Volvo C40 Recharge [POV]

It may have snuck up on you because Volvo is super lowkey

Welcome to short shift we’ve been spending part of the day with the volvo c40 recharge along with some support and some education from the volvo teams themselves now if you’ve not been familiar with this car i don’t think i could blame you volvo is a pretty soft spoken brand out here but they’re actually one of the first movers in terms of evs they’ve been making

Evs plugins hybrids for quite a while now experimenting with a bunch of different powertrain options and this is one of their first not pole star branded for ev so this is the c40 it rides on the same chassis architecture as the pole star 2 which i believe is the cma platform it is not a dedicated ground up ev chassis but it has been adapted from other cars in the

Volvo lineup to facilitate the battery pack underneath and i’ll show you some of that right now so what you have underneath is a 78 kilowatt hour battery pack in this one with the copified roofline this is the c40 you’re good for 225 miles of range which is solid it’s not as necessarily class leading but it’s pretty good it’s definitely good enough to you know have

A have a manageable range to get you to and from work and those sort of things but what you’ve got here since it’s not a ground up ev chassis is you have a front but it’s not huge it’s not like the ford mackie but it is still usable hold on of course pressurized and then here you go so you can put your charging cables in here and a couple other things if you’d like

One of the things though that i like about this as opposed to you know a lot of evs that you see on the road today is it looks like a volvo like you’ve got the typical volvo face from like the xc40 of previous years you’ve got the thor’s hammer headlight and since it is a typical volvo in typical volvo styling it’s gorgeous it looks fantastic i love this blue i don’t

Know if it’s coming across on camera but it’s kind of like this nice lighter kind of tealy blue you’ve got nice metal flake in there but it’s really pretty i like it of course it’s sealed up in the grill because it needs to be more aerodynamic now like i said or i was going to say this being the c40 with the copified roof means it’s six percent more efficient than

The xc40 which gets about 208 miles of range which is not exactly competitive so if you want the max range from this platform you go with this thing right here but yeah it’s just it’s quite nice it’s typical volvo stuff you’ve got some cooling up here for your front uh front motor as well as your battery pack and then as we come around the side you’ll see that it

Actually is riding up kind of high like you could probably take this thing off-road if you really wanted to i don’t know who’s going to do that in their volvo but you probably could um and then one of the things most specifically i love these wheels these are really cool so you’ve got 20 inch wheels but they’re kind of blocky and you’re starting to see this from

Evs and what it’s doing is it’s reducing drag so the wheel arch is like a very high compression area so by having a more blocky wheel you’re letting less air come in which means it’s more smooth which means you’re getting more range i do like this indentation bit here and then everything above the belt basically you’ve got these nice creases here but everything

Above the belt wing mirror and up it’s all black it’s kind of like the two-tone roof it’s quite nice i like it let’s take a look from the back here so it is kind of like that coopified roof shape and we’ll check out the back seat headroom in a minute but again you’ve kind of got mirror detail here which kind of dug in oh spider oh do i dare kill it with my finger

No no scared scared uh anyway so you’ve got you’ve got three spoilers here so you’ve got one two and then right here this bit three for the maximum aerodynamicism of course volvo c40 on the back recharge twin so really honestly and you’ve got of course you know plastic lower lower fascia as well but honestly if you didn’t know this was an ev you would hardly be

Able to know so having that front it’s real incognito you could definitely like smuggle joules or something in there because no one would know but with that let’s step in to the trunk and see how much space we have here so this is a pretty small thing like it’s a cute tiny little thing this is smaller than like a lexus nx it’s smaller than an acura rdx smaller

Than an x3 but you still have a reasonably large boot go into zoom mode as we typically do but you’ve got nice storage here you’ve got additional pockets down there recessed pockets for my water bottle which is great and then of course you’ve got additional storage underneath very usable 60 40 split for your rear seats let’s go back there all right heading into

