Volvo EX30: for the younger target group – Preview

You could say that Volvo and electrification go together like a V8 and a Dodge Charger. From 2030, Volvo will only sell fully electric cars worldwide and the brand has already started phasing out the traditional combustion engine. The current models are already available with various mild hybrid and plug-in hybrid powertrains, and Volvo is also making significant progress in the field of fully electric cars. There is already a successful electric variant of the XC40 and the sportier-lined C40 is even only available as an electric Recharge. Although the now eight-year-old XC90 will soon be given a facelift and may still be available in a select number of markets, Volvo’s largest SUV will actually be followed by a fully electric giant, the EX90. The electric EX90 is of course a nice showcase of all the beauty that Volvo has to offer, but with a provisional starting price of over €102,000 for the lavishly equipped Ultra version, it is certainly not for everyone. But don’t worry, on the other side of the electric status ladder, Volvo also comes with a new electric and high-legged model!

Subscription

From now on, Volvo will launch a new, fully electric model every year. During the introduction of the EX90, the brand showed a shadow of a new and relatively small electric crossover that it will officially present in 2023. Volvo CEO Jim Rowan recently gave away that the compact newcomer will be called EX30. That naming immediately indicates that it is positioned one step below the XC40. With the EX30 – which we can already show you thanks to the great work of our illustrator – Volvo is aiming at a younger target group. With the EX30, CEO Jim Rowan has his sights on 18 and 19-year-olds who are in the market for their first car.

Wait a minute, a Volvo for teenagers? Sure. Volvo will offer the EX30 online, among other things, via a subscription construction with a term of as little as three months. The Volvo EX30 comes with various sizes of battery packs, so that there is also something to choose from. Pay according to use, in perhaps the most literal sense of the word. If you don’t feel like using your EX30 after three months, you simply don’t renew your subscription. We know a similar construction from Lynk & Co, not entirely coincidentally another brand of Volvo’s parent company Geely. Volvo does not yet want to know anything about renting the battery pack of an EV separately. Of course, 18- and 19-year-olds aren’t the only ones Volvo hopes to get into the EX30. All in all, the new EX30 will play a major role in the sales growth that Volvo envisions. From 2025, Volvo hopes to sell 1.2 million cars annually, a growth of no less than 70 percent. Of those 1.2 million Volvos, half must be fully electric.

Volvo EX30 (illustration: Larson)

In terms of design, the EX30 leans heavily on the EX90. The small electric crossover gets similar taillights and a relatively angular design without too many design frills.

SEA platform

What Volvo’s smallest EV has to offer technically? That is still unknown. If we look in the parts warehouse of Volvo’s parent company Geely, we come across the scalable Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA) platform, among other things. The Polestar 4 uses a variant of it and the electric Smart #1 and the forthcoming #3 also use it.

It is obvious that the Volvo EX30 will also receive a variant of that SEA base. That does not immediately mean that the EX30 will be identical to the 4.3 meter long Smart #1. For the time being, it is only available with 272 hp and 428 hp powertrains. They seem to us for a model that should make ‘the EV’ more accessible on the very potent side. Although there are still some gaps in the story of the Volvo EX30, it seems that this will just become the most popular Volvo in the coming years. That alone makes the EX30 interesting.