Tested: 2025 Volvo EX30 Ultra Performance Twin – Pocket-Rocket EV!

Behold, Volvo’s Smallest Electric Vehicle!

Revealed globally back in 2023, the Volvo EX30 was initially billed as the indirect successor to the Volvo XC40. This was before Volvo—like many other European rivals—dialed back its full electrification plans.

The Volvo EX30 is essentially a shrunken-down, crossover hatch version of the flagship EX90.

Dubbed as Volvo's smallest crossover to date, the EX30 essentially mimics the design cues of the EX90 flagship EV SUV. This includes the signature Thor’s hammer LED headlights, a clean, grill-less front face with a simple lower air intake, C-shaped LED taillights, and 19-inch alloy wheels with a diamond-cut, aero-optimised spoke design.

From the side, the EX30 does look more like a hatchback rather than an SUV crossover, featuring minimal plastic underbody claddings, flared-out wheel arches, sculpted side panels, and thick D-pillars with a two-tone blacked-out roof.

One thing’s for sure, the EX30 is pretty small, spanning 4,223 mm long, 1,837 mm wide, and 1,555 mm tall, with a wheelbase of 2,650 mm. This Volvo is the smallest among its Geely-based twin, while also being the smallest electric vehicle ever produced by the Gothenburg-based marque.

Love it or hate it, the EX30’s sporty and hybrid design has garnered some rave reviews out there, so much so that it has won the 2024 Red Dot design award. That said, the unique design continues once we get inside this small EV…

Small in Size, Big on Features

Despite its petite stature, the EX30 boasts a pretty well-equipped and surprisingly practical cabin while retaining the signature Scandinavian minimalist design.

The Google-powered OS enables you to access multiple Google services from the EX30's main infotainment unit.

Up front, the EX30 ups the EV ante by featuring a pretty bare-boned front dashboard layout, with the most prominent bit here being the 12.3-inch portrait-oriented infotainment display powered by Google OS. This allows users to access a myriad of Google services, such as Google Maps and Google Play Store, as well as streaming services like YouTube, Spotify, and more.

For iPhone users, however, they can still connect their phones to the screen via the wireless Apple CarPlay connectivity.

Given that this is the only display available here, the top part of the screen acts as the car’s main metre cluster, showcasing essential information like speeds, ADAS functions, travel range, battery percentage, and more. This also resulted in all of the vehicle’s settings and options, including driver-related settings and climate controls, being hidden inside the screen.

Rounding off the tech amenities are the expansive panoramic glass roof with no sunshades or shutters, a 9-speaker Harman Kardon audio system, several ambient modes, and many more.

On the trim side, the EX30 does look and feel like a premium car, despite the liberal use of recycled materials, including the denim-like and Nordico leather upholstery blend for the seats. Speaking of seats, the front sporty seats feel quite nice and secure, but the lack of a ventilation function does deduct some points from this supposed ‘premium’ cabin.

With its small stature, Volvo has gotten creative to extract as much space as possible from the EX30. This can be seen from its unique central console drawer with multiple settings and configurations for better flexibility. As for the rear passenger, space is a bit limited and at best can fit two adults, and the lack of an A/C vent again makes us question the ‘premium-ness’ of this small crossover.

Predictable, space and practicality aren't the strongest suits for the EX30...

To make matters worse, the EX30 also boasts the smallest cargo space among its Geely siblings, with the standard boot space only measuring 318 litres. That said, there’s still a frunk in case you need an extra space, but we doubt the 7-litre compartment would do any good.

Overall, despite having a very intuitive infotainment suite, the EX30 falls short in terms of practicality and premium quality, which is somewhat expected given its small size. That being said, there’s one segment where we think the tiny Volvo excels over some of its rivals…

Yes, This Is The Quickest Volvo Ever!

In this top-spec Ultra Twin Performance guise, the EX30 is billed as the quickest production Volvo ever produced, and that is the exact impression we get after driving this car.

With a century sprint time of only 3.6 seconds, the EX30 is by far the quickest Volvo production model to date!

Despite using the same dual-motor AWD powertrain setup outputting 422 hp and 543 Nm as its other Geely siblings, the EX30 gets the quickest acceleration performance out of the trio, probably thanks to its smaller stature. And with a 0-100 km/h sprint time of only 3.6 seconds, the EX30 easily puts other sportscars to shame, although the face-ripping action eventually died down once you hit its limited V-max of 180 km/h.

