Volvo EX30 Cross Country Long Term review

The Volvo’s already been to Belgium and back​

January 15th 2026
Mileage: 2323
Real-world range: 180 miles
Efficiency: 2.8m/kWh

Our EX30 Cross Country only arrived at the end of December, but it’s already been to Belgium and back. I drove it out there for the Brussels Motor Show, where I had to do a bit of presenting for European Car of the Year. From where I live in Hampshire, it’s a trip of just over 300 miles, split almost equally half-and-half from my home to the Eurotunnel and then over the other side to Brussels. 

The Volvo absolutely aced the trip in most respects. I particularly like the way the Google maps (which is in-built into the Volvo’s system) calculates the trip and plans your charging stops. You just put your route in, and the car works out the best places to stop – and gives you an estimate for how much charge you’ll have at each destination. It’s fairly accurate, too, when it comes to those predictions, although it did tend to be a tad optimistic. Maybe it’s my heavy right foot, but I never quite managed to arrive with the expected battery charge – it was always a bit lower, but only be 2- to 5%. 

Anyway, more importantly the Volvo was doing a fairly easy 170 miles to a charge despite it being windy, cold and generally horrible weather for this trip abroad. That’s not brilliant, but is also not unusual efficiency given the conditions. 

I didn’t mind as I like to stop every few hours on a long trip, anyway, and the charging stops were all pretty good on these major artery motorways through the UK and Europe. 

One thing to note is that the Volvo only preconditions its battery if you’ve plugged the charging stop into the native Google nav. That’s fine, but make sure you plug it in as early as possible. I didn’t precondition on one occasion before this trip and saw slow charging speeds of about 60kW max, even from 150kW chargers, which was a bit disappointing given the claimed max of 175kW. 

I made sure to precondition well in advance (you want to leave at least 45mins to an hour, I reckon) by letting the car plan all the stops for me on this journey, and saw much better charging. The best I saw was 130kW despite it being cold and there being other cars at the Tesla Supercharger site in Belgium.  

Overall, I really enjoyed the EX30 for this road trip. The sound system is great, the seats – which have standard four-way electric adjustment and are the best seats in this class, I’d say – were just perfect for my creaky back. And it also drives brilliantly. Smooth, quiet and planted, even with heavy cross-winds and sleet, and all the misery that winter in Northern Europe can throw at you, really. 

Small but rugged: the EX30 is perfect for life in the New Forest

Feb 11th 2026
Mileage: 2987
Real-world range: 180 miles
Efficiency: 2.8m/kWh

I live on the edge of the New Forest, which I absolutely adore. I’ll take the countryside over the city, any day, personally! And I’ve found the EX30 Cross Country to be absolutely ideal for my life around here. Because the countryside is a delight, of course, but it also means that I spend a lot of my life driving on narrow roads and diving into heavily potholed gravel passing-bays. Even local trips, taking my daughter to Brownies or swimming, and the dogs out for a walk, all involve these sort of roads. The Volvo is absolutely ideal for it. The Cross Country bit of our top-spec EX30 means that it gets a slightly higher ride height than the standard EX30, which pays off when you’ve got to bump over monster pot holes and heavily eroded gravel car parks regularly. But the EX30 is under 4.3m long and is only just over 2.0m wide including the side mirrors, so it’s a similar size to something like the Ford Puma Gen-E and Renault 4. And that’s ideal, as it’s tall enough to tackle rough roads but narrow enough to be wieldy when the farmer’s going the other way in their tractor.  

But then it’s also a brilliantly composed motorway car, the dogs fit in the boot (just about, as one of my dog’s is a big 35kg Labradoode). In just about every respect, from the size to the understated ruggedness, the EX30 feels spot on for the my life at the moment. I’m really enjoying it. I’ve even had a look at how much a used one would cost and pondered buying one as my husband’s daily driver.  

But there is one thing that keeps making me hesitate: the locking system! Gah. The Volvo’s key fob has no buttons – it’s just a lightweight plastic cube. Every EX30 has keyless entry as standard. The problem is that the car doesn’t always sense the key, and won’t unlock. Or sometimes it doesn’t sense you walking away, and doesn’t lock. It’s so annoying! Most of the time it works, but at least once a week I find myself doing strange moves in a car park as I rub and tap the key fob over bits of the car, or walk away and return again, to see if it’ll recognise that I’m there and need to get in. It’s like it’s sulking, and you have to give it the secret handshake to gain entry. 

However, the phone app doesn’t take too long to setup and that doubles as another key. And it seems more reliable – if far from infallible. So if you’re getting (or have got) an EX30, the phone app is a must-have for lots of reasons, but chiefly as it’s a better key. I still sometimes find that I have to open the app, press unlock, and wait for the car to respond, which is not how it should work. You should just walk up, and the car senses you and opens the doors. But while there are irritations with the locking, at least it’s always let me in, eventually. 

What the fog are they thinking?

April 4th 2026
Mileage: 3,654
Real-world range: 210 miles
Efficiency: 3.1m/kWh

Had a few early starts with fog lying in patches around the roads, recently, which mean that I needed the fog lights on the Volvo. Annoyingly, they’re buried deep in the settings, which is really impractical. One thing you don’t want to be doing when you’re driving through fog is prodding through system settings on a touch screen… 

While I’m talking about niggles with the screen, the Volvo also has a very weird habit of not automatically connecting your phone to Apple CarPlay. Turn the car on, and sometimes it automatically starts, but other times there’s no sign of CarPlay and you have to go into the phone and Bluetooth setting and hit the ‘Launch’ icon, to get it started. There seems to be no reason why it does this, but it’s almost more irritating that the car clearly has linked to your phone but doesn’t want to start CarPlay. My husband had the same problem with his phone linked to the car, so it doesn’t seem to be isolated to my phone. I can’t speak for Android Auto, I’m afraid, as I sold my soul to Apple a long time ago. But this is one of those tiny irritations that really sets the wrong tone when you first set off in the car. 

I should also mention the lack of a driver’s screen, shouldn’t I? Look, I lived with a Tesla Model 3 before this, so maybe I just got used to it. But it just doesn’t really bother me. I would prefer a head-up display or simple digital readout behind the wheel, but this wouldn’t influence whether I bought the car or not – I’m happy enough to use the speed readout in the top corner of the screen. Lots of you may disagree, and that’s fine! I really can understand why it bothers a lot of people, as it’s definitely better to have the speed shown in your line of sight. But this wouldn’t stop me buying an EX30, I have to say.

It’s also nice to see the efficiency improving as the weather’s getting a bit warmer and more settled. I’ve seen 200 miles in steady motorway conditions now that the weather’s closer to 10degC and more in the daytime, and over 210 miles in more mixed driving. 

Anyway, just as the EX30's range is starting to pick up, I'm going to give it to your friend and mine - Mike Askew. Our enigmatic deputy editor and head of design is a tad taller than me, so it'll be interesting to see how he gets on with the fairly dinky EX30. He's also been running the Skoda Elroq, which is a chief rival to the Volvo EX30, so we're going to swap and see how we get on. Which would you have - Skoda or Volvo?! You can always drop us an email on [email protected], and we may even be able to chat about your comments on the podcast. Oh, and come back here for Mike's update on the EX30, too!