Best look yet at Volvo EX30 compact SUV ahead of June 7th reveal
Volvo’s PR department has been drip-dropping its EX30 compact SUV imagery alongside the patent department and website design teams ahead of its June 7th reveal in Milan, Italy. Head below for the latest installment with some interesting interior shots…
As you would expect from the name, the EX30 takes many notable EX90 design elements, including front and rear pixel lighting, and puts them in a smaller package.
The EX30 is a 4-door hatchback but harkens back to the small 3-door C30 hatchbacks of 2006-2013. Interestingly, Volvo made a limited run, compliance C30 EV called the DRIVe from 2011-2013 that was sold to fleets in limited numbers. The specs on that one were a 24 kWh battery and a 93-mile range. The EX30 needs to more than double these numbers.
Volvo EX30 interior
Until today, we’d not seen much of the EX30 interior, but Volvo provided some much-needed relief ahead of the global reveal next week. Below, you can see a tall tablet interface that will, of course, run on the rapidly improving Android Automotive, including Google Assistant, but will also support wireless CarPlay. Also interesting: there is no front-of-driver display, which would put it in the same league as Tesla’s popular Model 3/Y lines and will likely keep prices down.
Finally, we see that the dashboard looks to be made of a spotted recyclable material contributing to its best carbon footprint offering to date.
Perhaps most interesting is the center console design, offering a neat way to provide a sizable basin for purses and laptop bags, along with phone- and cup-holding configurations. Not only does the slide-out drawer facilitate the front passenger’s items, but there is a back slide-out door, as well, for the rear passengers.
Premium sound at a lower cost
Volvo is smartly cutting costs and offering more room while still offering premium quality. Instead of door speakers and window switches, both have moved to the center. The glove box is moved below the center screen for easy access by both driver and passenger. This “broader principle of centralization” has many benefits.
The soundbar in the EX30, the first of its kind, is inspired by home audio design. It brings several speakers together into one soundbar and fills the entire cabin with premium sound. When you choose to combine it with the Harman Kardon high-end sound system, you can listen to your favorite music and podcasts in outstanding audio quality. The soundbar is a great instance of smart design, by clustering speakers together within one component and reducing the amount of wiring and material. At first you might not even notice it, located under the windshield and seamlessly integrated into the cockpit design. But with no need for speakers in the doors, we can give you a lot more storage space. In the same vein, we’ve moved the window switches to the center console, easy to reach for both driver and passenger.
In addition to the EX30 and EX90, Volvo plans to introduce its first all-electric minivan within a year.
Electrek’s take:
With the Chevy Bolt being discontinued and Fiat and Mini not yet offering decent range in their small EVs, the EX30 is going to be one of the only small long-range EVs on offer when it goes on sale. A lot of people, including myself, love small cars regardless of the wider trend towards bigger vehicles.
More interesting is that Volvo seems to be trying to get this vehicle’s price down where it could be a mass-market vehicle. Unfortunately, it will be built in China, meaning it won’t be eligible for federal tax credits in the US. I’d still expect this to start under $40,000, so I think leasing – where the $7500 credit is still applied – might be a popular option.
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EV sales kept up their momentum in December 2024, with incentives playing a big role, according to the latest Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book report.
December’s strong EV sales saw an average transaction price (ATP) of $55,544, which helped push the industry-wide ATP higher, according to Kelley Blue Book. The December ATP for an EV was higher year-over-year by 0.8%, slightly below the industry average, and higher month-over-month by 1.1%. Tesla ATPs were higher year-over-year by 10.5%.
Incentives for EVs remained elevated in December, although they were slightly lower month-over-month at 14.3% of ATP, down from 14.7% in November.
EV incentives were higher by an impressive 41% year-over-year and have been above 12% of ATP for six consecutive months. Strong sales incentives, which averaged more than $6,700 per sale in 2024, were one reason EV sales surpassed 1.3 million units last year, according to Cox Automotive, a new record for volume and share.
(My colleague Jameson Dow reported yesterday, “In 2024, the world sold 3.5 million more EVs than it did in the previous year … This increase is larger than the 3.2 million increase in EV sales from the previous year – meaning that EV sales aren’t just up, but that the rate of growth is itself increasing.”)
Kelley Blue Book estimated that in December, approximately 84,000 vehicles – or 5.6% of total sales – transacted at prices higher than $80,000 – the highest volume ever. KBB lumps gas cars and EVs together into this luxury vehicle category, so this is where Tesla Cybertruck is slotted.
However, Tesla bundles sales figures of Cybertruck with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi(!) into a category it calls “other models,” so we don’t know for sure exactly how many Cybertrucks Tesla sold in Q4, much less in December. However, Electrek‘s Fred Lambert estimates between 9,000 and 12,000 Cybertrucks were sold in Q4, and that’s not a stellar sales figure.
What will January bring when it comes to EV ATPs? What about tax credits? Check back in a month and I’ll fill you in.
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Tesla is now claiming that Cybertruck was the ‘best-selling electric pickup in US’ last year despite not even reporting the number of deliveries.
There’s a lot of context needed here.
As we often highlighted, Tesla is sadly one of, if not the most, opaque automakers regarding sales reports.
Tesla doesn’t break down sales per model or even region.
For comparison, here’s Ford’s Q4 2024 sales report compared to Tesla’s:
You could argue that Tesla has fewer models than Ford, and that’s true, but Tesla’s report literally has two lines despite having six different models.
There’s no reason not to offer a complete breakdown like all other automakers other than trying to make it hard to verify the health of each vehicle program.
This has been the case with the Cybertruck. Tesla is bundling its Cybertruck deliveries with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi deliveries.
Despite this lack of disclosure, Tesla has been able to claim that the Cybertruck has become “the best-selling electric pickup truck” in the US in 2024:
It very well might be true. Ford disclosed 33,510 F-150 Lightning truck deliveries in the US in 2024 while most estimates are putting Cybertruck deliveries at around 40,000 units.
Those are global deliveries, but Tesla only delivered the Cybertruck in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2024, and most of the deliveries are believed to be in the US.
However, there’s essential context needed here, as we highlighted in our recent ‘Tesla Cybertruck sales are disastrous‘ article.
First off, Tesla had a backlog of over 1 million reservations for the Cybertruck that it has been building since 2019. This led many to believe Tesla already had years of demand baked in for the truck and that production would be the constraint.
However, based on estimates, again, because Tesla refuses to disclose the data, Cybertruck deliveries were either flat or down in Q4 versus Q3 despite Tesla introducing cheaper versions of the vehicle and ramping up production.
Again, that’s after just about 40,000 deliveries.
Furthermore, with almost 11,000 deliveries in Q4 in the US, Ford more likely than not outsold Cybertruck with the F-150 Lightning in Q4.
Electrek’s Take
Tesla is in damage control here. There’s no doubt that it is having issues selling the Cybertruck.
Inventory is full of Cybertrucks and Tesla is now discounting them and offering free lifetime Supercharging.
Tesla is great at ramping up production, and it’s clear the Cybertruck is not production-constrained anymore. It is demand-constrained despite having over 1 million reservations.
Again, those reservations were made before Tesla unveiled the production version, which happened to have less range and cost significantly more.
The upcoming cheaper single motor version should help with demand, but I have serious doubts Tesla can ramp this program up to more than 100,000 units in the US.
As a reminder, Tesla installed a production capacity of 250,000 units annually and Musk said he could see Tesla selling 500,000 Cybertrucks per year.
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