I think they will all be sold out in the next few days…
Very happy for Volvo, its good to see a company rewarded for giving consumers something that they actually want.
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I doubt it will have V2G or a power outlet. Don’t see it in any of the specs.
Just to make sure this is apples for apples, I checked the luggage space. The EX30 is in terms of luggage space closer to the Urban Cruiser or the C-HR. So it isn’t quite a replacement for the RAV4, but I still think it packs incredible value if you’re in that bracket of buyer who doesn’t mind a slightly smaller car.
I certainly considered a Subaru XV (the smaller brother to the Forester) before I finally decided on the RAV4, back in 2019… so I’m in this bracket.
I realized the same when I saw the first video review today of it and I saw the presenter standing next to the car, its definitely more Urban cruiser size than Rav4.
But I am also in the same bracket, heck at the moment I am driving around in a VW Up, so the Volvo would be a size upgrade 
But this will definitely appeal to a wider audience than just people that want SUV’s.
I mean if you look at a “hot hatch” market this car will definitely steal some sales from some of those, E.g :
The Toyota GR Yaris is priced at R815k and with its 5.5 second 0-100 time is only about 0.2 seconds faster in the 0-100 sprint, but it costs R40k more…
The Golf GTI (Ok this one is at least larger than the Volvo) is R766k so only R10k cheaper but also slower than the Volvo, not to mention your monthly fuel bills are going to wreck your budget.
It’s a similar story if you go up the chain to the Golf R vs the dual motor Volvo, the Golf R is R912k vs the R936 for the Volvo dual motor and the Volvo will crush the Golf at a robot race.
I could never fathom who wants to go from 0-xxx in 3s (or whatever) between robots.
Time and time again I get 0-45 in 25s … and hit the next light green … this brake thing is too much effort.
Most of the time I have packets of groceries or dogs in the boot. And my daughter is of the age where she knows not to get out of her seat, but also knows how to quietly get out of her seat. You can hoot all you want, but I rarely accelerate hard and risk a disaster of groceries, a sliding dog, or a falling child.
That being said, I absolutely love a fast car, going fast, and doing silly things. But at the end of the day there is probably a place and time for that. And currently I need a big car rather than a fast car. Budget being a real thing, I can’t have something that does it all.
When I was young and stupid, I had “records” set for myself, to “beat”, from Cpt to Jhb/PE/EL … man, I counted down in my head on some roads, when to turn the wheel just so … at max revs in 5th.
With the cars of today, driving vs flight check-in and all that, I could get to Jhb faster than a plane man!!!
Today, ag seker nie ver nie …
- Roads are silly.
- I simply don’t have the eye nor reaction time anymore.
… and you ALL are getting there … old… 
0-60 in 3 sec … bah … old toppies.
Back in the day when there weren’t as many morons on the road and average speed trapping wasn’t a thing, I used to do monthly jhb to Dbn trips over the weekend. Leave jhb after work around 5/6 off a Friday and then Leave Durban on Sunday evenings. My best time was just over 4.5 hours. Driving fast is no longer safe or maybe I’m just older now.
I bought a suv in December and it’s just boring. Yeah, it’s modern and has a lot more fancy features, but it’s boring. Have a 3.0 supercharged v6 that does 0-100 in 5 seconds. I don’t drive it much, Maybe once a week but Every time I drive it, it still puts a smile on my face.
I enjoy the 0-100 sprints or even 0-60.
Sometimes it just feels very fun going fast…
I have a 2- Stroke KTM that I use to inject excitement into my weekends
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I did Windhoek to Stellenbosch in 11 hours and 45 minutes once, over night, in a VW Citigolf Sport. It wasn’t that cars were safer. Hardly. We were more stupid. When I got married, my dad pulled me aside and told me: Remember, you are now responsible for her life too. And then I had kids.
But having something a little bit fast still puts a smile on my face. Similary, when I was younger, we played the music as loud as it would go (on a radio/stereo that probably didn’t like that at all). Now that I am older, I have a system that can blast the roof off the place, but very seldomly use it.
As the old meme goes: I don’t always listen to 80s music. But when I do, so does the neighbour.
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Some of my personal bests … reminiscing a bit.
S/West to Jhb … ±9.5h at night.
S/West to PE … ±3.5h - 60l tank is empty at George.
