New Volvo EX60 ride review: comfort, safety and quality, this EV has it all

Verdict

First impressions suggest that Volvo’s confidence the EX60 will do big things for the brand is well placed. It improves on all the things the manufacturer is good at, including comfort, safety and quality. Add in new highs for range and charging speed and you’ve got a pretty compelling package. We’ll look forward to seeing if the Volvo EX60 follows through from behind the wheel. 

Volvo has high hopes for its new EX60, the electric SUV sitting on a clever new platform that contributes to its huge range of up to 503 miles. Ahead of a first chance to drive it this summer before it hits the UK in September, Auto Express was invited for an early passenger ride in a car that, along with the new BMW iX3 and electric Mercedes GLC, will reshape the premium SUV sector this year. 

The car we’re riding sits in the middle of the three specs. The P10 offers 503bhp and 410 miles of range, sandwiched between the flagship 671bhp and 503-mile range P12, which is also all-wheel drive and gets the clever adaptive damping, and the entry rear-driven P6 with its 369bhp and 385 miles of range, which doesn’t. Prices kick off at £58,755, and run up to just over £70,000, a shade below the iX3. 

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The well-guarded Hällered Proving Ground, around 50 miles east of Gothenburg, is a sprawling tree-lined remote facility where Volvo has been developing cars since the seventies, and the first of three tracks on which we get to sample the EX60 brings together recreations of some of the worst roads the Swedish firm can find from across the world. 

Naturally the UK features, with a stretch of rutted B-road near Stanstead in Essex laser-copied into rural Sweden, along with some sample stretches of Sweden’s own nightmare surfacing, plus LA freeways with their crest and rough expansion joints, as well as truck ruts, protruding drain covers and various other challenges. 

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Our pilot is Volvo vehicle dynamics manager Hans Bäckström, who has been working on the EX60 project for the past four years. He told Auto Express that Volvo felt from the off it was on to a winner with the new SPA3 platform underpinning the car. “I would say it has felt really good from the start,” he said. “We were really allowed to start from a blank sheet of paper and build up everything how we wanted it to be.”

The all-new platform features cell-to-body technology that builds the battery into the chassis, increasing strength and rigidity while cutting weight and liberating more passenger space. It’s also Volvo’s first example of megacasting, where large portions of the body are cast from a single piece of metal, rather than welded together. Again, this saves weight and therefore boosts range. 

Over the rough British-style roads, it’s clear from the passenger seat how well the EX60 deals with harsh bumps, with the adaptive dampers absorbing the worst of the impacts even in normal mode, one of three damper settings that go from soft to firm. 

Even more impressive is how it deals with crests and compressions, the kind of undulating B-road sequence common in the UK. It rises serenely over peaks and drops into dips in a really controlled manner without any of the bounce you can get over ups and downs. The family will appreciate it. 

Taking to the second of three test tracks, the faster sweeping and generally smoother roads do betray some body roll at higher speeds, but Bäckström pointed out that “it’s a family car not a two-door coupé, so comfort is a factor”.

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The EX60 also deals really well with offset poor surfaces, the kind where the road has dropped away so the nearside of the car hits a bump. There’s no hint of being unsettled by the kind of ruts that pepper UK roads. 

“We have our mantra and develop cars that are predictable, controllable and comfortable;  that's really what a Volvo should be. It should be that good friend of yours that when you mess up, it should be there to help you, not slap your fingers and throw you into a ditch. It should help you to survive the situation,” explained Bäckström from behind the wheel. “But of course, at the same time, when you feel safe and you feel in control, you also can add on that layer of driver pleasure.” He said the EX60’s faster steering ratio than previous XC60 models and the smaller steering wheel helps get a sportier feeling from behind the wheel, and switching the adaptive dampers into the firm mode sharpens turn-in by adding more control to the body movement. 

From the passenger seat it’s tough to tell the difference between the firm and normal modes, although there is a noticeable bounce to the soft setting when deployed. That’s not one for using out-of-town, but could be useful at low speed. We’ll find out later this year when we get behind the wheel. 

What is evident from the passenger seat is the punch to the kidneys when accelerating out of a corner. Bearing in mind this is the middle 503bhp car, even before we drive it, it’s questionable whether the extra power is required from the 671bhp ranger-topper. 

Our third track is the 3.7-mile high-speed bowl, where there’s a little wind noise at motorway-plus speeds up to the limited 112mph maximum, but nothing that requires raised voices, and road noise is well suppressed. Volvo claims that the EX60 is as quiet as the larger and therefore better sound insulated EX90 flagship, and that doesn’t feel wide of the mark.