Super fast and super quiet, easy to use and elegant to boot: The Volvo C40 Recharge shows how great electric driving can be. But when you drive 600 kilometers for three hours of charging, it becomes clear what e-mobility is still missing.
Perhaps the best news first: You don’t really have to be afraid of range in a modern Stromer. Gone are the days when you put on your gloves in the first BMW i3 in winter without heating to look for the nearest socket because the car’s already meager range melted down to 80 kilometers. And the search for a charging station has sometimes taken you to the other end of town. Gone are the days when even with a Tesla you suddenly crawled onto the hard shoulder in emergency mode after a few full-throttle stages because the battery first had to cool down again.
Today’s Stromer are much better than their predecessors. More range, more power, less sensitive to cold. And if you are looking for a charging station, a well-assorted navigation system or a suitable app will provide you with plenty of choice at a tolerable distance, at least in most regions. A few meager kilowatts of power no longer trickle into the battery, but more power with up to 300 kW.
You’ll notice that a “but” is coming soon. Because what is better is always the enemy of the good – and that is no different with the electric car. So you get choosy when you are traveling in a modern all-wheel drive power electric car like the Volvo C40 Recharge Twin: The Android-based navigation system lets you easily filter all charging stations. 50 kilowatts or less charging capacity? We don’t even bother with such children’s toys – that belongs in a world in which electric cars were still ugly crutches like the first Nissan Leaf or the electric Smart walking aid.
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The more and the better Stromers you drive, the less willing you are to use some app to find a charging station in some commercial area that has been provided with a few dry copper wires by some local electricity provider, in case of doubt it is occupied anyway or does not work, and where you have to squeeze past some electric transporter in far too little space to somehow get to the charging socket. Once you have that behind you, you usually tear the cable out again after a few minutes, annoyed, because the amount of electricity supplied by the snore charger is simply ridiculous.
No, I don’t want to plan my trip with a car like the electric all-wheel-drive Volvo, which costs 62,000 euros, like James Cook once did for his circumnavigation. E-mobility has to look like the sparkling clean Ionity charging parks, the EnBW charging hubs or the Fastned stations, with power chargers, plenty of space for manoeuvring, well lit, ideally covered and of course accessible without detours. In any case, if you don’t just use your Stromer as a second car for commuting – then the slow wall box in the garage will of course also do the trick.
On a vehicle like the Volvo C40 Recharge you can see how the e-technology has improved. But also how demands are growing at the same time and where there is still a considerable discrepancy between desire and reality.
Volvo officially promises a range of 440 kilometers, but the car doesn’t make it: Similar to the technically closely related Polestar Stromer – the C40 is actually something like a slightly smaller Polestar 2 – the consumption of the two-ton car is a bitter disappointment. The Volvo consumes between 20 and 30 kilowatt hours per 100 kilometers and has to stand shamefacedly in the corner, because a Tesla Model 3 is considerably more efficient.
In practice, this means that not only real long but also medium distances require at least one charging stop with a maximum range of 340 kilometers; especially if you have to go back the same day.
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy with fast charging either. Because depending on how good the car’s charger is and the condition of the battery, the outside temperatures, etc., the more disappointing is the “fast” charging.
Because the charging curve, which starts in the Volvo with a promising 145 kW, quickly crashes and soon gets stuck at 50-60 kW. Electric drivers know that the best way to plan a route is to ensure that the battery has a certain charge level at a precisely calculated charging stop, so that it can fill up with plenty of juice as quickly as possible. Charging more than 80 percent also makes no sense, because on the one hand the charging speed is excruciatingly slow with every Stromer and on the other hand the manufacturers also recommend a maximum of 80 percent charging for a longer battery life.
However, it remains completely unworldly to base one’s route planning on the capabilities of the car, while the automobile has been used for more than 100 years precisely because it enables fast and flexible travel at all times.
Drivers still have 13 years to get used to the electric car – then, at least in Germany, it will no longer be possible to buy petrol or diesel cars when the combustion engine ban comes into force in 2035.
So far, however, many a promise of e-mobility has been badly embellished. What is not a problem with a second car that you ideally charge in your own garage and only drive 50 to 100 km a day anyway, looks different when it comes to the requirements of a real all-round vehicle:
To save the honor of the Stromer, it should be said that there are certainly cars that use electricity a little more efficiently than a Volvo or Audi e-tron, such as the Tesla models. The systemic disadvantages of the technology remain, however, even there.
If you regularly drive medium or long distances, you either have to adapt your mobility behavior to the e-car or it is better to stay with a normal combustion vehicle or at least a hybrid vehicle. E-cars with a range that comes close to that of a combustion engine (minimum 600 kilometers) are still in short supply and are usually only available in the expensive premium segment from Tesla and Co. It will probably be a few more years before advances in rechargeable batteries “eat through” in the middle and lower price segments.
It should be emphasized again that these problems do not arise if you rarely or never drive your car for long distances. In any case, electric driving in itself is not what would prevent a breakthrough in technology: power when overtaking, whisper-quiet gliding along and of course maintenance and care costs that are close to zero prove to be superior to driving a combustion engine.
Even driving fast on the Autobahn is fun, as a car like the Volvo C40 is proof of. It’s just a pity that the fast four-wheel drive vehicle, like all Volvos, is already limited to 180 km/h. Because even if you rarely push the button in favor of the range and mostly leave it at 130 to 150 km/h, it is precisely the suitability for the motorway that has successfully driven out the stench of the renunciation car from the e-car.
The number of charging stations, on the other hand, is at least currently so large that you can easily avoid “weak” stations and find free fast chargers along the freeways without any major detours. Unfortunately, charging there costs a lot more than at home; up to 69 or 79 cents per kilowatt hour can be due.
The challenge now, of course, is to let the number of charging parks grow fast enough. Because the proportion of purely electric cars in Germany is currently just 1.3 percent of the total fleet.