Left Bloem ±7h30, sat down at my desk at 1h15pm on the 15th Floor in Std Bank Building in town,
All that in the then new 1.6i Toyota Corolla’s … 3 of them had to get a new 5th gear every ±100 000 km, being a company car, I could drive it past the 3 years or 100’s km trade-in rule.
It was absolutely fun!!!
Till it was not.
PE to Cpt Fri night (missed my plane coming back, arrival is not the departure time, wife B/Day the Sat).
Raining since Plett, came down Sir Lowries, dipped the lights coming down, oncoming traffic being “locals” see … when switched back on I was in the corner on a wet road and promptly did 3 x “donuts” destroying the small lens on the side of the headlight against the rail. Stopped facing back up the pass, a truck coming uphill.
That was my “Strike 3” (3rd damn close call).
This silly “race” I had for fun with myself, it all stopped that night on that pass.
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Man, those things were severely underrated. They punched so far above their boring looks, as Clarkson found out. You could get 15km/liter if you drove sedately, and you could go flat out all day and it would be fine too. I must admit it gets very floaty above 180km/h, but it gets there!
was
Found that Dunlops on them were the worst with the floating. Bridgestone, one size up in width, is the best for mitigating the effect.
Took me 1 hour and 8 minutes to drive 200km with those little Toyotas. time and time again.
EDIT: O, and wind from the front, like the Freestate/PE trips, you never want that. Chows fuel and drops the overall top speed average immensely.
In 5th, they tend to rev limit, if memory serves, at 5500rpm.
So you had to drive it cleverly to keep the average speed high, as going downhill was not lekker when the rev limiter kicked in.
Just like the trucks of one big retailer, I drove for kicks. Downhill, at 89km/h, the engine cuts out … jis I lost it at the depot. Refuse to drive them again long road as it is a death trap waiting to happen. An alternative to not cutting out … ride on the brakes when the retarder cannot keep it <89km/h, not to even mention the heating up of brakes and retarder. But do NOT disable the engine. Geez! Was a stupid internal policy they had, that was in the process of being removed.
On Volvo’s site I count 14 units left of the 108 with the cheapest single motor core version completely sold out.
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Looks like the only thing people don’t like about this car is yellow…
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Yeah, people are saying no to driving around in the tweety bird car 
Another note about something I discovered yesterday, which in hindsight is actually incredibly obvious but you hardly think of it.
Yesterday at around 9AM, I had to take the ICE-mobile out, because we had a case of two people having to be in different places at the same time. That’s when I realised something: It is damn cold in an ICE-mobile before the heat finally kicks in several minutes later.
The i3 has a heat pump. Some models may have resistive heaters, but the heat pump option was not an expensive addition, so it is not unusual to find a heat pump in a second hand i3.
You can precondition the cabin, by telling it your departure time. But even if you don’t do that, the cabin is basically immediately warm, at the cost of maybe 4km of range or so.
This really is something I only noticed after a cold spell, and a week of not driving the ICE-mobile.
Holy smokes … fell off the chair laughing at this “revelation”!
Suzi developed a leak in the radiator inside the dash. To fix that, no sweat, bring us the radiator Silvertons said.
Ok, how do I do that?
Easy they said. Get an Auto Electrician to remove, refit it, and bring us the radiator.
Ok … so what does that cost, Mrs Auto Electrician? (yes, she is female)
±10h labour to take it out, refit the entire dash.
Guess what … Suzy now has no more leaks … you want heat, wear a jersey!
My first car was a 1986 VW Jetta MK2, with a bypassed heater core (because it leaked into the cabin). Getting the dash out of the car was the easy part. It was about an hour’s work. The difficult part, is that the heater core is inside the air box, bolted to the firewall, and the hoses running to the AC compressor wasn’t long enough to easily pull the air box off the firewall to access the heater core inside, so you also had to unbolt the AC compressor to get some slack in the pipes, or use the recommended AC machine to recover and regas the AC.
So what I did, is I bought the heater core (which was a cheap part), and then at some point when the AC needed a service and a regas anyway, we did the whole job.
This job was already almost impossible back in the 60s (I believe there is an old SAAB where it is said that the entire car was designed around the heater core), and today it is probably downright impossible without major cost.
So I arrive at my piano lesson in said ICE mobile, and my teacher asks…
T: Where is your car?
Me: My wife is using it, technically it is her car.
T: Shouldn’t the boss be driving the car? (interesting question, teacher is female…)
Me: The boss IS driving that car!
T: OK, what are we playing today?
Me: Just hang on, my hands are cold!
T: Oh, excuses excuses…
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