VOLVO PUSHES MY BUTTONS

Maddening design aside, this is an excellent drive at an enticing price

THIS is a very frustrating car. Why? Well, the drive itself is excellent, and the price point — starting from €38,596 — puts a premium brand like Volvo right in the mix with many of its mainstream, massmarket rivals.

The problem is that the user experience in this new EX30, in many other ways, can be absolutely maddening. Let’s start with the key or, to be more accurate, the card. The same size as a credit card, and just as thin, you use it to tap a point on the driver side B-pillar in order to open all the doors.

You might think that sounds like very little hardship, but the problem arises when you return to the car with two or three bags of shopping. I usually put them in the footwell on the passenger side, but to do that, you have to root around in your wallet (or, in my case, a card slot in the Otterbox cover for my phone), walk to the driver side to open the doors, then walk back to the passenger side. At some point, you have to put the bags on the ground, which in this country basically means giving them a bath.

Once inside, you have to deposit said card in a designated space in the centre console, which is fine. Only when you sit in, though, do you notice the fact there is no driver information screen behind the wheel. Nothing.

Everything is on a 12.3-inch central screen, including your speed, remaining battery charge, heating controls and so on.

MORE astonishingly, you also have to use the screen to open the glove compartment, and even to adjust the wing mirrors. Again, I hear you say, well, you’re pretty much the same size all your life, so surely once the mirrors are in your preferred position, that’s the end of.

Well, yes and no. There are times you need to adjust them for parking, or when you share the car with someone else, and simple buttons on the door handle or on the centre console would be much appreciated.

If you want to lower the windows, there actually are buttons, but not on the doors. No, they are actually on the centre console.

Look, you get used to it during the day but, at night, I found the absence of any light on the dashboard straight ahead of me really weird. I understand that everything I’ve described has been designed to reduce costs, and that’s welcome, but it really does take mental adjustment.

With all that off my chest, there’s a lot here to like. I drove the car in extendedrange Ultra spec — €51,095 net of the SEAI grant, but with no VRT relief which is capped at €50,000. It advertises WLTP range of 476km, so you easily can lop a third off that when your driving involves a fair amount of time at 120kph on the motorway, as mine does.

Around town, you will get much closer to the headline number, so if most of your journeys are urban, you’ll have nothing to fear.

The car is nimble, sprinting from 0-100kph in 5.3 seconds, and the handling is excellent, arguably the best in any Volvo ever, so I have absolutely no complaints on that front.

My car came with a single motor mounted on the rear axle, but a twin motor 428hp version also is available, at €48,883 in the entry-level trim, and that brings the 0100kph down to 3.8 seconds.

The cabin, in the Ultra trim model, is exceptionally well appointed, and to the basic specifications adds 20-inch five-spoke wheels, dark tinted rear windows, fixed panoramic sunroof, power front seat adjustment, park pilot assist, and 360-degree camera with virtual 3D view.

Standard on all versions are adaptive cruise control, road sign information, heated front seats and steering wheel, Google operating system with Apple CarPlay connectivity too, Harman Kardon sound system, a heat pump to reduce drain on the battery, dual-zone aircon, hill start assist and hill descent control, and all the airbag and crash mitigation systems you’d expect in any Volvo.

Indeed, such is the company’s reputation for proactive safety, it seems doubly surprising that so many basic functions can be completed only on the screen.

It is a really excellent car, named World Urban Car of the Year at the New York Automobile Show two weeks ago, but it would be even better if there were a few more physical buttons, and at the very least a head-up display, just to provide the driver with some basic information in a straight visual line.