VOLVO EC40

Our Swedish coupé-SUV excelled on a holiday to Yorkshire

- Darren Wilson

OF all the electric cars that I've tested, this Volvo seems to have finally killed off any lingering range anxiety. And the more I drive our EC40 the more I like it.

I've added a couple of thousand miles since my first report back in February, the majority of which have come via home charging using my 7.4kW charge port. I've heeded the in-car advice and limited the battery charge to 90 per cent. Based on my standard home electricity tariff of 27.03 pence per kilowatt-hour (kWh) a full home charge of the Volvo's 75kWh battery (usable) would cost £18.24.

That gives me about 240 miles based on my average efficiency of 3.2 miles per kWh, although I'm increasingly aware that EV efficiency is a grey area and the key word is 'average'; the EC40 is currently achieving far more than that figure. The weather is fine, the heating is off, but it's not so hot as to require air-conditioning, so the EC40 is in a sweet spot in terms of power consumption.

Therefore every time I get in the car, the efficiency figure (shown in kWh per 100 miles) ticks down very slightly, and it will be interesting to see how low the figure drops before going the other way. It should also be noted that I haven't turned up the brake regen for one-pedal driving because my wife hates it. But I will carry out a lengthy test before the next report to see what it adds to our range.