Things are looking bright with the arrival of the latest electric Volvo – but the existing crop of electric crossovers has something to say too
WORDS OLLIE MARRIAGE PHOTOGRAPHY JONNY FLEETWOOD
JEEP AVENGER
£34,800/£42,125
as tested
SMART ONE
£31,950/£38,950
as tested
VOLVO EX30
£33,795/£38,545
as tested
HYUNDAI KONA ELECTRIC
£38,595/£45,345
as tested
Let me introduce you to the Volvo EX30. I think you might get on. Swift, desirable, beautifully finished and it costs less than £34k. Initially I just couldn’t work out how Volvo had done it for the money. Later, I’d work it out.
But here’s where we’re going to start: value. Electric cars have received a kicking for not being affordable enough, but now we’re starting to see prices coming down. Not quite to MG4 levels, but far enough to make you sit up and pay attention. As you can see they all start from around £35,000. Put a six grand deposit down and you can have a Smart One for £280 a month over three years. That’s not bad at all. In fact it’s not a bad car all round, as I’ll come on to.
This is the core of the electric market, this is where future growth will likely come from. Because crossover. Not necessarily these four cars alone, as they’re splashing around in a deep pool of talent that extends from lifted hatches such as the Renault Megane E-Tech to new incomers from China – think BYD Atto. Interested in how those all fit together? So were we, so in parallel to this test we actually shot a 10 car film. Dig it out on YouTube or at topgear.com.
These four overlap and compare with each other in interesting ways. The Volvo and the Smart are related, for instance: Volvo is owned by Chinese firm Geely, which also owns 50 per cent of Smart in a joint partnership with Mercedes. So the two cars use the same motor, battery pack and basic underpinnings. But they’re different sizes, the One (we refuse to use the hashtag. It won’t date well and is as irritating as VW’s insistence that the Up required an exclamation mark) lining up more directly with the Hyundai Kona. Meanwhile the Sun Yellow Avenger reflects – quite literally – well against the Moss Yellow EX30. Both of them line up similarly in terms of size, interior space, general demeanour and the emphasis each places on design. And we’ve come full circle around our group of four.
A word on range. The Hyundai is the most expensive here and you don’t have to look far to se
