2024 Volvo C40 Recharge Twin EV Review and Off-Road Adventure

2024 Volvo C40 Recharge Twin EV Review and Off-Road Adventure

This is the 2024 Volvo C40 recharge twin motor ultimate it’s a stylish and sporty all electric four-door that packs quite a punch in this video we’re going to check out all the features and then go on an adventure that’s coming up right now on driving sports TV Volvo is continuing to make big moves in electric fact is if you go to their website right now you will see a majority of the vehicles they offer are electrified the C40 here is the smallest all electric option it starts at just under $54,000 and it shares a lot of Hardware

With the more rugged xc40 the model we’re testing today is the twin motor ultimate price as you see it here $ 61,7 45 including destination as the name suggests this particular C40 packs two electric motors one in the front and another in the back together they produce 402 horsepower and

494 LBT of torque this setup not only achieves higher performance than the single motor version it also Powers the all-wheel drive system even though it looks very similar to last year’s model the electric motors here are actually all new and Volvo says that these motors are more efficient the battery is now a

78 KW hour lithium ion unit that’s an increase of 3 kwatt hours from the 2023 model that along with the better Motors gives the 2024 C40 an EPA rated range of up to 257 Mi slightly better than the competition notably the Gen genus gv60 with all-wheel drive that has a 77.4 KW

Pack and a maximum 248 mes of range on the subject of batteries the single motor rear wheeel drive version of the C40 has a larger 82 KW hour unit for an impressive max range of 297 M all c40s support 200 KW DC fast charging which in

Theory should get the battery from 10 to 80% in just under 30 minutes we’ll test that out a little bit later Volvo claims a 0 to 60 time of the C40 twin motor ultimate at only 4.6 seconds of course this is an electric car so up front you

Don’t get an engine instead you get a small cargo space with a charging cable TDA this supports both level one and level two charging they have a little adapter for your standard 110 for a compact vehicle these are shockingly large Wheels they’re 20 in and they are

Wrapped in par relies which one are these scorpion All Seasons right no off-roading today or at least not much the most significant difference between this and the xc40 is the shape of the back this has more of a Fastback style design whereas the xc40 is more like a traditional crossover pretty boxy

Now of course that does affect cargo capacity with all the seats up you get 15 cubic feet lift this up to get to the Jack and some extra storage and then you can also leave it like this and you have hooks for grocery bags which is a cool

Trick fold all the seats flat for up to 49 cubic feet overall this is such a nice flat floor you can absolutely sleep in it if you’re short enough I’m 6’1 my legs don’t really fit unless I scrunch up but if you’re on the short side you can absolutely sleep back here

See if we fit in the second row oh it’s not too bad I mean for a compact I actually fit pretty good I got room for my knees I even get vents here I get seat warmers and two USB C’s and this massive Panorama sunroof excellent

Fold down the center section I get an armrest with cup holders and this is also a pass through if I have long objects like skis that way you can transport four people plus the ski it’s very nice this looks nice this is one of those Vehicles like

The Volkswagen id4 that turns on the moment you sit in it it’s not always my favorite thing cuz sometimes I actually want to leave my car running when I’m not in it don’t get that option here soon as I put it into drive basically everything comes alive these seats very

Comfortable they are wrapped in Wool of all things in fact this is the very first all vegan vehicle from Volvo we have a nice synthetic wrapped steering wheel we have this lovely Crystal shifter we do get a digital dash here as well as infotainment and you will note there’s

Google everywhere here because yeah they’ve partnered with Google for most of their systems here you get Google Maps on the inside and Google OS over here and it’s very tightly integrated so like if I have a Google account that’s logged in I can pull up my common navigation items my own per personal

Places stuff like that now there has been a minor modification to the system for 2024 it actually is a little bit different it’s not a very big tablet but I think it’s big enough for functionality we do have airon on the bottom row touch a button it is

Instantaneous we get three stages of heat on the wheel we get three stages of heat in the seat there is no Cooling in these seats though even though this is an ultimate addition we do get lots of power adjustments forward back I get Lumbar and leg it is a smallish vehicle

But I think it actually uses space very effectively the seats are great everything falls to hand nicely I would have liked to had physical airon controls but they at least give me defrost hazards and a stereo volume knob down there below that we do get a charging pad for mobile devices and

Under that we do get a couple cup holders surrounded in this piano black now in here we get a little like this is like a little waist bin which is cool uh we do have some cables let’s see I need a USBC cable so let’s give that a try

And see if Apple carplay comes up quick allow and boom there we go we now have apple carplay up so even though this is an Android based system yes you can run Apple carplay see is it Wireless no it does require a cable Volvo synonymous with safe safety obviously we have Collision mitigation

