Volvo EX60 Review & Prices

The Volvo EX60 is a big, practical electric SUV. With loads of space inside it’s ideal for family life, and its massive range means road trips will be range anxiety-free. However, the car feels huge on the road, which makes it a touch stressful to thread through rush hour traffic.

If you’re in the market for a posh electric SUV, the EX60 should be considered alongside the BMW iX3 and Mercedes GLC Electric. All three are newly released, similarly priced, similarly practical and with similarly impressive range.

Picking your favourite is a bit like browsing the pasta dishes at a restaurant – there’s not much difference between them on paper, and whichever you pick you’re unlikely to be disappointed.

The Volvo certainly has the most understated design of the three, with its grille-free design the polar opposite of the Mercedes, which looks like a whale chugging down krill. The classy headlights make the front of the EX60 its best angle; it’s a bit generic at the rear.

Volvo EX60: electric range, battery and charging data

Range: 385 - 503 miles
Efficiency: 3.9-4.2 miles per kWh
Battery size: 80kWh / 91kWh / 112kWh
Max charge speed: 320kW / 370kW / 370kW
Charge time AC: 12-18hrs, 0-100 @ 7.4kW
Charge time DC: 18mins, 10-80% @ 320kW, 18-19mins, 10-80% @ 370kW
Charge port location: Left rear
Power output: 369hp / 503hp / 671hp

Inside you get a two-tiered dashboard and multi-layered surfaces throughout, with material quality largely excellent. The cloth-upholstered seats of our test car were really comfy.

As is the trend these days, the EX60 goes largely without physical buttons, with most functions routed through the touchscreen instead. It’s annoying, but at least shortcuts make most items one button press away from the home screen. The display is quick to respond and the Google-integrated software works well.

Space is fantastic wherever you sit, and those in the back are particularly blessed with legroom. This also means it’s ideal for bulky child seats, and the ISOFIX mounting points are easily accessible. The boot is a good size with useful underfloor storage. The capacity is directly in line with the BMW iX3, and though it’s down on the Mercedes GLC Electric, it’s not a clear-cut advantage for any one of the three.

With a huge claimed range between charges and ultra-fast charging, the EX60 should be on the radar of anyone who does a lot of miles. The smaller battery goes on sale first and promises up to 385 miles on a charge, which isn’t as far as the equivalent BMW iX3 or Mercedes GLC Electric, but you get a quicker 10-80% top-up time. Bigger battery models promise 410 miles or 503 miles of range, the latter of which is a match for the BMW and beats the Mercedes.

If you do big motorway miles the Volvo EX60 is a great choice, because it cruises quietly and comfortably at high speeds. This also translates to low speed city streets, though the large blind spots around the pillars make it quite difficult to place on tight, busy roads. As a result it’s not a car you instantly relax into driving. A BMW iX3 is generally better to drive, which is particularly noticeable on a twisty road.

Verdict

With its classy interior, impressive comfort and long range, the Volvo EX60 is tough to criticise. With plenty of space on board it’s great for families, too. There’s not much to choose between this, the Mercedes GLC Electric and BMW iX3, but the Volvo feels like it nails the combination of new-age tech wrapped in a familiar package. However, if you want your car to feel like it’s from the future, the BMW should be your first choice.

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The Volvo EX60 starts at just under £57,000 for the P6 RWD model. This gives you the smaller battery with rear-wheel drive, as well as all the same safety kit you get on the more expensive models.

P10 models give you a bit more power and range, with prices starting at just under £60,000, while the most powerful, longest-range P12 model starts under £65,000. These prices are for the Plus trim, but you can add £5,500 to each for the higher-spec Ultra. That makes a fully loaded P12 model just over £70,000.

That puts the Volvo EX60 right in the middle of the competition’s prices – it’s a bit more expensive than the BMW iX3 and a bit more affordable than the Mercedes GLC Electric.

The Volvo EX60 is incredibly comfortable, but it’s not the easiest car to thread along tight city streets

In town

Although the roads on our Spanish test route were in much better condition than typical UK Tarmac, the way the Volvo EX60 handled speed bumps indicates it should take our pothole-ridden roads in its stride.

However, this is not a small car and it feels its size from the driver’s seat. The two-tiered dashboard blocks your view of the bonnet so it’s difficult to judge where the corners of the car are. As a result, you don’t necessarily feel comfortable driving it immediately, though the slew of cameras and sensors on hand to warn you when you’re getting too close to obstacles take away some of the stress.

On the motorway

The Volvo EX60 is at its best at cruising speed on the motorway. It’s incredibly refined, with minimal wind and road noise making its way into the cabin. The suspension deals wonderfully with cracks in the road, too. Coupled with the long range, this is a car in which you could happily spend hours behind the wheel.

You get Pilot Assist as standard, which is essentially adaptive cruise control that can nudge the wheel to keep you centred in your lane. It can also give a bit more space to large vehicles such as lorries as you overtake, which is a neat feature.

