Electric Volvo XC40 Recharge costs £53k
The Volvo XC40 Recharge P8 AWD – Volvo’s BEV take on the XC40 – costs from £53,155 in the UK, £12k more than the XC40 Recharge Plug-in Hybrid.
Fundamentally still the very good XC40, Volvo has added a blanked-off grille and charging point, fitted a 75kWh battery pack – reducing boot space a bit, but there’s a bit extra in the ‘front boot’ to offset that – fitted a 201bhp electric motor on each axle and rolled out the Google Android-based Sensus for the first time.
That adds up to an electric XC40 with 402bhp, o-62mph in 4.9 seconds and a range – at least officially – of 248 miles. Which all sounds very decent.
The trouble is, it’s not cheap, and the recent scrapping of the plug-in grant for EVs costing over £50k means you can’t mitigate the steep price – the Volvo XC40 Recharge costs £53,155 – with a £3k taxpayer bung.
It seems the only model available, at least for now, will be the XC40 Recharge P8 R-Design, which makes it easy to compare it with Volvo’s other Recharge XC40 – the plug-in version.
It comes in at £40,905 – more than £12,000 less – in R-Design guise, and offers 258bhp from its combination of ICE and electric motor, and has an electric range of 28 miles, enough for pootling around locally as an EV, although it’s FWD only.
Of course, the electric XC40 is really aimed at business users, offering the tempting incentive of zero BIK to mitigate the 30 per cent extra you’ll pay, and Volvo do say they will be offering financial incentives to get buyers in to Recharge models.
So, is the Volvo XC40 Recharge P8 R-Design just too expensive?
Mark Atkin says
Four wheel drive and 1.5 ton towing capacity looks very tempting. I’ll be comparing this with the Tesla model Y when both are available to test drive.