The 2022 Volvo XC40 RECHARGE Is a Shockingly Awesome EV Off-Roader Because….

Charge with FLO: Click on the link to learn more! ( ).

Tflev is brought to you by flowcharger maker of reliable high quality charging stations for your electric vehicle hey everybody i’ve got a really fun one for you today because this is the new volvo xc40 recharge twin the all-electric volvo crossover and in this video we are doing a full comprehensive review and then we’re gonna take it through our off-road course

To find out if this will work for your lifestyle needs the xc40 recharge shares its platform with the gasoline volvo xc40 but of course in the recharge configuration it’s fully electric it’s got a big 78 kilowatt hour battery and two electric motors one in the front and one in the back it shares the same platform with the polestar ii and this one is in thunder

Gray metallic although let me know what you think in the comment section below it looks a little bit more blue to me so let’s talk about some of the specs on the volvo xc40 recharge ultimate twin this is a 2022 model year now the epa rates his vehicle at 223 miles on a single charge it has a 78 kilowatt hour battery and has a peak dc uh fast charge rate of about

150 kilowatts and then a peak ac charge rate of around 11 kilowatts which is uh really pretty good now we are on our little off-road course and we are just finishing the development here we’ve got some more on the rock side to do but we’ve got three obstacles we’ve got holes we’ve got logs and we have rocks and i’m not really expecting the volvo to be able to

Complete all three because we are on 20 inch wheels with pirelli tires and we only have about 6.9 inches of ground clearance now the gasoline xc40 has over 8 inches of the ground clearance and we have taken that thing off road and it is an absolute rock star out in the dirt it’s got such a good all-wheel drive system so let’s see if the recharge can do as well

Out on our course now we do have an off-road mode and then in onward mode we also have a range optimizer mode which will help maximize the range by limiting limiting climate control so we’re going to stay in on remote to start out with and see if we can tackle the holes course let’s see if the audio drive system is capable in the standard on-road mode and then

We’ll flick it into the off-road setting so i’m going to put down my window here now the whole idea of holes is we get the vehicle very much off kilter we get it articulated so certain wheels are going to go in the air and then the dual motor setup is going to have to compensate using traction control to send power to the wheels that are on the ground so that we

Can continue some forward momentum so once again on-road mode normal mode everything in its standard on-road systems so dipping into the first hole and there you can see we are lifting up tires so that is now full throttle and the traction control system is figuring it out trying to maintain just a little bit of gentle momentum dipped into the second hole oop

A little bit of scrapage on the third hole so we ran out of ground clearance just a little bit now we’re going to start picking up tires again once again ground clearance limited so that is going to be one of the big issues on this vehicle is it just doesn’t quite have enough ground clearance for this kind of thing um but the all-wheel drive system even in the

On-road mode is working excellent to get us unstuck so the traction control is activating it’s sending torque to the wheels with traction just trying to be nice and sensitive here and i think we’re gonna do it pretty close to the top now this is also on a pretty steep hill so there we go we’re losing traction we are completely articulated and we are nice and

Stuck so let me try this let me go ahead and engage the off-road mode and see if that’ll help us get unstuck so what’s going on is only two wheels of traction right now the other two are fully in the air so i’m gonna go into driving let’s go ahead and engage the off-road mode off-road mode engaged and let’s see if we can get unstuck using this system come on

Figure it out it’s working on it oh look at that that was impressive so in the off-road mode it knew to clamp down on those wheels in the air because this car is open diffs and force the power to the wheels on the ground and we were able to get up that was very very good in my opinion this volvo is one of the best looking new electric cars on the market it’s very

Purposeful i love kind of the square jawed nature and i actually do love this blue color i’m going with blue even though case strongly disagrees of course the headlights have the thor’s hammer design and this grille is this flat body colored piece to let you know it’s the electric model now of course under the hood we do have another hood check that out pop the