The rear this is really cool i want to show you guys this it’s like carpet like legitimate carpet so one of the cool things about volvo swedish company they spend a lot of time and you can actually get this in orange if you’d like which is just mega it’s super cool but they spend a lot of time and focus on like recycled materials and i love that it’s super cool

Especially in an ev so having this carpeted material they also do like wall seats and stuff it’s just kind of cool to see of course you’ve got your typical stuff but hold on actually let me before i talk about that look at this this is more space than i have in the hyundai ionic 5 and that has the wheelbase of a three row palisade and i’ve got more leg room in here

At six foot now in terms of headroom i’m right up against it if i put my head back but if i could put my head forward then i can put my head right underneath this big pane of glass which is brilliant there’s no there’s no shade that comes past but you know it’s uv treated you’re not going to get super hot back here it’s fine then you’ve got nice weighted venting

Controls you’ve got charging back here you’ve got 3 three level heated seats and then you’ve got like contrasted leather in alcantara white stitching it’s very very nice again look at this nice alcantara i think a lot of these materials are recycled which is great cup holders let’s take a look at the front all right and stepping into the front seat again we’re

Going to take a look at the same details i like this right i don’t know if this is coming through on camera but this is like a three-dimensional like almost stacked kind of feeling you’ve got loop door handles harman kardon this the speakers on these things the volvo takes their their sound very seriously you’ve got the bows and wilkins you’ve got harman kardon

All of the sounds actually pretty good now i do again i’m going to point out the cool recycled carpet bit because it definitely matches with the exterior paint you can see it down here in your floor and you get it everywhere on your center center area here it’s really really cool and of course you’ve got aluminum recharge here on the door sill nice and again little

Easter egg on all the volvos a little swedish flag you love to see it but let’s step inside here and take a look so i’ve sat down i’ve sat down i’m gonna turn this off before i get demonetized actually i don’t have enough subscribers to be monetized but maybe eventually one day but anyway so what we’ve got here uh you notice there’s something missing right so you

Don’t have the typical like twisty bit to start stop so this kind of uses the same type of thing as like the q4 e-tron we were just in where i’ve sat my butt on the seat that’s turned on and then i just go into drive and i’m good to go i can power away and then of course just park button but one thing you’ll notice from this interior is it’s very minimal it’s very

Simple design it’s very scandinavian in that way i really quite like it and make a good use of the materials and the space now a lot of stuff is baked into your system here now this is the new system uh running with android and google so if you’ve got google profile it works pretty well if you don’t and you just use iphone and you know your icloud account you might

Not have a great time based on my experience it works just fine i actually like the screen pretty well it is covered in gloss black around it but honestly it’s not a huge deal this is gloss black this this part annoys me a little bit more than gloss back especially this bit here where they used to have the little spinny bit for your stop stop that’s gone so it’s

Just a big a big sheet of scratchy black plastic or you know shiny black plastic but you do have wireless charging here usbc’s typical stuff and then here you’ve got your little volvo trash can which is just kind of nice of course you can remove it and dump it and then you’ve got center console as well for storage um but it’s really nice i mean i think this is

Like a nine inch screen which is you know perfectly fine you’ve got this i think 12 and a quarter inch digital cluster now this is an updated one it’s kind of like audi in the sense that you can customize it make the whole thing like a map which is quite nice um so yeah i mean from an interior perspective i think what you’re getting here is a lot of design um if

You have an android you’re going to love this system it’s going to work perfectly for you but now i think i think the value proposition that you’re getting when you get a volvo obviously you know first thing anyone thinks of is safety but you also have just a really nice clean design especially from like a modern ev like this you’ve got little bits of personality

That come through this the blue with the carpet like there’s just little bits that remind you that you can have personality in a car without having you know crazy had gimmicks every single place that you look so i quite like this let’s get it on the road and go for a drive right behind the wheel of the volvo c40 recharge what we have underneath the skin here is

The same platform that underpins the poor star 2 the i guess you could call it kind of twin ish uh full ev from volvo’s kind of spin-off brand of fully electric cars you can see that i think it’s the pole star 3 coming out soon it’s just a gorgeous thing it’s unbelievably beautiful this is a pretty good looking thing as we’ve seen already now what you have under

