 miles per kWh for the single motor model. Based on those figures, we’d expect the AWD to have a real world range of around 230 miles and the single motor to return around 260 miles. It’s worth noting, however, that while both large battery models come with a range-saving heat pump, the small battery model doesn’t.

Thanks to the EX30’s Android-based system, Google maps will automatically find you a charger when you’re running low and then take you to it while the car preconditions the battery to the right temperature. When you get to a charger the extended-range Twin Motor can accept up to 153kW, while the standard-range car has a capacity of 134kW.

Join Ginny as she drives the single motor extended range model on the road for the first time. Is this the compact electric car you’ve been waiting for? Is Volvo onto a winner with the EX30? Let us know in the comments below.

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