Which has pedestrian and cyclist detection blind spot warning switching into reverse we get a nice surround view camera system plus we get rear cross traffic alerts the C40 is available with one of two different stereo systems the ultimate here we are loaded with the Harmon cardan sound system which is the

Upgraded option okay so what’s the plan for today well we’re going to take this into the Olympic mountains uh because this is not really a Trail Ready crossover it is effectively a hatchback style car we don’t have a lot of ground clearance so we’re going to take it easy

Today but we are going to take it for a drive into the mountains we’re going to see how the mileage shakes out and then we’re going to go take it to a charging station and see how long it takes to charge back up we are starting off with

A not completely full battery we’re looking at around 90% with under 200 M of total range but that should be sufficient for today let’s buckle up and head out so the weather has gotten a little colder and it’s a little Rainier I don’t know what kind of conditions we’re going

To hit once we get into the mountains basically I’ll just deal with it when I get there it is currently 40° out I currently am showing 180 M of range oh let’s reset my trip uh how do I reset my trip where even is my trip okay so we have

An infotainment system that is so simplified I don’t know where anything is let’s pull over and figure this out okay so where is a trip how do I see my trip see this is the problem with like super simplified buttons you can’t find any there’s no buttons okay go into settings

This is one of those things where obviously if I owned the vehicle I would have figured this out by now but uh right now I’m not even finding a trip of any kind there’s nothing there there’s nothing there there’s no buttons here can I no that’s

Stereo stereo on stereo oh oh hit the middle button on the controller and that gets me my trip we’re good to go so I reset the trip it shows my range is 1880 Mi and I’m at 82% charge but it’s also giv me a cold weather warning because it is 40° outside right

Now and this car was sitting out overnight because yeah I don’t actually own a garage so these seats are of course using wool material and I actually like them quite a lot my wife did not particularly like them she thought they looked nice but first thing she saw was

Just like these these things are not going to take stains you know you have kids in the car you’re shuttling them around I don’t think you want to have this open weave wool it just seems like it’s going to collect stuff even if it technically wipes clean it’s just going

To collect stuff between the weaves definitely I really prefer a synthetic material or even a leather for that case obviously leather isn’t vegan uh however if you want to go vegan and something that’s easier to clean if you have kids then you definitely want to go with a synthetic leather they’re actually quite

Nice these days uh personally though I like these seats I think they’re really comfortable I like how I fit I don’t slide around at all but I wouldn’t expect that in a family crossover SL Coupe SL electric car like we’re driving right now even though it’s a very dark day uh you can’t

Tell really on this inside cabin that there’s some interesting illumination so it’s a pattern that looks like a mountain elevation relief and it illuminates it’s kind of cool at night if you like that kind of thing um I personally just find it a little distracting I want like minimal lights

In my vehicle while I’m driving uh but you know if you like that kind of thing it’s it’s a unique look so our mission today is going to take us 50 mi into the Olympic mountains there we’ll climb a peak get a look and then try to find a charger

Somewhere uh because even though I have 180 miles of range 50 Mi there 50 Mi back that’s 100 that only leaves me with 80 it’s not just it’s just not going to leave me with a lot of charge when I get this vehicle home so I’m going to top it

Off after we climb up the mountain so that way we can also see exactly how these range calculations work out and also we can check out how fast this vehicle charges because of course that is a prime importance to electric car owners Volvo says that this one can

Peek out at around 200 KW so we’ll see even though this has very quick acceleration and it’s very quiet to operate other than that you really wouldn’t know that it’s electric cabin is exactly the same as a gas powerered Volvo you have the same little shifter control down here just because it’s

Electric doesn’t mean you have to reinvent the wheel and clearly we have a steering wheel here so that was not reinvented the infotainment system for 2024 has been reworked on this car so it’s a little quicker you still have to dive in for a lot of stuff I would

Prefer more physical buttons but at least they give you controls for volume and the defrost which is nice even though this does come standard with Google Maps built in you don’t have to use Google Maps for everything fact is is that even this map that’s integrated into the dashboard can show Apple Maps

When you are using Apple mapping software the good thing about that is it means that I can set the main panel that everybody in the car can see to something else I can even have an alternate mapping program like onx running in the middle while running navigation in the center console it’s

Kind of a cool setup according to the trip computer we’ve only gone about 6 miles and we have about 50 to do so I’m going to go ahead and fast forward to the next leg of this Trip well we’re continuing on into the mountains I have 140 Mi of rain and we’ll see how this goes free report on my seats very comfortable I like them a lot still no hot spots let’s go ahead and try adaptive cruise because I have a

Car in front of me now I just hit the little cruise control button on it automatically sets it to Lane centering though I can turn that off if I want to it’s a little toggle left right here and this road is definitely on the twisty

