Pedal to the metal for this swift Volvo

Ian Donaldson finds driving can be a whole load of fun - at a cost

Find the right setting on this first fully electric Volvo’s touchscreen and it turns into a dodgem car. A very fast one at that.

All you need do after that is steer this handsome SUV in the right direction and speed up or slow down with the use of what in most cars passes simply as the throttle pedal.

Squashed hard to the floor, you’ll embarrass a host of much faster looking cars away from the traffic lights. Although, of course as a responsible Volvo owner you’d never do that...

Ease right off the loud pedal and your two-ton-plus machine will quickly and smoothly bring itself to a dead stop without you having to think of the brakes.

Such is the cleverness of a zero polluting family machine that shows us the way

Volvo (and everyone else sooner or later) is going as the world turns against noisy and smelly petrol and diesel to fuel our personal transports.

It comes at a cost, you won’t be surprised to learn. You can bag yourself an XC40 that looks practicality identical to

the car you see here (minus some goodies, the big wheels and blanked off grille) for about half the price.

It will have a petrol engine and won’t be anything like as quick as the all-electric supersteed but it’s still a very decent car for taking the little ones to their after school club or whisking the family away on holiday.

The full fat, fully electric

XC40, on the other hand, has the power stored in its huge underfloor battery to propel you and your passengers so swiftly towards the horizon that one might say (he did) “it feels as though the front wheels are leaving the ground.”

They don’t, of course, but this Volvo would feel familiar to a fighter jet pilot setting off down the runway, I’m sure.

Use all that poke and the car’s official 259 miles range on a full battery would look like fiction. In everyday use, with the odd power display the car used its charge just a little faster than the real miles increased – so 61 miles driven used 68 miles of juice, for instance.

Crazily, the car’s dashboard doesn’t tell you the remaining range until it’s close to ‘find a charger’ time.

You have to prompt Google onboard with a spoken question, ‘how many miles remaining?’ before an American lady tells you. Daft.

Either version of this XC40 comes with rear park assist, with cameras showing a spookily accurate image of your car from the sky above. Slotting backwards into a tight parking bay was never so satisfying.

Opt for the £6,750 upgrade pack fitted to the test car and it will fairly drip with goodies, from fancy nappa upholstery and huge glass sunroof to climate control, full LED headlights and a Harmon Kardon sound system.

It also includes 20ins alloy wheels that look smart but turn the ride jittery on poor roads, even if helping it feel surprisingly sporty on better ones.

You might be very happy saving the £6,750 and still enjoying a car that surprises at every traffic light grand prix.