Second hood and you’ve got a decent sized little storage cubby now from the side the first thing you notice is the black that roof which i think does look quite nice and this little recharge emblem along the c-pillar this is one of the big criticisms i have about the overall vehicle i’d love it to differentiate itself just a little bit more from the gasoline model

This recharge is a nice step but maybe some cool stickers or design package along the side just to make it look a little bit more special and then down here we see these large 20-inch wheels now they’re probably not going to help us out on the off-road course especially in this relatively mild pirelli all-season scorpion tire but they do look quite good so this is

The holes course part 2 off-road mode engaged from the get-go and let’s see if we get a better result with off-road mode engage so also stuck right at the base but brakes are clamping down hard hard to distribute torque very impressive and the modulation with the electric powertrain is excellent really excellent modulation now the modulation from the tommy not as

Impressive but very easy to drive extremely slowly with a lot of control and precision now we’re probably going to bottom out here just a little bit we’re just taking it nice and easy so we don’t damage this press loader okay of course the battery does have a lot of shielding on it so i’m not concerned about that aspect of it but you know i want to be courteous

To other journalists reviewing this vehicle and it’s kind of thinking about it there we go that was good dipping down into that hole now it’s got a climb out of it easy steering modulation too a nice controlled rack not too fast not too slow very impressive though on the all-wheel drive programming i really think volvo has is pretty much nailed of course locking

This would help but for a stock non-off-road oriented vehicle all right we’re getting a little bit stuck here that groading is i believe the brakes which are engaging so much easier when we did the whole course in the off-road setting i was too fitting a little bit which it didn’t like that’s where we got a little bit of jerk but um very impressive all-wheel

Drive very very impressive stepping into the volvo this electric car has a feature i really love on a full ev and that is a complete lack of start button so all you do get inside the vehicle with the key in your pocket put your foot on the brake and then select a drive direction and you are simply ready to go that is all there is to it why include a start button

Or key or something you have to activate when you have an electric motor fantastic solution now the overall interior design is very minimalist there are a couple of hard buttons there’s one here for volume and then of course you can advance your track the infotainment system is a google operated system so you can see that this main screen is all google it uses

Google maps uh the overall interface like google assistant that’s all done through google if i haven’t said google enough google but uh one thing i don’t like is how when you go into like the climate pages this seems very much volvo so it feels like there’s a little bit of a mismatch especially in the settings page between the google system and then the stuff

That you need in a car and i’d like to see a little bit more kind of cohesion there but it is a fairly easy system to use we do have a full surround view camera system and you can access the cameras by clicking on various buttons there overall though a nice interior couple of fun little features down here there is a little place to store your phone in a vertical

Position which is pretty cool down here is a built-in trash can which i just love a fantastic idea and then in the glove box is what they call in the uk the curry hook so if you went out uh for your takeout you can simply hang your little bag there that is a nice little thoughtful feature the seat very comfortable i love the contrasting white stitching overall a

Nice interior um the operating system is my only complaint every now and then it’s just a little bit clunky so this is our log course and this is a great test of not only ground clearance we do have a little bit of articulation but it really is a good test of approach breakover and departure angle so we’re looking at 20 degrees of approach angle right around 16

Degrees of breakover and then 26 degrees of departure so lots of departure angle on this volvo i am a little concerned about the ground clearance though so off-road mode engaged we approach the logs turn off the parking sensors of course completely silent operation this is actually the first time i’m running a dedicated crossover over this course i’m going to

Take it a little bit easy all the other times i’ve been in like wranglers and broncos which is kind of hard to see the capability or the challenge of the course i should say but we’re gonna take it nice and easy and see if the volvo can tackle it a little bit of traction going on there with the uh that log now it does look a little jerky i’m trying to be ever

So careful just to make sure we’re not going to come slamming down on the battery too hard there we go i’m kind of figuring out the two footing now now this log in the middle this is the big mama let’s see if we can make it over this is not gonna look very elegant on camera it’s got so much torque it’s very hard to be nice and gentle it is actually letting me