On a twisty road

The BMW iX3 is a better bet if you want some fun on the scenic route home, but the Volvo EX60 performs adequately enough on a twisty road. It will feel big on a narrow British country road, and there’s no feedback through the steering wheel to inspire confidence in how much grip the front tyres have. However, it soaks up bumps nicely so you’re never worried about being hoicked off course in the middle of a corner.

Interior space is excellent, but the EX60’s boot has a smaller capacity than the Mercedes GLC Electric

Space in the front is excellent, so there’s plenty of space for two people to get comfortable on long trips. You also have plenty of storage options, with a sliding storage tray in the centre with retractable cup holders being a particularly neat touch. You also have a hidden wireless phone charging tray that keeps your phone out of sight, and large door bins. There’s loads of adjustment in the seat and steering wheel, but having to do the latter through the touchscreen is really annoying.

Space in the back seats

Space in the back is hugely impressive, with loads of legroom and headroom, which means you can carry adults in comfort or fit even the bulkiest of child seats. Easy-access ISOFIX mounting points are useful for family life, too.

Storage is a bit less impressive, with small door bins and pockets in the seat in front, though two USB-C slots mean those in the back won’t be fighting over who gets to charge their device.

Boot space

At 523 litres the Volvo EX60’s boot is almost identical in capacity to the BMW iX3 (520 litres), though both are down on the Mercedes GLC Electric’s 570 litres. So if you need pure capacity the Mercedes is your best bet, but the reality is that you’ll have to work hard to actually fill the Volvo – think a weekend away with the extended family, or maxing your credit card at Ikea.

The space is huge, and the low bumper means it’s easy to lift heavy items inside. There’s also loads of under-floor storage for lesser-used items you don’t want cluttering the main boot space. You also get a usefully large front boot, though it’s about half the size of the GLC Electric’s gargantuan one.

Material quality is excellent, but some of the touchscreen functions are unintuitive

Volvo interiors have always been a highlight, and the EX60 is no different. There are soft, expensive-feeling materials used throughout the cabin with the only cheap plastics kept well out of sight. A felt-lined central storage compartment shows the attention to detail.

The minimalist design is generally appealing, but where Volvo’s outgoing range of cars – think V60, XC90 etc – feature neat stitching and satisfying buttons and switches, the clean surfaces on the EX60 could do with a little pizazz.

Those clean surfaces come in large part thanks to the fact pretty much every function in the EX60 is controlled via the touchscreen display. This might be the modern way but no car maker has fully sussed out an intuitive setup and so it is true with Volvo. Even with clever shortcuts, functions such as changing the mirrors and steering wheel are a chore.

That’s where infotainment complaints begin and end, though, because the screen has sharp graphics and fast processors that make the logically laid out menus snappy to navigate. You can also talk to your car using natural language, because the EX60 comes with Google’s Gemini AI.

Audiophiles should go for the Ultra model, which comes with an incredible Bowers and Wilkins sound system. The sound is crystal clear and you can really crank the volume without getting any distortion – though this did introduce some vibrations from the interior trim on our test car.

You have a choice of three battery and motor combinations. P6 opens the range with the smallest battery, promising up to 385 miles of range, and it has the least power thanks to being the only single-motor option.

The P10 and P12 are both twin-motor and come with all-wheel drive as a result. The P10 has 503hp with a range of up to 410 miles from its bigger battery, while the P12 gets 671hp and 503 miles from a bigger battery still.

We spent a day testing the P6 model in Barcelona, Spain and found that you should be able to get around 310 miles in the real world. That would make it a bit more efficient than the BMW iX3 and Mercedes GLC Electric, though we’ll update this review once we’ve spent a full week with each car in the UK to get some more robust data.

Both the Volvo and BMW are available with over 500 miles of claimed range in their biggest battery versions, while the Mercedes is only offered in 405-mile guise currently.

Fast charging speeds max out at 320kW in the P6 and 370kW in the P10 and P12, meaning all should complete a 10-80% top up in under 20 minutes. Officially that’s a bit shorter than it would take in the iX3 and GLC Electric, but realistically there won’t be much in it.

First-year road tax is in the lowest band because the EX60 is an electric car, but all versions will have to pay the expensive car supplement in years two to six. It’s in the lowest benefit-in-kind band for company car drivers, too.

The EX60 has not been crash tested yet, but Volvo has an incredible record for safety, so it’s not a stretch to assume that this will score highly.

As standard you get all the assistance kit to keep you on the road, and some that help mitigate the results if you find yourself off the road, so you don’t need to pay extra for all the good stuff. That means everything from semi-autonomous cruise control and automatic parking to 360-degree surround-view cameras and various autobraking and collision avoidance systems.

Although the EX60 is a new model, various other electric Volvos have had trouble with software in recent years. Over-the-air updates can fix glitches, but they could be annoying to deal with. Volvo finished just inside the top half of the Driver Power owner satisfaction survey, though, indicating owners are generally happy with their cars.

You get a three-year, 60,000-mile warranty as standard, which is about the minimum you get from a new car in the UK, though it is in line with other premium manufacturers. That said, the BMW iX3 and Mercedes GLC Electric come with unlimited mileage over three years.