Styling
We've got no problems with the styling of the Volvo EX30 Cross Country. It looks great in its regular format anyway, but the Cross Country treatment serves it very well indeed. Baffling, of course, as CC Volvos always used to be
jacked-up estates, and anyway the idea of making an SUV (supposedly an off-roader or 4x4-type machine anyway), um, more off-roader-y seems totally counter-intuitive to us. Also, with an EV, it's a dangerous game hiking it up further into the airstream to impact its aerodynamic efficiency and thus reduce its range, but hike it up Volvo has - to the tune of 19mm (12mm from the suspension, another 7mm from the wheel-and-tyre package bespoke to this model).
However, the black body colouring and Volvo's decision to only offer an array of 'earthy' tones for the Cross Country's panels (our test car was Vapour Grey, but the one you can see in these pics is the lovely Sand Dune; and no, the eye-catching Moss Yellow that was a launch colour for the EX30 has, inexplicably, been deleted from the entire range) does give it an adventurous air. It's the front and rear panels in black which we like most, though, and if you peer closely at the one in the nose - which makes the EX30 look something like a 2020s Scandi interpretation of the
SEAT Ibiza Bocanegra - then you'll see contour lines supposed to represent the relief map of Kebnekaise, the highest mountain in Volvo's native land of Sweden. That's the kind of wonderfully self-indulgent and nerdy attention-to-detail overlaid with gentle patriotism we can wholeheartedly get onboard with, so the EX30 is, from an aesthetic perspective, off to a strong start.
Interior
Hmph. We're going to have to be careful not to let this section run away with us, because it's going to be a rant. But let's begin with the good stuff. From a pure build quality point-of-view, the EX30 Cross Country feels like the properly premium piece of kit it is supposed to be. And once you're aboard, the doors shut with a beautifully reassuring and hefty 'thud', while the seats are once again another Volvo masterpiece. How other manufacturers are not, by 2026, just buying old models from the company, tearing down their front chairs to see how Torslanda does it, and then just shamelessly ripping off the Swedish outfit remains beyond us. Plain and simple, Volvo does the best car seats in the business. End of.
All so positive, right? Ah. Well, it can't have escaped your notice from the pics that there is pretty much bugger all in the forward area of the Volvo's cabin, aside from a steering wheel and a big portrait touchscreen. Now, if you're one of the
Teslarati, then you probably adore this bleak minimalism, although we'd counsel caution about copying Tesla's interior ergonomics, because they can be utterly daft at times (cough, indicator switches on the steering wheel, cough).
At best, you can say the EX30 Cross Country's fascia is clean. At worst, you can say it's unremittingly boring and stark. Quite who it was at the company who looked at what the firm was doing ten years ago for the majestic cabin of the
second-gen XC90 and thought that, for the EX30, the approach was to go 'no, this is rubbish; let's chuck it all in the bin and start again, stripping out all the warmth and charm that was there and replacing it with absolutely nothing of interest whatsoever'... well, what we'd like to do to them is unspeakable in print.
The reason, of course, for this design-related austerity is that bloody stupid touchscreen on the dashboard. Which runs
absolutely everything inside the EX30 Cross Country. And if the bog-basic look of the fascia in the Cross Country is bad enough, this thing is simply heinous. Volvo, remember, is the company which is a watchword for safety. In a spectacular show of noble philanthropy for all humankind, it gave the rest of the automotive world the three-point seatbelt for free rather than for profit, so convinced was it of the device's life-saving merits. It hardly needs saying that every single car in the industry uses these items nowadays, does it?
So how the hell did
anyone in Volvo, of all the car companies in the world, think this utterly unsafe touchscreen set-up was in any way a good idea?! It honestly makes you want to tear your own eyes out in frustration. There are so many systems and processes that Volvo has completely and needlessly reinvented that we can't go through them all, but how the company thinks that having to tap the screen multiple times and then fully confirm you want to actually do what it is you're doing in this monumental faff,
just to turn the bloody car's lights on and off, is totally unfathomable; we've had a rotary switch on the end of a sodding column stalk, or at worst down on a side panel, that has done this job perfectly well for decades.
