On the road

Volvo is certainly a manufacturer that can’t be accused of following the crowd. From its early lead on seatbelts and an all-round focus on safety, the Swedish brand has carved its own path.

But launching a compact executive saloon without a diesel engine is still a bold step, given the way sales of rival diesels, such as the BMW 320d, dominate their respective ranges.

Such a move came about, to some extent, through circumstance rather than design, because the S60’s estate sibling, the V60, comes with three diesel power options, so it’s not like no suitable engine was available. However, the S60 is built at Volvo’s new plant in America, where they don’t buy diesels, but do buy more S60s than are sold over here, so the Chinese-owned company took the decision not to add an oil-burner to the range as part of its pledge to phase out diesel in exchange for electrification.

Which is how we get to the S60 T8. When the S60 launched in early summer of this year, it came only with a 250hp petrol engine, which at 152g/km offers emissions prohibitive to most company car drivers. But now Volvo has moved the S60 firmly into company car focus, from a CO2 point of view at least, with the arrival of the plug-in hybrid T8 models, which have also landed in the V60 estate.

The PHEV puts the S60 under 50g/km, which brings some hefty company car Benefit-in-Kind taxation and company National Insurance benefits, as well as the running cost efficiency of electric over petrol for shorter journeys. The official range figure sits at more than 30 miles, which puts the car in the pleasantly low 12% BiK band for 2020/21, dropping from 16% this year, and we found that with a degree of gentle finessing, at least 25 miles is a realistic real-world expectation from the battery, before the need to deploy the 303hp 2.0-litre petrol engine.

Volvo has headed down a different path from competitor plug-in hybrid models, which isn’t a surprise for the brand. So, the S60 T8 is a more powerful but much more expensive model than the likes of the BMW 330e, Mercedes-Benz C300de and Volkswagen Passat GTE that form the core competition from a PHEV perspective. The T8 produces 390hp in regular R-Design Plus specification, or there is an uprated Polestar Engineered model that increases it to 405hp, taking 0.2 seconds off an already absurd 4.6-second 0-62mph acceleration time. Even this R-Design Plus spec is a full second quicker than the 306hp Mercedes C-Class PHEV over the sprint, while the new BMW 330e and Volkswagen Passat GTE are a further 0.3 and 1.8 seconds back with 292hp and 218hp respectively.

But, and here’s the pay-off, that phenomenal performance figure doesn’t come cheap. The entry P11D price for the S60 PHEV is an equally phenomenal £49,750, which puts it a shade under £10,000 clear of the 330e, and more than £5000 in front of the C-class diesel plug-in. Which makes it a car that will only really be available to senior executives. The S60’s Polestar Engineered trim level is another £6300 up the road.

The new S60 is a significant 126mm longer than its predecessor, which becomes very apparent when you sit in the rear seats, where there is significantly more space than is offered by most of the compact-executive competition.

Context

Volvo is at the forefront of moves to electrification, and recently became the first mainstream manufacturer to offer plug-in versions of each of its models with the unveiling of the XC40 PHEV.

The SUV will be launched early next year to complete the full house of PHEV versions across XC40, XC60 and XC90 SUVs, and the saloon and estate S/V60 and S/V90 models. Volvo will supplement that in around 12 months’ time with the arrival of its first electric model, the XC40 Recharge (pictured), which introduces the branding that will be rolled out across all the company’s plug-in models – both fully electric and plug-in hybrid.

Between Volvo and its premium Polestar sub-brand, the company has said that it will launch a new electric car every year for five years.

In addition, Volvo has declared that it expects half of its annual sales worldwide to be full-electric cars by the middle of the next decade, with the rest deploying some degree of hybrid technology alongside an internal-combustion engine. Other sustainability moves include the brand aiming to use 25% recycled plastics in its cars from 2025 and imposing a 112mph speed limiter on all its new cars from next year.

Verdict