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Hello! I'm in the market for a hybrid XC90, just joined the forums to get caught up on what owners think and say about the vehicle. Looking to buy used so definitely want to understand how to spot any potential issues before I buy anything.

thanks!

Welcome to VF IvanRZB


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After a few months of shopping I finally found and bought a 2016 XC90 T8 with all the things I wanted--and not many of the things I wasn't willing to pay for.
Have had it for 3 weeks now, I'm pretty happy with it and my wife absolutely loves it-it replaced a 12-year old minivan so a welcome addition to the fleet. I'm writing down some impressions here in case someone else is looking at this model, it doesn't seem there are very many T8 owners on this forum or out here IRL.

Our needs are: get 2 adults + 2 kids + dog around town daily to school, etc. A few times a year we'll do long trips (300-800 mile each way) with the whole crew plus luggage, so needs to be comfortable. During the warm months it needs to tow a ~3,000 lb boat a short distance to and from the lake, with the aforementioned adults, kids, dog. Our trusty Nissan Quest was great at all of these except for towing--it did the job but I had a couple of oh sh*t moments pulling the boat out of the water hence a car search was started. I briefly looked at X-large SUVs but don't like driving huge vehicles and can't stomach burning 12MPG to get to the supermarket. There are tons of options in the mid-to-large SUV space, but the dual-engine setup on the T8 really had me intrigued and eventually won me over. We can do our daily driving on mostly electric power, and can still do long roadtrips on regular gasoline. I personally think it's an ideal setup given where technology is today.

A few observations after 3 weeks of driving it
- It's a very well-balanced SUV in terms of driving and handling. Not as sporty as some (Audi Q7 FTW there), but better than most everything else I drove
- Very spacious--my 9- and 13- year olds have plenty of room. Hopefully they say the same a few years from now
- Hybrid power train is about as good as I expected. You do need to fiddle with the settings a bit to get it just right and to figure out which modes to use in which situation. The switch from electric to gasoline in some modes is abrupt
- Towing with this thing is awesome--the combination electric torque+supercharged gas engine make it efortless.
- The Sensus console can be annoyingly slow. I know there had to be fast enough processing power in 2016 to have a faster console.
- We've yet to do a long trip but I think it'll be comfortable for everyone. Not sure how much gear we'll be able to pack so a rooftop carrier may be needed.