To match its pocket-rocket acceleration, the EX30 also gets pretty decent driving dynamics, as it feels quite sharp and nimble around corners. Again, this is attributed not only to its small stature but also to its low-slung, hatchback-esque bodystyle that helped to deliver that same go-kart driving feel made famous by a certain Anglo-German marque.

But with sporty suspension tuning, the EX30 is also susceptible to several rebounds and head tosses, especially when driven on uneven roads and surfaces. This is further compounded by its subpar NVH suppression, with both the wind noise and the loud sound from the A/C compressor that can get quite noticeable at times.

To summarise, the EX30 Ultra Twin Performance gets all the things right to make this a sporty, pocket-rocket EV that can humiliate any other performance car with ease, but at the predictable expense of compromised comfort. But that’s not all the compromises you need to make to enjoy its sheer performance.

Not Exactly The Most Efficient EV, But Still One of the Safest

Dual-motor EVs aren’t exactly known for their competent energy efficiency, and that premise also applies to the EX30 Ultra Twin Performance, although it's not as bad or as dramatic as other performance EVs out there.

For starters, Volvo claims the dual-motor EX30 can do around 17 kWh per 100 km of energy efficiency with up to 450 km of WLTP range, which is quite a reasonable figure to achieve. But from our experience driving this car from Kuala Lumpur to Penang and back, we managed to get around 18 and 19 kWh per 100 km, which is not far off from the claimed figure.

Underpinning Geely's SEA2 platform with a 400-volt architecture, the EX30 can accept DC fast charging at up to 153 kW.

But perhaps the biggest challenge is to resist the urge to floor this car every time you drive it, but should you manage to do it, we’d reckon you can easily extract around 400 km of range from this 69-kWh NMC battery pack. That said, this car can be recharged in a relatively short time, with its 153 kW DCFC can refill the pack from 10% to 80% in less than 30 minutes, although its AC figure is capped at just 11 kW instead of 22 kW like the smart #1.

On the safety front, the EX30, just like any other Volvo car, still aces this segment, thanks to the myriad of active and passive safety features primed inside. The former includes ADAS functions like Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) with Pilot Assist, Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB), Blind-spot Information System (BLIS), Front (FCTA) and Rear Cross-Traffic Alert (RCTA), Lane Departure Warning (LDW), Lane Keeping Aid (LKA), Rear Collision Warning (RCW), and more.

Compared to some other Chinese EVs, the EX30’s ACC feels quite intuitive and less finicky to use, although you might need some time to learn how to activate and play around with the functions, given that most of them are hidden deep inside the screen. But once you get used to it, you’ll be rewarded with one of the best ADAS systems we’ve tested in a modern EV.

Should You Buy One?

Uniquely styled with some familiar design touches, a minimalistic yet tech-laden cabin setup, and sublime driving performance, the Volvo EX30 Ultra Twin Performance ticks all the right boxes to make a decent high-performance, high-tech driving machine, provided that you can live with some of its minor yet noticeable shortcomings.

Another thing you might consider is the price, because the top-spec EX30 here, despite now being locally-assembled (CKD) at Volvo’s Shah Alam plant, is still priced handsomely at RM228,888. This is enough to make it more expansive than both the Zeekr X AWD and smart #1 Brabus, although the latter now comes with a hefty rebate that cuts its price lower than the EX30.

While its price tag was somewhat justified when the EX30 was originally launched, the influx of more affordable Chinese EV SUVs, especially those around the RM200,000 price range, has now put the Volvo crossover in a slightly disadvantageous position. To make matters worse, some of them offer way better practicality and arguably better premium amenities than the EX30, which again is not doing a favour for this pocket-rocket EV.

But when putting things into a different perspective, the EX30 is still the most affordable new Volvo car you can buy today and, with its pocket-rocket performance, is also one of the most affordable ‘performance’ cars on the market. So, should you not mind its slightly compromised practicality and other minor shortcomings, the EX30 still makes for a pretty decent EV, and more importantly, it is still a deserving model to carry the Volvo name.

SPECIFICATIONS

2025 VOLVO EX30 ULTRA TWIN PERFORMANCE 

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