To two foot though if you’re ever so careful you can apply the brakes and the throttle just ever so slightly kind of volvo see what you got wow pretty good really very impressive haven’t scraped all yet so weird off-roading in complete silence i’m expecting like rooms and turbo noises and all of it but it just is absolutely silent now this departure angle is

Really put to the test at the end here let’s see if the volvo has what it takes to not rip off a bumper actually the 360 degree camera is so helpful you can see the logs as we’re going over it and then you have good relation to the vehicle as to where they are i think that was gonna be the last one and i think we’re off not bad whatsoever let’s check out the

Trunk in the volvo now this vehicle does have the kick sensor the idea being that you swipe your foot underneath the rear portion of the xc40 and there it goes it’ll lift up got a lot of stuff in your hands i find it to be a little bit clunky i prefer just to use the pad or the key now the trunk of the volvo right around 20 cubic feet of space with these seats up

They fold down and you get closer to like 47 or 48 cubic feet and this is a cool feature the trunk floor lifts up and now if you lock it into position you’ve got a space for your grocery bag which i really like underneath the trunk floor a little bit of additional storage storage and let’s check out the charge connector and i think this is really smart so you can

Either use it with 240 volts or a 120 volt level one system just by swapping out the little dongle at the end not the first manufacturer to do this but definitely love to see that feature and then something very interesting if you look down here there is a jack and you do have a small tire iron but as far as i can tell this vehicle does not have a spare tire which

I think is very funky so they give you the jack to give you the tire iron but no spare tire donut or full size as you see you can even lift it up i mean that’s just the trunk floor there nothing underneath either so kind of an interesting idea that volvo has incorporated the back seat in the recharge is a good place to spend time this is my driving position at

Six feet tall and you can see i’ve got plenty of leg room and even really good headroom that’s with the full panoramic sunroof fold this down here we’ve got a couple of cup holders and a ski pass through so an excellent rear seat even for full size adults so now the rocks course and this isn’t quite finished our guru david has been working hard to get it done but

We’re gonna see how the volvo performs um and if we if you look like we’re gonna pinch a sidewall or you know curb one of these 20-inch wheels we’ll certainly uh back her down but we’re just gonna take it nice and easy at first and then we’ll kind of get out and reassess traction control is working so we’re already fully articulated here come on come on volvo

There we go there we go all right you figured it out that was good everyone’s staring at me we got like a whole team of production people behind us wondering what the heck is this guy doing in a volvo hey this is nutty volvo this is an xc40 recharge baby how’s it looking david come on a little bit of slippage there all right not a little bit of slippage just

A loose rock you want me to go right oh tired of slipping now what do you think it’s slipping david we don’t have the grip out of these pirellis am i gonna clear it so traction control traction control really working hard there to crawl up these rocks because the pirellis do not have the grip we need on these rocky surfaces engage my cameras here yep that

Looks pretty scary come on baby wow wow it’s doing it though ever so slowly taking it super easy i think we might claw out of this bad situation this is this volvo’s fully maxed out off-road right now and it’s completely silent doing it this is pretty wild and i think we are almost almost out of the worst of the rocks now we got this loose hill climb here

So there we have it obviously not a dedicated off-roader but the all-wheel drive system is really very competent and can get you up quite a number of cool things if you want to get to the cool camping spots or trail heads definitely recommend putting on a smaller wheel and a more aggressive tire for more of that kind of thing but i do love this volvo the biggest

Issues the price sixty thousand and ninety dollars now you do get a lot of premium features but when you keep in mind the range is only rated at 223 not a lot of range for the dollar but if you are just looking for a great comfortable luxurious city commuter that you can plug in at home at night this thing is really pretty rad let me know what you think in the

Comment section below as always this has been tommy with tflev we’ll see you in the next video you

Transcribed from video
The 2022 Volvo XC40 RECHARGE Is a Shockingly Awesome EV Off-Roader Because…. By TFLEV