Here is a 78 kilowatt hour battery in this x excuse me in this c40 you get 225 miles of range and in the xc40 the more rugged the less copified roof shape you get 208 miles of range this is a little bit more efficient it’s a little bit more aerodynamic and that’s why you get more range from that now you’ve got dual motor setup you’ve got all-wheel drive so you

Get 402 horsepower and 400 and 48 pounds foot of torque now this ford fusion is going to get out the way we’re going to put our foot down i mean it’s not slow it does 0 to 60 in about 4.5 seconds it is properly quick now this is this is kind of the nice thing that i like about the direction that volvo have gone here uh they’ve simplified everything so they used to

Have like two liter turbocharged four cylinders that also had a supercharger and then there was hybrid system involved there was just there was a lot going on they’ve simplified it it’s battery electric it’s super powerful there’s less components to maintain that means your reliability will probably be a little bit better uh the longevity will probably be a little

Bit be a little bit easier and it’s just it just works it’s just nice you’ve got plenty of punch plenty of get up and go depending on you know no matter what speed you’re going you can have you know a lot of go out of a dig from zero miles an hour you can pull at 80 miles an hour you’ve just got loads and loads of power loads and loads of torque available to you

At all times and again since it’s an electric car with an electric motor you’re not waiting for a turbo to spool you’re not waiting for a supercharger which you wouldn’t be anyway but everything is instantaneous you have all of this response and i can troll with a one-to-one ratio the cause reaction and what’s happening with my right foot it’s just it’s just a more

Civilized way especially in something like this like a compact or sub-compact crossover you know i’m not necessarily looking for the drama of a sports car i’m not looking for like v8 sounds i’m just looking for something that’s quiet that’s comfortable that still has enough pep that’s you know refined and this i think encompasses that really really well so i really

Like this platform that they’ve got here now like i said 78 kilowatt hour battery 205 miles of range i believe this charging is about um eight six to eight hours on level two which is what most people can have at their house which is again if you plug your car in after you get home from work you can plug in it’ll charge itself to 100 overnight and then you’ve got a

Nice full charge for the next day you’ll never have to stop at gas station and that’s what most people are going to be doing most of the time of course for your one-off you know longer commutes you know you have to worry about the public infrastructure but that’s a whole nother conversation if you do go with a dc fast charger you can get from about zero or five to

Eighty percent or whatever it is in about 40 minutes which is actually pretty quick now in truth the koreans the hyundai and the um the kia they charge a little bit quicker but this is still i mean 40 minutes is is pretty good like i said 90 plus percent of the time you’re just going to be driving this to work to the grocery store to the gym perhaps and then you’re

Gonna plug in when you get home so it’s not going to be a problem at all so this platform works really really well it’s smooth it’s pretty quiet there’s a little bit of wind noise coming in or maybe i’m just more aware of it because there’s not an engine or transmission kind of making vibrations and sound so you’re just more aware of your environment overall that’s

One of the things that you have to be aware of with these evs so it’s nice it’s quiet it’s comfortable you’ve got a strut front suspension multi-link rear suspension and it keeps the car nice and composed you know we own these roads that are pretty decent but not perfect so it’s it’s a nice and smooth ride all right from a dig oh it gets up and goes that’s immediate

Talk there’s not a lot of noise that comes along with it which i think is kind of nice so ford kind of synthesized a lot of fake propulsion sound out of their mackie and it’s fine but in something more civilized more upscale than in like a volvo it’s kind of nice to have a little bit of um it’s kind of nice to have a little bit more refine more quiet more civilized

Feeling now you actually have two different drive modes you’ve got d for you know normal driving conditions and then you can flick it down again with your gear selector and that’ll be b mode which will be like kind of like your one pedal driving so that’s a little bit different

Transcribed from video
Volvo C40 Recharge [POV] By Shortshift