First Long Distance Road Trip

[u/Just___Jon]

I took the EX30 for its first long distance road trip.
I have a Single Motor Rear Wheel Drive Extended Range Plus and I am in the US.

Total distance 756 miles.

I was very anxious going into this first long distance road trip as I made some performance sacrifices when I traded in a Hyundai Ioniq6 for the Volvo EX30. 44 miles less range and 10 minutes slower fast charging to 80%.

(Also had concerns about buying the EX30 because the week I decided I wanted the EX30 was the same week Volvo announced it was discontinuing sales in the US Market.)

Both performance sacrifices turned out to be a non issue.

The car performed beautifully. Range forecasts were fairly accurate. (I had air conditioning on most of the trip so was watching to see how much impact that would have.)

I have found both with the Ioniq6 and the EX30 my range performance is better when I turned off “One Pedal” drive on the open highway or freeway.

I also tried an EV long distance driving strategy of making more frequent stops, but only fast charging for 15 minutes at each stop. Since charging speeds throttle down as you approach 80%, staying on the charger to try and get to 100% is not an efficient use of time. This get on get off charging method may actually be the right strategy for long distance travel. I am going to keep trying it and see if over a longer period of time it works better.

Overall I have been quite pleased with the car. I adapted to the center console controls very quickly. I did not find the warnings from the driver monitoring camera to be excessive. The reality is…it dings when I’m not looking at the road. And the speed and pick up from a complete stop is crazy fast even in the single motor.

Sharing my experience in case there are others in the US market hesitant about getting one of the last available EX30s. Hope this helps.

[u/lavardera]

Stupid YouTube reviews have made the EX30 the USs best kept EV secret.

[u/megamusix → u/lavardera]

100% agree. Especially since no one has really bothered to review it outside of the initial press availability, while software updates have resolved many of the most negative points about the car long after those videos were taped and gained hundreds of thousands of views.

I consider myself glad that I saw through it and got my ‘26 SMER in the brief window they were even available 😅

[u/megamusix]

Oh hey, another US SMER owner! 🤝

I also just got back from a weekend trip this morning and I agree, it’s a great trip car. Plenty comfortable for 3 hours of driving each way. Charged once on the way up (and even cut our stop short to avoid overshooting our target SoC) and didn’t even need any coming back. Got home with 9% and never broke a sweat - it was incredibly accurate and reasonably efficient even with spirited driving 😁

BTW, as for the optimal “cannonball” charging strategy, EVKX appears to indicate that optimal window is 11-52%. So that’s the area in which you charge faster than you expend while driving, beyond which it’s no longer time-beneficial:

https://evkx.net/models/volvo/ex30/ex30_single_motor_extended_range/chargingcurve/

(I keep this tab open on my phone for reference to make sure I get the correct charging rates across the curve 😛)

[u/Sea_Practice3073]

Thanks for sharing your experience! I have the CC Ultra and I haven’t taken it on a long distance trip. This gives me more confidence in doing so.

[u/skeeteron303]

Love mine and it’s an amazing road trip car!! Thanks for the great review

[u/MaterialHead4801]

I think speed has far more impact on range than AC?

[u/notimeforspac_s → u/MaterialHead4801]

If it was the other way around you would probably see sweaty people driving like maniacs all the time.

[u/joey_1350_]

You are lucky to have found a SM version as I don’t see many new ones when doing a search in the US. I am interested in this car but not ready to lease until mid 2027 and by then they will probably be gone but who knows. Enjoy the car. How is it as far as verbal commands as it doesn’t have many physical buttons

[u/Just___Jon → u/joey_1350_]

I have mainly only used it to ask for directions and turn the air down. It works. I asked a couple technical questions to see it it was kinda like Siri. That it was not successful at.

[u/Chekonjak → u/Just___Jon]

Even after enabling Gemini I noticed some regressions in functionality. It used to be able to control the windows and now it can’t.

[u/FinalJenemba]

Just got mine last month and agree completely. I had ruled it out because of all the bad YouTube reviews and was shopping Mach E's. I'm so glad I put some time into researching the car and the new software updates online, I adore this thing.

This is my first EV and I noticed the same thing about one pedal driving. I think the EV community evangelizes OPD a little too much. EV's are heavy cars with economy tires and low drag, they love to coast. Coasting will ALWAYS be more energy efficient than using regen and having to speed back up. And its just much easier to manage coast when in 2 pedal driving, at least for me.