We could go on. Why is there no physical volume button in the middle of the dash for the stereo? Why do you need to tap a button on the screen to open the glovebox? Why is the cruise control master switch on the column-mounted shift lever? Why are the awful haptic buttons on the steering wheel that control the volume for the stereo (your front-seat passenger can't use these mind, obviously) not marked as volume buttons in the accepted graphical sense, but instead up and down arrows? Why is there no small screen in front of the driver to display vital info, like the car's speed (yes, we know, Tesla does this too, but we've already said that the American firm is in no way a market leader when it comes to sensible cabin layout and vehicle operation)? Why is adjusting the in-car cabin temperature such a vexingly awkward job that requires you taking your eyes off the road for far too long at a time?
It's all just
dreadful. And, from Volvo, unforgiveable. Operating this thing on the move is little short of dangerous. If the EX30 makes it through its midlife facelift with any of this still intact, we'd be absolutely gobsmacked.
Practicality
Leaving aside the obvious impracticality issues brought about by the safety points raised above, the EX30 is OK in other regards. Space in the second-row seating isn't great if you're six-foot tall, but smaller occupants should be happy back there. The boot's nothing more than passable at 318 litres, but it's at least of a usable shape and layout. And while it took us a while to figure out where the blinkin' front cupholders were, eventually our 11-year-old son solved the problem - and we have to admit they're quite a neat installation, in the end. They pop out of the front of the central armrest, in case you're wondering.
Performance
We've got no qualms about the thumping pace of the Volvo EX30 Cross Country. It comes only with the Twin Motor Performance AWD Ultra powertrain, which means a couple of propulsion motors are sited on each axle, and they deliver goliath outputs of 428hp/543Nm. Thanks to a relatively modest 65kWh usable battery pack, the EX30 CC comes in at less than two tonnes, so it is brutally, almost gratuitously quick. The 3.7-second 0-62mph time only tells a fraction of the story about the monstrous roll-on pace this thing has, because it arrived on test with us in the wake of the mega
BMW M3 CS Touring, and if anything - and despite its lack of aural drama - it was the Volvo which felt the quicker car. Remarkable.
There's a payoff, though, for all this unassailable overtaking potential, and it's the second major black mark on the EX30 CC's copybook - which is crippling range anxiety. Volvo claims this car will do up to 273 miles to a charge. And while we thoroughly understand that dual-motor EVs with 400hp-plus and 1.95-tonne kerb weights are not the height of electrical efficiency in the way that, say, a
Renault 5 E-Tech is, the distance-to-empty readouts in the Cross Country are nothing short of brazen liars.
Try as we might, utilising all our EV range-saving tips and nous, we could not get the EX30 to do anything better than 21.5kWh/62.1 miles. That's 2.9 miles/kWh, which is 188 miles off a full charge; way short of 273. But, even working to that capability, and that you're often kicking off with 80-ish per cent showing,
and the fact that the nav in the Volvo is by Google Built-In, twice the EX30 nearly stranded us by massively overstating the distance it could do on its remaining charge.
The first time, a 90-mile trip from base to just down the road from Gaydon, the car reckoned we'd turn up at our destination with more than 20 per cent battery left and around 50-60 miles of range. We finally rocked up at the place, which of course had no chargers and was about 10-12 miles from the nearest DC hook-ups, with 2 per cent and six miles left; embarrassingly, we had to throw ourselves on our hosts' mercy and ask them to granny-charge the thing, so we could at least get to a charging point. (Saints that they were, they actually did that until it had enough to creep away in shame to a DC unit, then took it off themselves to charge it to more than 90 per cent while we were driving other products - we're indebted to them forever more.)
