Volvo EX60 - HOW are they DOING THIS?

Imagine being able to fly or float effortlessly through every town or city you ever went to. Imagine waking up every morning and looking at something and saying like you do to your wife, you're beautiful you are. And imagine looking forward to getting in your car to go nowhere. Volvo have made yet another car that isn't nicer to be in than your actual house and another electric car that lots of people are going to actually want. But in doing so, may have also made a huge mistake. And they don't like doing that. Mistakes cost lives and Volvo likes lives. And this car has saved millions of them. It's their biggest selling, most loved car. But now with this, they've built themselves a competitor, more modern, lovely to look at. And I think you'll like it. This cabin, of course, it is a Volvo features world class seating. You'll get in this and think, I don't know why I even sat in another car. Now, there are comfortable seats with other cars, but they're not as good as this. It's got two screens. This screen is an extremely good quality screen. You get another one there instead of your head up display. One of these roofs that first I've seen in an Audi. Now it's in this and you can press this button and it shades it and unshades it. And then there's even a bit of jewellery. They call this jewellery. That's your volume control in the track advance. And this which you'll either love or hate. I quite love it at the moment, which is the small and unique steering wheel, which is square and tiny and spacious. My neighbour, who's a bit thick and has noisy children, still thinks Volvos are for old men. What century does he live in? Look how far they've come. The X60 might look a bit like the cheap one from the front, but from every other angle, it's a thing of beautifulness. And it doesn't say I'm an old man. It says I'm a successful one. But it's not just a very good looking car on the inside and on the outside. This is serious business. 680 horsepower, 503 miles of range, 3.9 seconds not to 60. And this will charge 10 minutes, 210 miles. You don't wait for this to charge. It waits for you. Come on, get a ring on. 500 times a second. You could say that's ultra high frequency real time damping. I'm talking about the suspension. Yes, it's suspension that thinks. One minute it's floaty. Like I said, it does feel like you're flying sometimes. The next minute you're on the motorway and it's very stiff. It's good. It's like several cars. Although it probably wants to be, doesn't it? Yeah, let's not pretend there aren't other cars out there. Jacob, for instance. Yes, you buy one of those. They'll throw in a three bedroom house, a Chinese wife and a dog of your choosing. Volvo can only do one thing, sell you a car. And that's not very much. But it is a very good one. And they're also best mates with Google. Gemini is included. So you can have a real time conversation with Google about anything just by saying, hey, I'm having a bit of anxiety today. I'm sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do to help find some relaxing activities or something to distract you? Well, yeah, it's just I've bought this really expensive Volvo and here's a horse. Look at the horse in the road. What a beautiful horse. Should we say hello to the horse? Oh, hello, beige horse. What kind of horse is beige? You might be thinking of a Perlino or a Cremello. The simplest things entertain me. The way that these door handles work is brilliant. There's a little light in there and behind that, just a tiny button which you just pull. Anyway, along with reinventing the seat belt, which will come on to here is the boot, which is 18 percent smaller than a Tesla Model Y to give you an example. Seats go down like this with this button. You'd think it'd be electric. Let me see if they work. Well, that's good, isn't it? It's a slow. But here's how they've sort of reinvented it a little bit, which is with these bits of clever storage. You could put your eggs in there. What are you doing? There's nothing revolutionary, of course, about storage or organization. Come on. But then Ikea did right out of it, didn't they? And they're they're Swedish, aren't they? Speaking of, here's some storage here. Your phone is charged out of sight and the phone is also your key. And unlike a Tesla, if your phone is dead, you can still get in the car. That's the thing with Volvo. It's them little things, isn't it? It's like they're thinking about you. It's not just about saving lives. Oh, dear. You're right. The all important interface, which I was very much looking forward to trying before I had a go in it. Now, this is how they've made it easy. That's your screen. One button rear, one button and then your mirrors and your 360 camera, which looks like this really crisp. This is a 15 inch OLED. There are a lot of screens in cars, particularly cars from a certain region. They have lots of brilliant tech, but the screens are such terrible, terrible resolution. This is beautiful to look at. Even when you get in, you've got the picture of the car with the proper wheels on it saying hello, user, probably say your name. Now, down here is your quick access to your air con. It's one button, so it's not too fiddly. And there's a lovely menu. Should we check the air quality just in case you've got asthma? You just want to. So you won't need your inhaler. Here is the apps. One thing I noticed yesterday is I downloaded YouTube music so that I can have podcasts and music. But I didn't realize that with YouTube premium, you get music as well as everything else. So you're not getting interrupted with sounds like a sponsorship ad. And if you go to my link, but anyway, I was paying for Spotify and YouTube premium, but now I only pay for one. Yeah, the key. Everybody's putting it up. This is my favorite button. The intelligent speed assist stops you from speeding, doesn't it? Unlike the other Volvos, though, this system works slightly differently. It's supposed to have a pedal response. It does. But I think there's a software thing probably going to be coming down because to me it's behaving in an unusual way. Also, when you're in auto cruise, the very nice pilot assist, it will tell you the speed limit changes and you just confirm. But in some cars like a Volkswagen, it will just speed up and slow down. So that's one point of Volkswagen, I think. What do we think of this, by the way? I think it's pretty nice. It reminds me very much of the Polestar. And that is the sound which we'll come on to in a moment. Before the sound, the money and the road noise, we've come a long way, haven't we? From there being only one electric car worth getting. Now, cars like this demand is super