What is it about Volvo seats? Their chairs have been the gold standard for literal decades. Take a corner with a bit of extra speed, and your butt will stay planted. Drive for hours on end and at one point, you’ll realize how long it’s been since you didn’t fidget and readjust. They seem firm at first, but once you settle in, you can’t go back. They’re absolutely brilliant, the best in the business, even in lower-end models like the C40 Rech—I mean, the 2025 Volvo EC40.
But enough about the seats. Despite the tides somewhat turning these days, Volvo remains bent on electrification. Everything they sell right now has some sort of hybrid electric assist at the bare minimum, and nearly everything they sell has an optional provision for a plug and the ability to drive itself on electrons alone. But this year, with the EX30 and EX90 joining the lineup, Volvo had to make some changes as to how it named things.
What’s new with the 2025 Volvo EC40?
For all intents and purposes, there’s nothing brand-spanking-new about 2025 EC40 aside from a letter on the back. It’s identical to the 2024 C40 Recharge, but there’s the rub. Until now, Recharge would denote electrification of any kind—that’s why the C40 and XC40 Recharge were fully electric, but the XC60 and XC90 Recharge were plug-in hybrids. That might’ve made sense five years ago, but with the EX30 and EX90 joining the lineup now, calling everything “Recharge” doesn’t make much sense. So, the XC40 and C40 Recharge are now the EX40 and EC40, and models like the XC60 and XC90 Recharge are now simply called Plug-In Hybrid.
Style, comfort, and practicality
I’m glad Volvo decided to only change the badge on the back. Whatever you want to call the EC40, it’s a sharp-looking thing. It continues to wear Volvo’s signature Thor’s Hammer lighting elements up front, and out back, the stacked tail lights tie into the rest of Volvo’s crossover lineup. Being a crossover-coupe-thing, the EC40’s sweeping roofline is almost unfitting for a Volvo, but it adds a sleek touch. Our particular tester comes equipped with the Black Edition trim package, a new addition for 2025 which dips almost everything in a gloss black finish. Depending on who you ask, it either adds to the EC40’s sleekness or detracts from Volvo’s usual sense of class.
Inside, the EC40 remains visually identical to its more practical and conventionally shaped sibling. Materials and fit-and-finish look and feel top-notch, the row of physical switchgear and central volume knob—with its absolutely lovely knurled metal finish—lives on, and the heated steering wheel is quite possibly the strongest we’ve experienced in a long time. Despite the sloping roof, the EC40 still feels spacious: legroom in both rows is generous, there’s plenty of headroom up front, and enough out back to avoid feeling claustrophobic. Cargo space comes in at 489 litres with the seats up, grows to 1,205 when folded, and the front trunk pitches in another 31 L. It’s obviously less than the EX40, but it’s still usable and doesn’t feel compromised.
The only bit inside the EC40 that ages it a tad is the infotainment. As much as we love the design—it’s recessed into the dash, so it actually looks like it belongs—the nine-inch touchscreen is small by today’s standards. It works with a 12.3-inch digital gauge cluster that doesn’t have much in the way of customization or visual pizzazz, but both displays are crisp and cleanly laid-out. If you’ve used any tablet at any point in your life, you’ll get used to Volvo’s Google-based software quickly—it’s a different version than the software in the EX30 and EX90—but even if you don’t, wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are on-board here.
How does the EC40 drive?
Like the EX40, the EC40 can be had in single- and dual-motor configurations. Our tester is the latter, giving it all-wheel-drive and a boatload of power. Specifically, you’re looking at 402 horsepower and a whopping 494 pound-feet of instant torque. You’ll love being first in line at a red light—floor it as soon as the light turns green, and you’ll cackle every single time. On the highway, it remains punchy—unlike a Mustang Mach-E GT, which tends to fall flat when you floor it at speed. Beyond the straight-line giggles, the EC40 feels surprisingly nimble. There’s little feedback but good weight to the steering, it holds a line quite well when you take a corner with a bit of extra speed, and although the ride feels a little stiff on our tester’s blacked-out 21-inch wheels, wind and road noise are well-hushed.
Perhaps less impressive is the cold-climate, real-world range we observed with the 2025 Volvo EC40. All use an 82 kWh battery pack, but the dual-motor setup is limited to 75 usable kilowatt-hours. This results in slightly less range—480 kilometres on paper for single-motor ECs, versus 431 for dual-motor cars. That’s all fine and dandy until temps dip below freezing. At that point, it’s not a matter of if you’ll see a big dip in range, but more so how big. We started our time with the EC40 at a 90 per cent charge and an on-board estimate of 290 km. Granted it wasn’t a full charge, but we plugged in two days later with zero range left and temperatures around -5 degres Celsius, having covered a grand total of … 188 kilometres.
Our second attempt proved slightly more fruitful. We embarked on round two with a full charge and an on-board estimate of 320 kilometres. As the week progressed, ambient temps rose ever-so-slightly to around the freezing mark, ultimately enabling us to cover another 210 km before plugging in with 13 per cent remaining. Better, sure, but having range cut by more than half doesn’t inspire much confidence for longer-distance drives in winter. At least the EC40 charges up quickly—Volvo says you can expect a full charge in about eight hours on a Level 2 charger, and a 10-to-80 per cent top-up in about half an hour at a Level 3 charger. Our real-world experience lined up with those estimates.
Final thoughts
Pricing for the 2025 EC40 ranges from $59,950 for the base, single-motor Core trim, all the way up to $76,750 as-tested for our dual-motor Black Edition tester—which is based on the otherwise full-jam Ultra trim. It’s in-line with EV crossovers like the Mustang Mach-E GT and Genesis GV60 Performance, undercuts a comparably equipped Audi Q4 E-Tron Sportback by a decent amount, and priced pretty much identically to the EX40. But much like the EX40, the newly arrived EX30 outshines the EC40 by offering a nearly identical powertrain for much less money, albeit in a slightly smaller overall package.
Aside from the new badge on the liftgate, there’s nothing else really new about the 2025 Volvo EC40. That’s not a bad thing—if you can make the range in winter work, the EC40 will win you over with its hilarious performance, inexplicable sense of niceness only Volvo can really nail, and of course, the best damn seats in the business. Hey Volvo, you’ve already done shoes—ever thought about office furniture?
