Hello. I am new here and new to Volvo. We recently leased our first ever Volvo and it's an XC40 Recharge. We like the car very much, but support and answers to simple questions have been difficult to obtain.

Like what happened on our Subaru Plug-In Hybrid, we seem to be outside anyone's area of expertise. I guess that's the problem with being a pioneer.

Here are a few questions/comments to start:

1) There's no paper owners manual and I did find the one on the center console, but it talks about some things our car doesn't seem to have.
2) I haven't been able to get the Volvo app to work (doesn't pair with our car).
3) The Adaptive Cruise Control buttons are there but I haven't found any way to get it to work. Maybe we need to upgrade to a tech package, is that possible?
4) I haven't found a charging scheduler. This is essential for any EV which we want to charge at night w/o having to remember to plug it in just before bed.
5) Is it possible to limit charging to say 95% vs. only increments of 10%?
6) How do I set our house as a "Home" destination?
7) We need to figure out how users work on the center display. Owner still confuses me and the car defaults to my profile which didn't allow pairing.
8) The wheel is not centered with the instrument dashboard. The dash/seat is too far left or the wheel is too far to the right. I don't see an adjustment for that. There's no position where I can read the entire screen on the dashboard.
9) One-Pedal driving should be a quick button. (why not the patched-over start button this car doesn't use?)

Anyway, just a few things to start with. The car is very well-built and drives like a dream.

 

Hey Falcon, I'm also new to the current line-up. I have the XC60 T8 Recharge but some things should operate the same or nearly. While yours is all electric tho, mine is the PHEV like your Subaru was.
1st of all, after 20 years in the business the one thing I'm qualified to tell you is your dealer let you down by not fully explaining the car to you. When I delivered a car to my customer, as far as I was concerned that was the most important time spent to make sure they were as comfortable as possible with it. Don't be afraid to go back to them and ask for their tech specialist as your salesperson didn't seem to know. It's OK to embarrass them if they didn't do their job !!!

RE: Owners manual, the car now comes with just the paper 'supplemental' manual. The full one should be on your big screen and if you had a proper delivery, they would have made sure your car and phone were paired. That said, you can contact Volvo and they will send you one, I intend to do that, just haven't yet. I think I just covered #'s 1 and 2 of your issues.

I have the Advanced PKG on my XC60 that includes the adaptive cruise control along with several other features for the measly cost of $1900 bucks but it did include quite a few features. Your window sticker they should have handed to you with your papers will have a listing of all your options and standard features.

Regarding a 'Charging Scheduler': One of my biggest beefs. My Honda Clarity had one and yes it was handy. Here in GA, if you have an electric car, GA Power will set your power meter (at no charge to your) for different rates during the day. During the summer for instance, the highest rates are on weekdays from 11 AM to7 PM (.20 cents per kwh) with the lowest of the low rates from 11 PM to 7 AM ( .01 cent per kwh). I would just come home and plug it in when I parked in the garage and it would start charging automatically at 11 PM for nearly nothing LOL. Sad news tho and I've complained till the cows came home. Volvo does have that feature in Europe, just not here. I was told it could come down the road as a download so please call Volvo Corporate or 'On Call' from your car and pester the crap out of them 'till maybe they do that. You can already set your app to start the 'conditioning' of the air at any time you want so it could be linked into that. I also love my car and believe that is my only 'Peeve'. Now I set my phone to wake me at 11PM tho I'm usually awake anyway watching the news in bed. There is no reason to limit your charge, the car will not let the batteries over-charge or go completely dead. At a point when it indicates no charge left it will warn you before then just 'stop'. That's to protect the batteries. Plus it's cheaper to charge at home unless you find a merchant that offers it no charge. I have installed a level II power source in my garage.

If you download the 'Volvo Cars' app, to your computer and phone or tablet, it has a link to the full manual. I have it on both, easier to read on my large computer screen. I may be mistaken but I think on your model it's gone totally Google so use that to set your home as Home. I did that but don't remember how I did it. It's nice tho to just push the talk button on the steering wheel and just say "take me home" LOL

Once you're able to get the 'manual' operating on your screen you'll figure out many more settings.