high and having 370 odd miles showing 90 percent in this middle spec version is only part of the reasoning. It looks better than an XC60. It goes further than an EX30 and it's cheaper than an XC90, even though to insure one, you'll pay 48 percent more. And if paper mile happens, that's going to cost you another 940 pounds a year on average. Yes, we will protest. And if you want to buy a balaclava, well, they're quite cheap on the Internet. Yeah, no, I don't think that's a balaclava, is it? Actually, let's talk about seatbelts next, because seatbelts. Yeah, now that is it's more interesting than you think. Instant subscribe, that is. He talks about seatbelts. No, hang on a minute. If you watch Crash Detectives on BBC iPlayer, it's a brilliant show. You'll suddenly be an expert in seatbelts because in an accident, your body and the seatbelt is subjected to thousands of pounds of pressure. And that's why these fibers are really, really important. And that pressure not only causes whiplash and bruising, but can actually damage your ribs or even your lungs. And Volvo thought, nah, we're not having that. As I drive along now, the car has already weighed me. It knows my frame because there's a camera that sees my frame and it measures me. So if there is an accident, it knows instantly how much pressure to use to hold me back in the seat and how much pressure to release and at what point to reduce the likelihood of an injury. Eleven different settings, thousands and thousands of hours of development to reinvent the seatbelt, which they didn't really need to do, but they did. But it's not all clever technology and new inventions, because ultimately this is still a family car and it's got to be useful. A huge boot with 1687 litres, a frunk with another 58 and plenty of room for actual people to go inside. Now in the back, these are not the materials I would choose, and I certainly wouldn't choose to have an ND filter, but it's fine that it's here. Here's your cup holder. There are three different materials to choose from. I would choose one of those and not these. It's not they're not cheap or anything. I just don't like dark cars. You might if you've got kids, you just want to ice cream everywhere. But firstly, legroom and knee room is great. The amount of customisation is great. And you also have four colours for the interior as well and nine colours for the outside. It really is like speccing a house. Yeah, you know, you don't get turf. You do get several versions with 376 to 503 miles of range. And the best way to check how it uses that is to do an airport run of 104 miles. So I started at 62 percent and returned at 24 percent. All done in a soothing, floaty manner, by the way, with its auto lane changing and amazing seat consumption, a pretty decent 2.58 miles per kilowatt hour. So it might not beat the Tesla Model Y on the same journey. Oh, here's the thing that the Tesla Model Y doesn't do. And that is Dolby Atmos. Your Volvo will have Dolby Atmos in it. Why is that important? Because width of sound and it comes native with Apple Music. Fortunately, if you're not an Apple Music subscriber, you're not going to get it. But wow, Dolby Atmos is important because Tesla knew that the width of sound was important. So they made an immersive feature and put that in their cars several months ago. A little little fader adds a bit of reverb to the channels, but it widens the sound field and it has improved the Tesla system by about 20 percent. This is one better than that, because when the track or the album is mixed in Apple Music, they decide what instruments and what parts of the track go to which speaker. But to get this speaker system working, you need Apple Music. But without it, it is very good. 28 speakers with a Bowers and Wilkins system. Is it any good, Howard? Yes, it is. Is it best in the world? I tell you what, the Mercedes is very good. We haven't heard the very latest and in every car. Same for BMW. I think that's gone down a bit, but we're waiting. We're waiting for the call to double check it. What's that? Why? Why don't you want it? Anyway, this is, I'd say, best in the world. Okay, so shall we recap? So we've got a tranquil environment. We've got a floaty suspension system which we can change into being hard. We've got a steering system that can be hard or silky. A full time, free of charge mental health team in the car. You know that feeling of disappointment you get? I'm disappointed because you know like that disappointment feeling you get when you can't have something and it annoys you? That is what I feel with this. Oh, and I think that it's BMW now. I'll just get that. I've been deliberately avoiding this bit. This is the slightly less positive part. We'll put a list of the bits I like and the bits I like less on the screen in a minute. But first, well, this is not meant to be a cheap car. This is meant to be a luxury item. Luxury items cost money. This costs £56,860 starting. Now, you might say, well, it could have been worse. And that is also true. But what's more true is the fact that this is £15,000 cheaper than a very good XC60. Hence the question, have they killed the best car they've ever made? But £56,850 does not buy you the Bowers and Wilkins Volvo version, which is one of the reasons why somebody might buy a Volvo in the first place, because of the sound system. It does get a Bose and we've yet to test that. In fact, if you do the subscribe thing, click the do and do the do, then we'll do a basic cheap one and see if it's actually worth having or not. And this one is the P10. So you get a P6, which is the cheapest, the P10, the one in the middle and the P12, the highest all wheel drive, biggest, most powerful. That's the most expensive. This one is £61,495. But for context, I have a piece of paper. An equivalent BMW is £7,000 more. The Tesla Model Y performance is £200 more. And this is the big one. The Macan S is £20,000 more and it's slower. I really should calm down, though. The BMW iX3 is a very nice car to look at. And the Mercedes GLC, well, that's another one. I mean, that's got a cinema in it. And as for Tesla, well, unfortunately, Elon does still own all of the world's electricity. And so before we do the cheap one to get a final, final verdict and where we are with this, what do we think? It's funny because I'm trying to think if there's another car for this kind of money that offers this amount of quality. And I also didn't think that Volvo were going to be able to make another car that make me lust after it like I'm 12 years old. Right. But they have. So the question, have they then killed the XC60, the best car they've ever made? No, I don't think they have, which is a relief, but it's not far off.