In for the annual service this week, so 1yr report, how has it been, pretty damn good, fulfilled the brief for the dual nature car EV town car, long range lugger, I’d like to say it has been perfect but I cannot, we had a heater failure that took a while to fix, in fact it took a while to even get the car into my local dealer….
Fortunately loosing the coolant heater was not end of the world as I have a big turbo petrol powered lump of aluminium that can do a good job of this
How much have we used this PHEV as intended, pretty much all our local running has been covered in EV mode, petrol filling in on the long range stuff, in just under 10k and we are only on on 7th tank of fuel so an average of ~1400 miles per tank, typically nearer 2k
So lots of EV use, gotta be in the region of 70% EV.
This can been seen in the tyre wear, current depths are 5mm front (petrol engine) 3mm rear (electric motor) obviously having the rear do both the accelerating and the decelerating in EV mode (one pedal drive so rear motor does regen) has quite an impact on tyre wear, can only be 6-7k on this set as I replaced them after all the 22” blowouts to 20”s, so looking at about maybe 10k out of a pair, not great, will do a rotation so I replace all 4 together later in the year ready for winter wetness. On the plus side, barely any break pad wear, just moved the problem somewhere else I guess.
Is it a plus, pads are cheaper than tyres…..Hmmmm
For our journeys and how we use the car, the EV side is not very efficient, we can have some good outliers over 2.7 miles per kw but that is rare, 2.4 seems most common, now in low temp its 1.9-2.2, doesn’t matter too much, as we fill cheap/free, just means for the most part you only get 30-35miles out of its usable battery, it never really got loads better in the summer for us, couple of 38s and the odd kiss of a 40.
This could have course be attributed to buying the wrong tyres when I dropped down to 20s, using proper sports rubber rather than some EV/VOL specific things, when I replace I will not make that mistake, maybe it will improve things on wear and consumption.
It’s a well put together machine, despite the battering this got from the kids, potholes and missus smashing curbs etc, no squeaks or rattles or other issues have materialized, interior has held up well to the dogs claws and its general craziness when she gets excited. Feels nice and robust.
Overall good car and I love the look of the thing, trawling Volvo forums though does give me concerns about its ability to be a long term keeper, with EV running gear issues etc, but at the moment it feels so good I might just do the head in sand thing and hope it out lasts me