Say hello to the first small car that makes electric accessible, sensible and desirable: Volvo’s all-new baby SUV that’s as if Apple made motor cars…
Words Darren Styles
CARS
At various points in recent memory, Apple has been the biggest, or at least the most valuable, company in the world. You can point to its leadership, its record of innovation and its mastery of modern communications technology to find the reasons for that.
But others have those things too: great leaders, innovators and communicators exist in any number of other spheres, and yet Apple they are not. Because, you might venture, nowhere else are any or all of those elements combined with an ability to make industrial design sexy.
The late Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple, once said of an iMac that it “looked so good you want to lick it,” and while I can’t claim to have tasted any of the Apple products that dot my home, it’s true that millions of us have been seduced by smooth casings, sleek glass surfaces and the tactility of haptics various. As the adage has it — if it looks right, it is right. And if it looks right, you are more likely to desire it, seek it out and pay a premium for it.
Which brings us to the new Volvo EX30. The first-ever small Volvo SUV, but the biggest of ideas within, and an all-electric platform beneath. So far, so good. But then who better to make a small, boxy car than a company that has been making big, boxy cars for nearly a century? You could probably draw it without seeing it, couldn’t you?
Except not. Just look at it here, newly unwrapped. It may be small, but it’s perfectly formed. At once modern and yet, when placed alongside any number of faceless, aero-moulded EVs being rushed to market, both distinctively Volvo and reassuringly SUV in form. And for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on — bar it being intrinsically right, taut surfaces, design detailing and all — unusually desirable.
I know, right? Getting excited about supercars and super-luxe is fair game, but hot under the collar about a baby SUV? I am as confused as you are.
Or maybe not. Because there’s more inside. There are four different interior designs, or ‘rooms’ as Volvo calls them, awash with recycled and renewable materials, shredded plastics from window frames or upcycled denim fibres among them. And the architecture is different in here — there’s a home-inspired, dashboard-mounted soundbar, so no need for bulky speakers in the doors, and the car being electric means a sizeable cent
