This January I drove an Enterprise Rental car for and it was a 2024 Volvo XC Recharge.
This rental is the twin motor so it takes off with a thrust equivalent to the Triumph Daytona 675 (crotch rocket), but without the front wheels constantly going in the air. My Kia has an amazing amount of thrust for what it is, but wow, this Volvo really has the thrust! As a Volvo it also has a great suspension and hugs the road very well and with great comfort. I also really like the glass roof to allow in the sunshine.
For a road trip however, I found the twin motors to be power hungry. For one thing, to fit two motors on board they used a slightly smaller battery capacity. For looks they made, IMHO, a large sacrifice by using such large, wide, heavy wheels and just to add insult, they used even wider tires on the back than the front so you can’t rotate tires front to back.
– Front 235/45 R20
– Rear 255/40 R20
I thought the tires on my Kia were a touch too wide at 215mm with R17 (rims), however my Kia Niro EV is not rated for towing and the Volvo is, 2,000lbs!
One evening on a 67 mile drive at mostly 70 MPH you can see that the car used 38 kWh./100 miles. I began the journey with 90% battery. At the end of the trip the battery was at 54%. Since this twin motor only has a 78 kWh battery I would estimate at highway speeds this car will get maybe 140 miles at most before the driver begins praying and holding their breath and being hopeful they arrive at the charger in time. I used 40% of the battery in roughly 70 miles. Unless you plan to use a tow truck, you want to arrive at the charger with 20% remaining so one has options and is also prepared for traffic problems. Furthermore, as the battery voltage decreases the current is going to increase causing the battery to deplete it’s charge even faster.. so like when driving with gas, don’t go below 1/4 tank!
I really missed the brake-hold feature my Kia has. That has become a ‘must have’ feature for me while sitting in traffic in town. The Volvo didn’t have that feature. Yes, the Volvo has the one-pedal driving feature but that presented me with a big learning/training curve to get acclimated to that and this is a temporary car. I also missed my Kia’s drastically better backup camera. The Volvo’s camera is a bit fish-eyed and I could never tell when I was going straight and I never ended up where I intended. It’s also a funny view, like looking through a fish mouth. It did have a 360 degree ‘birds eye’ view that was a bit hard to look at. For a outdoor parking spot it was good but inside the garage it was very confusing. Speaking of backing up, I found that I really have to hold the brake as this car is ready to go without touching the accelerator. This is one thing I find a bit dangerous. When you put it in drive or reverse you better have the brake on hard.
For the adaptive cruise control, I found that it worked very well but the range buttons were way too far in from the steering wheel to easily press during traffic to close-in or stretch-out my gap. Normally I simply drive down the highway using adaptive cruise and I use the range buttons to speed up and slow down based on what I could see way ahead. This was difficult in the Volvo.
The heated steering wheel and seats were nice but I realized it did not have heat/cool seats.. heat only. And then there is the car’s interface. It’s basically a Google tablet which I thought would be great but it wasn’t a ‘second’ screen to my Google phone. I actually found that it did very little with my phone. So I could not use the Waze app on my phone or anything else – I had to install and configure the apps on the car’s console.. and Waze was having some problems.. more annoyances for me. It would use my phone as a streaming media player over bluetooth thankfully.
I found the lack of a ‘turn-on/off’ button on the dash to be amazingly annoying. Anytime I’m sitting in the parking garage at work but I want the car off, I have to go through the menus on the console to turn-off the car. When I’m jumping in and out of the car for a moment and I don’t want to lock the door, I have to do this. When I get home and park the car in the garage I have to do this (or lock the car).
I have cross this car off my ‘next car’ list. I need something that will go 200 miles at 70 mph and less annoyances. I hope to drive a Rivian or a Canoo some day.