Our cars Flaws yes, but still love it


Despite its minor annoyances, the Volvo XC40 Recharge is my kind of car and here’s why… Guy Bird


In my line of work I often have the privilege of talking to senior car designers, and once cheekily made the observation to then head of Volvo design Robin Page – recently made top designer at Bentley – that I found the XC40 to be very similar to an iPhone. In that you forgive it for all the things it doesn’t do well, because of all the other things it does brilliantly. Page’s response was to smile and simply say, “I’ll take that as a compliment”. Good design can have that effect and the XC40, whether in its original guise as an internal combustion-engined car with


conventional grille, or as the all-electric Recharge with ‘closed mouth’ and superb 20in alloy wheels, is just such an example. The strong proportions and geometric graphic originality – using clean diagonal and horizontal lines – make it unlike any other in its mid-size crossover class. The interior is an exercise in ‘less-is-more’ without feeling austere and the experience of driving full-electric, gliding near-silent along quiet streets, to easily keeping up on faster A-roads and motorways with solid steering and a decent ride, makes this Volvo seem well-placed for my life.


Yes it has annoying traits – like the iPhone – most notably when it unilaterally acts in the name of safety. Volvo has always laudably taken safety seriously, but when the car decides that my low-speed driving through a twisty section of road with a bollard in the centre and parked cars to the left constitutes an emergency situation that necessitates it slamming on the brakes without prior audio warning to the actual driver, I take umbrage. A similarly unannounced ‘automatic brake slam’ happened when I was merely reversing into an empty car parking space with nothing


Volvo XC40 Recharge Ultimate (Single Motor)


P11D price £54,995 As tested £55,090 (OTR) Official range 259 miles Our average consumption 3.0m/kWh Mileage 2801


around me, and the sensors seemed to confuse very bright sunlight for an imaginary nearby solid obstacle. The (non) incident shook up my passenger considerably and was totally unnecessary.


I also reported on Volvo’s App being a massive pain to link to the car, but once that hurdle was jumped, it has proved quite useful. Another weird XC40 flaw I only came across recently is the poorly designed coat hook. A standard feature for decades, and previously just a raised nodule on a rear seat passenger grab handle, such designs were imperfect – coat hangers tend to slide if you drive too vigorously – but getting the hanger’s hook off was never a problem. By contrast, the XC40 coat hook is a small two-size hole, which probably intended to


Standard equipment on Ultimate trim:  City safety (inc. pedestrian and cyclist detection, front collision warning with fully-automatic emergency braking), Oncoming lane mitigation (guides car back into lane if it drifts out), cruise control, auto LED headlights with active high beam, rear parking sensors, reversing camera, 360-degree camera, two-zone climate control with clean air quality system, 12.3in digital colour driver display and 9in central touchscreen with Google Automotive Services, DAB radio, Bluetooth, Apple and Android mirror screening, eight-speaker Harman Kardon stereo, power tailgate, 20in alloys, four USB-C charging ports, wireless inductive smartphone charging pad


Options:  Thunder Grey metallic paint (no- cost option)


solve the sliding issue, but makes getting a standard coat hanger hook into the hole really hard in the first place (let alone two) and can cause a wrestling match when you want to remove it.


Sat nav was decent with Google Maps and/ or Apple Maps via CarPlay but Waze never quite played ball. The late 2022 Recharge set-up is better than the old 2020-era XC40 PHEV I also tried for six months, but there is still work to be done. Volvo’s ex-design boss Page told me he had recruited more than 100 user experience (UX) designers in the past three years, so that should improve later iterations. That the user experience can improve over the lifetime of the vehicle – without changing the physical car via ‘over the air’ updates which worked well – is also heartening. One small UX case in point that many of my ‘late to buckle up’ passengers noticed when moving from Audi to Volvo: the chime reminder to fasten seatbelts in the Swedish car sounds quietly Scandinavian and gently persuasive, rather than harshly German and loud.


Elsewhere a solid boot divider made securing fragile cargo easy and the 360-degree bird-eye view camera made manoeuvring in tight spaces reassuringly simple. Energy usage varied from 2.6 miles per kilowatt hour in colder months to 3.4m/ kWh in warmer ones, but as electricity prices fell in the spring – now 0.37p from my local charging post – the process feels less prohibitively expensive. In summary, I like the XC40 Recharge in a big way, and forgive it all its (small) sins.


Why we’re running it


To see if the Single Motor XC40 EV is the best choice for this fleet


WEBSITE Please visit www.businesscar.co.uk/tests/long-term-test/ for previous reports on our fleet www.businesscar.co.uk | June 2023 | 47


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