Due to a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events I have a new car. Since the tax changes for EV and PHEV around 18 months ago I have been realistically looking at getting an EV. I have been interested for a while, but could never afford one.
My fjord blue Volvo C40
My sister and brother-in-law were in need of a new car about 6 months ago and they were also able to take advantage of a lease to get a new EV. Around that time I had a couple of tests drives of a Volvo C40, a Polestar 2, and a BYD Atto 3. I really enjoyed driving the C40, but it was simply not affordable when compared with my current car lease, a hybrid Subaru XV.
Then Volvo announced the EX30 and my interest was piqued. The price brought the cost of a lease down below what my current lease, or at least VERY close to it - depending on the day of the week and the direction of the wind (interest rates).
Volvo C40
Fast forward a few months I got an email letting me know the deliveries of the EX30 was being pushed back at least 3 months, due to unexpected and overwhelming demand world-wide. I was checking the website of my local Volvo dealer for any extra details and saw they had a few demo model year 2023 (MY23) C40 vehicles listed as available, and one with a sizable discount as the MY24 vehicles were on their way and it had dome some kilometres already.
Time for a quote from the leasing company, and it came out as $3 less per pay than my current one. Phone calls to the dealer, paperwork, more paperwork, additional paperwork, signing more things in wet ink.
Volvo C40
On a Teams call with work colleagues - “Hey, Tim. When are you going to get a new EV?”
Just trying to troll me knowing I had been interested in the EX30 and it had been delayed.
“Oh, ahh, I have to pop out in about 1 hour to drop of my car as a trade-in and pick up my new car.”
Shocked Pikachu
It is a couple of days later. I am yet to charge the vehicle, or drive it very far. So time for a road trip. After ensuring I have some podcasts queued up on my phone I headed off to a DC charger than is around 50km away. I told the car where I was heading and it told me it thought I’d have around 44% charge when I arrived, down from 79% when I left. After about 10min on the road I noticed it had changed its mind and decided I was going to arrive with 65%.
I was driving patiently, not not trying to overtake vans on a slightly iffy stretch of single-carriageway, but when the overtaking lane became available I indicated, checked the my blind spot and found the acceleration from 85km/h up a hill to be extremely brisk. And this is not the ‘twin motor, 4WD, rocket ship’ - this is the based model.
I arrived with 66% charge 😁
Volvo C40
At the charger there was a Model X towing a boat leaving and an XC40 trying to reposition itself to get the cable to reach. I parked and waited. There were two plugs on the charger, but one of them is a CHAdeMO plug, only used by a few models of car released a while ago (Nissan really need to do something about that).
At some point and a Mercedes EQC400 rocked up and joined the queue.
The other Volvo left and I reversed in. I couldn’t check-in on the Plug Share app as my phone doesn’t have coverage in the area and the app on the car didn’t take my password 😕 (The Volvo’s SIM card did have coverage in the area, which was great to see.)
Plugged in. Hit the go button. And it started charging. That was it.
I didn’t hang around for ages, just topped up the battery to 75%, more as an exercise to go through the process and make sure everything is happy more than anything else.
Volvo C40
I stopped the charge, unplugged, and told the car I wanted to head home. It estimated I’d only have 30 something per cent charge when I got home, which was another massive over estimate on the consumption driving home. Again, after about 10 minutes it had reevaluated the consumption and decided I’d have 40 something per cent. Another 15 minutes later and it was up to 50 something per cent.
I think a lot of this is based of the fact it is an ex-demo car, and had been driven without any thought of efficiency, until I had taken ownership of it.
When I did get home I had 56% charge left, after taking a longer, and windy, and at times bumpy way back. Checking the consumption in my garage it told me 16.6 kWh per 100km - which seems good and on the better end of the efficiency scale.
My next trip will be to Melbourne.