Side and it is more than what this Auto steering system really wants to deal with but let’s see so is it going to keep Quest centered and it’s pacing the car in front of us very nicely yeah I would say that’s kind of what you want I can also change my gapping with

These buttons up here want to get a little bit closer let’s see how fast it gives up the ghost here on the turn I got to keep my hands on it because of that rail you know it actually whoa over steered okay it’s a little bumbly in finding its uh steering

Line but on mostly straight stuff it is great so that can help reduce fatigue on long trips I I like that feature the auto steer so long as you can turn it off and on this one you can um once it’s on you just toggle to the right and then

It just goes to adaptive cruise without the lane tracing feature okay we got a little ways to go here still but I will check back in as we get off the highway and turn off into the mountains driving this on kiry highways is actually pretty nice you know it’s

Planted it has good suspension I really like the way that it it moves in the corners and of course that power when you want it boom got a car in front of us so I got to be careful there okay and here we go into the mountains wait for a

Car oh I should say that this vehicle actually does support single pedal driving it’s not my thing but if you like that uh let’s go ahead and click on driving under settings and go all the way down to one pedal so if I turn on

One pedal I can use the gas pedal to accelerate and then when I remove my foot off the gas pedal it’ll decelerate all the way to a complete stop it’s literally one pedal driving as its name implies or says outright anyway this is a good if you’re doing a lot of City

Driving um it’s also very efficient because it uses a lot of regeneration when you you take your foot off the throttle so you are putting as much power as possible back into the system personally I don’t care for it you can set three different settings here in the

C40 uh either on off or Auto so I’m going to go ahead and turn that off uh here you can also uh change the steering feel I prefer firm so that’s on right now and then we also have two Drive modes either standard or off-road we

Will test off-road as we get to the top of the hill it should make it as capable as possible keep in mind this is rolling on 20-in Wheels it has very little sidewall we’re not going to do anything to extreme because this is a C40 now if

It was an xc40 the crossover more crossover boxy rugged looking version we might push things a bit further but this one is really a performance Coupe that kind of is in the style of a crossover and as far as performance Coupe goes yeah this thing isoo it’s it’s quick and it handles

Really nicely I like the feeling into the corners you add a little throttle you get that surefooted all-wheel drive push as you exit very nice let’s not uh use up too much of that battery shall we I might end up having to walk home and I’m not like

Doing this just to play into the range anxiety of electric cars this is legit like I wanted to go here I did quick math in my head I miscalculated the miles and the charger doesn’t exist where I thought a charger existed so if you’re not a fastidious planner it is

Possible that electric cars may not be right for you just keep that in mind man it is so wet out today but that’s okay we’re going to head off this pavement and onto a gravel road as we climb up a very small Mountain add some throttle woo oh we got some uh wood down here no big deal add some throttle now these are of course allseason radials they are not designed for anything too extreme and I have to say with this much power you can get in over your head okay this is

Fun but I do have to be really careful because even a modest sized podole could pinch the wheel and give me a flat this suspension is amazing I hardly feel the rocks at all but I can still feel what the steering wheel is doing mostly let’s try a quick launch see how

This thing does so I’m in Drive no different Drive modes and let’s just punch it woo wow really smooth acceleration even on a slippery surface like this that’s impressive really good traction control system can we get squirly with it let’s see squirly no doesn’t want us

To you know every single time I get out of this car it turns itself off and I kind of hate that now it is quick to re-engage but still don’t turn my car off I don’t like the idea of it turning on when I sit in

It I just want my car to stay on you know so far this thing is doing amazing I mean if you want to go on a forest Run yeah this car is really great now you’re not going to be able to get like backend

Out tail happy cuz I mean come on it’s a Volvo and they’re just not going to let you do that now can I dip into settings and turn off Dynamics uh not seeing it here now there is an off-road mode which ooh wow wow that really loosens up the wheel that’s

A that’s interesting let’s go back to standard and everything is now all tight again okay and we’ll continue our track we’ll wait to hit off-road mode when we need it a little later now this part of the track I have to be careful because there’s a really

It’s a big exposure off on the right normally a great view but today just clouds and rain I can kind of see Hood Canal a little bit there major producer of oysters by the way looks like some trees were down here recently but someone has been through

And cleared them so that’s good thank you to the forest service oh yeah that’s a that’s a big one it’s funny there’s been no storms lately I guess just from all the rain oo I like this small vehicle gets me through those tight areas While we’re doing this final climb I can say that this trip has been an hour and a half it’s been about 60 mil and I have 95 M of range remaining so a little worse than what the expectation was but I was probably driving worse than it would expect me

To um but yeah it’s right in there okay and then we have final climb to the top uh let’s do the hard line this really um was a problem for the one of the Kia uh I think it was the Kia Sportage had problems with this

