WATCH: Volvo C40 Recharge a seriously fast compact SUV

South Africa is a country of many contrasts and no more so when it comes to our choice of cars. Over the past few weeks my test car schedule has ranged from driving the country’s fastest, most over-the-top, gas-guzzling bakkie in the Ford Ranger Raptor, to Citroen’s all-new entry-level C3 targeted at the masses.

Watch Volvo C40 Recharge in action

And it went from the easy-on-price and even easier when it comes to sipping fuel Citroen C3 to the niche, pure electric Volvo C40 Recharge.

For every person who craves power, regardless of price or consequence, there is another person working to a strict budget who wants the best fuel consumption possible.

And somewhere in the middle are the early adopters who want to embrace the future while having a bit of both – power and low fuel consumption – and this is where the C40 Recharge comes in.

I will start with the fun stuff, the stuff everybody understands. The power.

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Volvo C40 has vooma

The C40 Recharge features an electric motor on each axle and these electric motors are powered by a 78 kWh lithium-ion battery pack. This ensures a full 300 kW of power and 660 Nm of instant torque goes down to all four wheels. This translates into one seriously fast compact SUV coupe that can get to 100 km/h in 4.7 seconds. It then hits an electronically limited top speed of 180 km/h in not much more than 400 m of tar.

The Volvo C40 Recharge is a blast every time you punch the accelerator. I don’t think I will ever tire of the hooligan-type urge on tap when you want it.

But at some stage during The Citizen Motoring‘s launch drive to Ludus Magnus, an appropriately chosen, completely off-the-grid resort in the heart of the Franschhoek wine valley, I had to also test the C40 Recharge’s actual claim to fame. To silently, and comfortably, consume kilometre after kilometre at zero emissions.

Beating load shedding

This brings me to the stuff many don’t understand. The charging of an electric car and how to stay mobile every day, despite load shedding.

If you travel vast distances in the day and don’t have the wall charger the Swedish carmaker installes for the VOlvo C40 at home, or access to high output public chargers, then an electric car is not for you.

If you are going drive around and run the battery almost flat before deciding to charge it, then an electric is probably also not for you. Because unlike filling up with fuel, charging a battery takes substantially longer.

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‘Filling up’

Just like an internal combustion engine car has a tank of fuel that must be filled, an electric car has a battery that must be filled. In this case, the Volvo C40 Recharge has 78 kWh battery (fuel tank). If you fill this “tank”, then you should get around 444 km on a single charge.

Just like an internal combustion engine car, the rate at which you use fuel (battery power), is directly related to how fast you drive. Use all the power on tap and you will eat up range, drive sensibly, and you get the maximum range out of the charge.

Pay attention, because this is important: the rate and cost at which you can charge the battery in your Volvo C40 Recharge differs substantially.

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The cost of charging

Using a traditional three-pin wall plug at home, you will fill the 78 kWh battery at rate of 3.6 kW per hour. This means 21 hours at the cheapest rate of around R3 per kWh.

Using the Volvo-supplied wall box, this improves to 11 kW per hour and seven hours of charging at the same home-based rate. If you stop at one of the high-output public chargers it can take you less than an hour to be fully charged at around R6 per kWh.

Bear in mind, you shouldn’t and wouldn’t run the battery almost empty before looking to charge your electric car. And if you treated your electric car more like a cell phone when it comes to charging habits, and simply pop it on charge via the wall box each night when you got home, you will have no range anxiety issues. And you’d save money over any internal combustion engine car.

Now I have explained some of what I think are the important ins and outs of owning an electric car. When we get the all-electric Volvo C40 Recharge on test, we will dig into the other positives of owning this sporty and premium offering.