And then, the Cross Country did it again. The night before its collection, ready to run our lad back home after a weekend, it said it had 11 per cent battery and 16 miles of range. No bother - driving on mainly 30mph roads, we had a 10-mile round trip to drop The Boy off and get to the InstaVolt chargers at Ollerton roundabout to juice it up for the driver coming to pick it up on the morrow. Yet, despite driving it like a particularly cautious nun and running no electrics in the cabin at all, it completely ran out of charge 2.4 miles shy of the charger. What ensued was a sweaty, panicky crawl at 28mph to make it, which the car finally did - but still.
Fine: a 428hp EV isn't going to give you a comfortable, year-round 400 miles of range, we get that. But the trip computer was, being as kind as we can be, woefully optimistic about what the Volvo could realistically do, to the point that it became a thoroughly useless readout. So a real-world 150-mile range is about the working limit for the EX30 CC, and that seems poor, given what the car costs.
Ride & Handling
We're back to the good stuff here. In terms of ride and refinement, the EX30 Cross Country is one of the best Volvos we've ever driven. It has sumptuous springs and dampers, which can soak up some atrocious road surfaces with little difficulty whatsoever, and the acoustic isolation of the passenger compartment is near-total at all road speeds. Throw in those glorious front seats and there are few other cars you'd rather wish to do hundreds of miles in at a time, other than the Volvo. Well, apart from the fact it can't
do hundreds of miles at a time, of course, due to its range limitations. Oh, and that the stupidly arranged cruise control, complete with only 5mph incremental adjustments once set, will do your nut in long before then.
The handling's perhaps not quite as impressive a showing, as there's a lot of power for some very, very soft suspension to handle here. That being said, we liked the positive and weighty steering of the EX30, plus the fact that it occasionally felt a bit tail-happy and lairy when you got on the power early out of tighter bends. So no, while it's a long way from perfect in the roadholding regard, the Volvo's kind of fun nonetheless, because it's so devastatingly quick and so marvellously supple. You can just batter along whatever pothole-strewn road you want at any speed in the Cross Country, and it will take the strain out of the process with little drama whatsoever.
Value
There's just one specification for the EX30 Cross Country, which means it costs a chunky £47,060. That's in a framework where the most inexpensive EX30 model is a gigantic £14,000 cheaper. Perhaps the best thing to note here is that our test car felt well-equipped and properly plush (in the main, dash aside), and yet there were no cost options on it whatsoever. Not even the paint. Therefore, with this flagship model of the Volvo, WYSIWYG.
Verdict
A review of two halves here. Strip out the spartan interior with the calamitous touchscreen, and overlook the car's electrical profligacy coupled to its con-artist charlatan of a trip computer, and you could quite easily give the Volvo EX30 Cross Country four, maybe even four-and-a-half stars. We think it's brilliant to drive, it looks smart on the outside and most of the cabin (if you ignore the dash area) is very nice. Admittedly, at getting on for 50 grand, it's not cheap, but comparable EV rivals with this sort of performance and prestigious badging aren't any less expensive.
But you can't just ignore the massive flaws of this car, because you have to interact with them every single time you drive it. We could just about forgive the plain-as-paper dashboard and even the car's woeful electrical inefficiency on the move, we reckon - but that ridiculous infotainment system is a step way too far. It simply must be changed for the midlife facelift, Volvo, to arrest a worrying trend we've noticed with your erstwhile-magnificent Geely-era cars: and that's the realisation that all the 'E' Volvos, such as this EX30 and the big
EX90, are either alarmingly underwhelming at best, or fatally flawed at worst (OK, the
EC40 and
EX40 are fine, but that's because they started life as the combustion-powered
XC40 in essence).
Here's hoping that the incoming ES90 fastback-saloon-type-thing doesn't fall into the same category. And also that the otherwise-likeable EX30 Cross Country can be saved from ignominy with its scheduled update programme in, presumably, a year or so's time. Fingers crossed.