I don't have an answer for you on the slightly 'off-center' of the steering wheel and dash. I just got used to it and don't notice it anymore. I guess it's just a 'Nordic' thing ???

Mine as a PHEV and not totally electric doesn't have the 'one pedal' driving like yours. I tried it tho on a Tesla test drive w/o a firm opinion on whether or not I'd like it. Only reason I didn't get the Tesla was I know 4 people with them, and only one said they'll get another one. Too many issues from fit & finish to not having service 'as we know it' available.

Hope I helped you a bit. Give your dealer an embarrassing account of their delivery and Volvo Corporate a call re: downloading a charging schedule to your firmware and phone app.
Good luck

 

It took some time for my post to appear here and thank you for your reply. I have some updates after more calls with Volvo and the Dealer. My car was in the shop for 3 days, so I had a regular XC40 gas model as a loaner (more on that below).

Some comments on the above:

2) The dealer supposedly has fixed this and gave me a list of instructions. I haven't tried yet, so my blood doesn't boil too early in the morning.
3) The dealer advises this is part of a tech package that can only be enabled when the car leaves the factory. They said if it was a gas model, it could be upgraded by software. Really? It has what it needs to make it work. To be fair, the loaner also didn't have adaptive cruise control. It's sad this isn't a standard feature in such a vehicle now. I mean my long gone 2017 Honda CRV had adaptive AND self steering.
4) Nope, no charge scheduler. I will run this up the flag pole as it's just silly. The dealer said I need to do it thru the app, which he later corrected saying thru the ChargePoint app. I don't have a ChargePoint (yet). I'm on a TOU electric plan with Edison and we get discounts after 8pm and after 10pm. Charging between 2pm and 8pm is expensive!
5) No just 10% it seems. I charge to 90% but am considering 80% now.
6) This works now since Google has synced.
7) I'm not sure "Profiles" are worth the trouble. I may just keep the one as my wife only cares about memory seats. I also deleted my dupe profile and renamed the old "Owner" profile to Mike.
8) Yep, they told me I'm "too tall" which is why it "appears" off-center. No way to fix. My wife should be ok since she's 5'0".
9) Yeah, no easy button for One Pedal, so I gave up on it. My wife won't use that anyway.

Some other gripes about the vehicle that I didn't mention on my earlier post.

A) No HD (FM - IBOC) Radio and the loaner had it. Go figure. They are trying to say HD Radio isn't compatible with electric. Heh, no way. Maybe on AM but certainly it's not a problem on FM. Speaking of which:
B) No AM Radio. They say it's not compatible with electric vehicles... My Grundig disagrees. It's a bit noisier than normal, but there's no problem listening to KNX 1070. This feature omission seems to be a European thing as I've discovered some EU countries, like Sweden, don't use much or any AM radio anymore. Wow.
C) No compass. Yeah, let me guess, no go with Electric again. The loaner has a compass.

Overall, the software on the XC40 gas loaner seemed much more polished, but while the gear shifter looked the same, it needed a double tap where the electric only needs a single tab to change gears. This put me in Neutral in the loaner more than I cared to admit and embarrassingly so. I don't know why it needs to be different...

If Volvo plans to go all electric soon, they seriously need to get their act together! Right now, it's annoying to pay more only to lose some basic features not to mention the lack of training for their employees!

 

I got the Volvo app working again, but not from anything the dealer did. I did a factory reset on the car and it allowed me to pair the phone to On Call again. I couldn't do it from the app as it didn't know it was paired. This pairing is different from Bluetooth pairing, as unpairing one doesn't unpair the other.

 

Here's a handy link for the XC40 P8 Recharge I posted on another thread.

Pure Electric Volvo Quick Guide

I wish I had this before I posted my first question.

 

Agreed, this is so much better than the “selected topics” paper guide they referred me to when i picked up the car.