Other Volvos will follow.
We don’t lack attention with the Volvo EX30. The color Moss Yellow means a lot, the design of the smallest Volvo also catches the eye. It is the new trend in the compact segment, cube-shaped and tall EVs are booming there. Yet you can make it even more colorful with your EX30 with the visual tuning of the new Dutch brand Everlast. In the text of this video we also give you an update on the ins and outs of our EX30 endurance tester.
Everlast offers two types of appearance for the EX30. The Sport looks a bit sportier, despite its high concept it almost looks like a hot hatchback. The Outland seems like a small 4×4 that doesn’t shy away from scrambling through muddy or rough terrain. The two styles were designed by Niels van Roij, who previously focused on the latest Land Rover Defender. The designer sees a future in appearance adjustments as an extra to the accessory lines of the manufacturers themselves. “The EX30 is a very strong car, but with Everlast we want to give it its own character. We wanted to be the first company worldwide to offer modifications for the EX30 and that is why we started designing wheels and colors on the car in a virtual environment without having seen the car in real life. That was quite difficult because we had no ET values for the wheels and we had nothing to scan or view. When developing the Sport, we assumed that the car could be lowered, and fortunately that turned out to be true. The same applies to the 21-inch wheel size, one inch larger than Volvo offers. Fortunately, that turned out to be possible.”
EX30 Sport had to get a hot hatch look
“With the Sport we looked at how we could give the car the character of a hot hatch without losing sight of the price tag. You can achieve a lot with the spraying on the body and the lowering. The wheels come out a little further, which improves the stance of the car.” And then the Outland, where at first glance you think that the car is actually higher on its legs than a normal EX30. “But that is not the case, although we did intend to do so very early in the design stage. It wasn’t necessary because we could make it look higher with several factors without it being so. The graphics, the graphic elements, play a major role in this. The black surfaces on the nose and the rear and the smaller wheel with the coarser tire provide this appearance, making the EX30 Outland look like an off-roader. We assumed that Volvo would also come up with such a version, and the Cross Country also came. People simply thrive on two main tastes, a dynamic look and a more rugged look. However, manufacturers are increasingly skimping on designs and paint colors, especially with EVs. The development of electric cars is expensive, and we are responding to this with Everlast.”
Other Volvos but also Polestar and Lynk & Co
Everlast focuses on Volvo but has also announced that it is targeting other Swedish cars. Which ones are they, because Saab no longer exists? “Polestar and Lynk and Co were also invented in Sweden. Although with Chinese money, but we see them as Swedish,” Van Roij explains. “But as mentioned, our focus for the time being is on Volvos. The 60 series, for example, is an interesting model line.”
If we look at the sales numbers of the Volvo EX30, there is a considerable market for Everlast. The car is doing well on Dutch soil. More than 4,100 have already been sold, which means it has already surpassed the (E)C40 that was launched more than two years ago.
First software update is on the endurance tester
And how is our endurance tester doing? He has completed the first software update, we are now running version 1.3. We have it physically downloaded, EX 30 riders receive it over the air. We notice that the ‘car wash function’ now works, the car then closes the windows and folds the mirrors itself and you don’t have to worry about it switching to ‘Auto Hold’. There’s nothing more annoying than rolling through a chain wash. The radio still stutters sometimes, but not as often as before the update. The car also enters a limited charging mode less often. There are still irritations about the many functions on the screen. For example, we still have to reset the distance that the car keeps in the adaptive cruise control from the car in front every trip. Remarkable: if you adjust the distance from the longest to the shortest in one go, it will automatically return to the first mode. If you first select ‘average’ and then ‘short’ via the swipe screen, the distance will remain there. But sometimes he doesn’t. The car also occasionally does not have GPS, so the map does not work and recently we got in and the system indicated the time we got out the day before. And it kept doing that during the ride, even though we tried to adjust it.
Consumption finally below 20 kWh/100 km
Power consumption was solid until the end of April, we barely got it below 20 kWh/100 kilometers. That is a high consumption for an EV in this class. Although we have 272 hp, which guarantees super-fast acceleration, but when we look at the other electric endurance tester in the fleet, we find the consumption very high. We do see an improvement as the temperature rises. We now drive an average of 17 to 18 kWh/100 kilometers according to the on-board computer. However, that is about 3 kWh/100 kilometers more than the Jeep Avenger needs at the same speeds and temperatures. The electric Jeep has 156 hp. We drive the version of the EX30 with an electric motor, which is good for 272 hp. It is an Extended Range, so with a 69 kWh battery pack instead of the 51 kWh capacity of the basic version. In practice, we now increasingly see a range of around 400 kilometers appearing on the display.