Climb first we’ll just do it in standard mode and then we’ll switch to off-road mode if we have to so what do we got we have wheels spin traction control is really cutting in a lot wow this is where it’s should have issues with power yeah I’m hearing a lot of noises

Okay let’s go ahead and switch this into off-road mode and see how that changes things will it increase that wheel braking yeah I’m hearing a thk thk thk thk as this shifting power left to right on those open differentials moving us forward very slowly I’m keeping my my

Foot’s just in the throttle I’m not like doing much of anything here and then up and over oh that would be a spectacular view if it wasn’t absolutely overcast and raining so that’s the Volvo C40 as you can tell it’s a very effective off-road system uh if you need to do stuff like

That I mean it’s a Volvo you’re not going to do rock climbing but I think for daily driving for little trips like this the C40 is is amazing but now it’s time to head off of this mountain back into the City and try to find a charging

Station so we can wrap this video up woo man it is cold out there I mean it’s 40° but add that chill and wow so my batter is now showing I have 47% left right let’s put it in reverse shows I have 95 mil range should be no problem

Uh I am am I still in off-road mode I am not so getting out and into the vehicle again it resets my drive mode that’s not cool okay we’re in off-road mode Let’s see if this hill descent control system works going backwards so we’re on the

Tilt going to just lift off of the brake it does yeah it grabs it’s a 3 m hour descent not my favorite but it does the job Let’s wrap this up Bump now that I’m running back to go get this charged I show a range of 100 miles remaining now it is interesting there’s this range optimizer uh in the software tells me your vehicle will maximize range by limiting climate control functionalities and I guess I will limit

My airon just so that I can actually get back okay it’s showing me a range of possibilities between 70 Mi and 100 miles through this whole day I would to say the seat’s been very comfortable really good visibility inside the vehicle it’s just a really nice drive

They really nailed the as poal here now would I spend as much money as this thing is supposed to cost that’s kind of a tough one but I do get it you know it’s an electric car it’s batteries and motors and this stuff is still expensive

So if I had the wherewithal yeah i’ bu consider something like this I do think one of the misses here is the fact that this does not come with Wireless Apple carplay like seriously guys this thing’s a lot of money give us that please so we’re just a couple minutes away from

The charge ing station in Gig Harbor it is an Electrify America level three system DC fast charge so I should be able to get up and running pretty quick after that I am down to 16% charge with 35 mil remaining and I’m averaging 37.5 kwatt hours per 100 miles so if we did

12 say 125 miles uh and we have 35 mil remaining uh 3 4 5 6 so we ended up doing about 160 Mi based on on a 180 M estimate I don’t think that’s bad because some of those miles were gravel roads and a lot of it was also me

Driving more aggressively than somebody who’s trying to get good mileage would do so I think overall the system seems to be pretty accurate so according to the specs uh this should charge from 20 to 80% in about 30 minutes we will see ooh charging stations look busy hopefully there’s a

Slot now that we’ve made it to the charger let’s go ahead and plug in on the first available terminal for some reason touch payment isn’t working on this particular charging station so I’m going to go ahead and go into the app go ahead and pick number four which is what

This is and initiate oh yeah okay so it’s broken doesn’t say it’s broken anywhere but it’s clearly broken let’s move the car to the next terminal over go through the same process let’s go ahead and touch for charging hey look at that this one works I want to go get

Some coffee and then when I come back I’ll report on how it charges and we’ll wrap this episode up okay so got my coffee and now I just have to wait for this thing to charge while I’m kicking back here I can go to YouTube I can go find a great video to

Watch oh look at that driving sports TV how nice because of course this is based on the Android operating system you can install other applications but it does come default with both two as well as uh YouTube YouTube being my favorite of course now uh in terms of

Charging we’ve seen a peak of over 150 Kow currently it’s at 43 because we’re coming down off of that that kind of optimal curve uh the optimal curve you know getting up to 150 but then easing it down to around 80 which is where it sat for quite a long time as we’re

Getting to filling up the battery it’s starting to go down a little bit more uh but the result is the fact that we’ve been here for 33 minutes and I have successfully charged all the way up to 78% so that’s pretty good it is taking a

Little bit longer to charge but it is 43° out right now and I did not precondition the battery so these are definitely not optimal conditions um I think in optimal conditions clearly you can do a little bit quicker overall very happy with the C40 it got

Where we needed to go today it got us back it’s charging very quickly and it’s a very comfortable and easy to like ride just if you want something that feels like a normal car but just happens to be electric with a nice powertrain comfortable feel and just really nice

Ergonomics I think that the Volvo C40 should be on your short list for driving sports TV I’m Ryan D thanks for watching be sure to like subscribe and share our videos we make them for you hope you enjoy them

We drive the Volvo C40 to the top of a mountain to test it’s all-weather, all-conditions capabilities.

#volvo #newcar #electriccar

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