Volvo EX30 Wins CleanTechnica Car of the Year in Europe – CleanTechnica

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It’s time to announce the winners of 2024 CleanTechnica Car of the Year voting. After coming up with four finalists for 2024 CleanTechnica Car of the Year in Europe, we opened up voting to readers to choose the winner. Here are the results:

1. Volvo EX30 — 43%
2. Volkswagen ID.7 — 25%
3. BYD Seal — 18%
4. Kia EV9 — 14%

So, the clear winner is the Volvo EX30! Congratulations to Volvo.

The EX30 was the 3rd best selling electric vehicle in Europe in January–November 2024, only behind the Tesla Model Y and Model 3, previous CleanTechnica Car of the Year winners in their debut seasons. In November, the Skoda Enyaq and Volkswagen ID.4 were also higher than the EX30, while right behind the EX30 was the Volkswagen ID.7 in 6th place. As you can see, the ID.7 came in second in the CleanTechnica Car of the Year voting in Europe. That said, it wasn’t close, as the #2 ID.7 and #3 BYD Seal combined had the same vote share as the EX30.

The Volvo EX30 comes with up to 296 miles (476 km) of rated range on a full charge, 28-minute fast charging from 10–80%, and acceleration to 62 mph in 3.6 seconds in the most powerful package. However, the base range, for a car that starts at £32,850 in the UK, is 209 miles. You have three main options:

• A budget option, the EX30 Core, which offers the lower end of what is considered enough range for normal use (right around how much range my 2019 Tesla Model 3 has, which I’m very happy with). This starts at the base price of £32,850 and has a single motor (RWD) by default.
• The EX30 Plus for slightly more, £34,400, gets you a few extra features (ambience lighting themes, power liftgate, interior illumination, and heated front seats and steering wheel).
• The EX30 Ultra is actually still a single-motor option by default, but it comes with extended range (295 miles/475 km) by default as well. It also includes a panoramic roof, Park Pilot Assist, and a 360° camera with 3D view.

You can add more range to the first two trims, for a price — £4,200 on the EX30 Core or £4,700 on the EX30 Plus. You can add a second motor for more performance and AWD on the second two trims (an extra £7,200 on the EX30 Plus and an extra £2,500 on the EX30 Ultra). One nice thing is different paint colors or interior colors don’t cost extra — you get your full choice of color and design without having to pay more.

Naturally, all of those prices will vary a bit from country to country.

Overall, with the EX30, you’re getting a very capable, well designed, elegant, modern car, but one that doesn’t go overboard and thus comes at a rather affordable price. Of course, you get the highly regarded Volvo badge and a good 5-star safety rating from Euro NCAP.

For more insight into the car, you can read our initial review of the Volvo EX30 in Barcelona, Spain, from late 2023, or you can read this owner review from Australia. When summarizing the EX30, CleanTechnica‘s Kyle Field initially wrote: “The Volvo EX30 takes Volvo’s legacy of building some of the safest cars in the world, electrifies it, and wraps it all up in Volvo’s smallest SUV package ever. At the same time, the EX30 is the fastest SUV Volvo has ever built with a staggering 0 to 60 time of 3.4 seconds in the dual motor performance build.” Here’s a little more from Kyle’s review:

“With all that power being applied to the wheels, you’d expect the Volvo EX30 be ripping tires apart, breaking traction at every opportunity, but that just wasn’t the case. Along the test drive, we abused the car both on straightaways and around the tight mountain curves of the Barcelona coastline. On-road and off into the rocky dirt roads weaving through Spain’s wine country. No matter how tight the turn, how much we stomped on the accelerator or pounded on the brakes to scrub speed, we weren’t able to break traction in normal driving.

“Based on that, we assumed the vehicle had some masterful implementation of digital torque vectoring that leveraged the responsiveness of its electric drivetrain along with millisecond-level computations to maximize traction. We were wrong.

“After a long day of driving, I talked to Egbert Bakker, Volvo’s head of vehicle dynamics, who smiled and shared that the EX30 didn’t have a torque vectoring system. There is zero front-to-back throttling of power from the front to rear motor or side-to-side with any electronic differential technologies. Instead, Volvo does as it has always done, using the brakes at each corner of the vehicle to effectively adjust the amount of power being applied if traction comes into question.

“This rather standard digital traction control system is complemented by a modern multi-link suspension system. At the rear of the vehicle, the EX30 features a 5-link suspension system with four links being stamped and the fifth being a double wishbone cast suspension link where the suspension has to dip under the body. Up front, a more traditional lower control arm keeps things supported from the bottom with a beefy coilover system damping all of the bumps and bruises that the road would otherwise apply to your rear end.”

The positive first impressions left on Kyle clearly weren’t a blip, and weren’t too influenced by the beautiful Barcelona scenery. The Volvo EX30 is a superbly put together vehicle and has been holding its own — or actually much more — on the consumer market since its arrival, particularly in Europe. Its advanced tech combined with subtle but elegant design makes it the perfect purchase for many buyers. Without a doubt, the EX30 was a deserving winner of our 2024 CleanTechnica Car of the Year—Europe award.

Stay tuned for the US winner.