Volvo EX40 SUV

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Volvo has been electrifying its range over the past few years. Many are electrically powered versions of its combustion-engined cars or, at the very least, began their lives that way.

The EX40 is one such example – in fact, when it launched in 2020, it was the Swedish manufacturer’s first EV.

Back then, it (along with the plug-in hybrid model) was known as the XC40 Recharge – mainly because it was an electric version of the combustion-engined XC40, the 'Recharge' moniker denoting that it had no such engine.

It was facelifted three years later, before being renamed the EX40 (along with the rest of the electric range, which took on the ‘EX’ nomenclature) in 2024. Putting an electric motor in a car designed for an engine sounds like a logical idea, but it can be fraught with difficulties.

Chassis strength, replacing redundant, complex fuel and exhaust systems, and integrating EV software with older mechanical parts create difficulties, not to mention the need for physical space to accommodate batteries.

Sometimes, these challenges are insurmountable. But what’s interesting is that, when the combustion-engined XC40 – on which the EX40 is based – was unveiled nearly a decade ago, Volvo always intended for it to be an EV eventually.

As such, despite an electric version being years off, it was designed from the ground up to be one.

That means none of the compromises you often find in petrol-to-electric conversions is present – and that can only be a good thing.