Hey y'all,

I took delivery of my XC40 Ultimate on December 30th last year. Beautiful Crystal White colour, drives like a dream. Peppy, no stink, quiet and none of the herky-jerky of an ICE vehicle. I love home charging as well. Thankfully we kept our 2015 XC60, given what's been happening with the XC40, but I really dislike driving that car now. I guess once you go EV you never go back.

Unfortunately, about a month in (Jan 28th), the car started having some intermittent problems. The first thing we noticed is that we couldn't pre-condition the car with the app in the morning. The app's pretty quirky, but this persisted for some three days. Once I went to investigate this closer, we noticed that the LTE and the GPS were non-functional. So no assistant, no navigation. We live in Montreal, and it was brutally cold here at the time, so losing the ability to remotely precondition the car seemed like a big deal.

So, we called the dealership, who set up a service appointment on February 4th. By the time the service appointment came around, the rear camera was intermittent. The dealership told us they "updated the software", but as far as I know they made no physical repairs or performed any diagnostics on the car. I remember backing the car out of the space at the dealership, and noticing that the rear camera took a while to come up - there was some kind of a fault indication there for a while, and then the camera kicked in.

Over the next several days the rear camera got more and more intermittent, until it cut out entirely, and we've now not seen it working since Feb 11 or so. More worryingly is that we were noticing the LTE and GPS drop out randomly. I'd drive a 5 minute distance to pick up some beer, and I'd notice the tunein radio station drop out, and the map would stop updating the position.

February 25th the dealership finally saw fit to take the car in to diagnose the camera problems. They replaced the camera with a known good one without any change, and then they gave us the car back as they "had to contact Volvo Corporate" for instructions. About a week later they took it in again to change a "wiring harness", but unfortunately they had the wrong harness. After three days in the shop, they gave me the car back without any improvement, and told me it'll be 3-8 weeks wait for the replacement harness as "it's custom made".

Once we got the car home, we noticed that the LTE and the GPS were out cold. More worryingly was that the charge controls and indicators were malfunctioning. I have some photos of the dash where the current limit in the head unit is indicating 6A, but the arrows to change the limit are greyed out. At the same time the car is plugged into the wall, and is charging at 29/0A. The charge limit in the head unit is indicating a 90% limit, but the dash claims 100% limit. The car ended up charged to 90%, and thankfully it charged at the full speed of my home station.

Anyways, at this point I'd had enough. The following Monday morning I dropped the car off at the dealership, and told them I didn't want to see it again until it was fully repaired. Unfortunately the issue had resolved by then - like magic the LTE reappeared, the GPS started updating and all the rest of the problems vanished on Saturday afternoon.
I then called Volvo Canada Customer Care to see what to do about the lease payments, as I don't think I need to be paying lease on a new vehicle that's non-functional, unreliable or in the shop. Volvo opened a "New Vehicle Concern" issue for the case, but so far, I'm not really happy with this experience. It's not much better than dealing with LG customer service, which makes the experience deliberately awful. The rep, which is a nice enough lady, tells me that "the executive team" will "consider" my request sometime in the "next weeks".

Now, the dealership has been pretty cagey about these intermittent problems. They've never really told me they did any diagnostics relating to those issues, always focusing on the camera. I wonder if this is a known issue, that there's perhaps a software issue that's crashing something in the car causing these problems. I've certainly seen other people complaining about random LTE/GPS dropouts, but I've never seen anyone complain about charging controls or indications.

As a side issue, I know that a rear camera is mandatory equipment in new vehicles sold in Canada since 2018 or so. I wonder if this car is technically road-worthy with a non-functional rear camera?

Siggi

 

The GPS on our C40 went out last weekend, but it's been ok since then. Yes, random problems aren't any fun at all, but all too often taking the Volvo to the dealer makes things worse. I am glad we sold our XC40. One Volvo is enough!

The app and the software still have lots of problems, especially as respects the Radio/Sirius XM not showing what it's actually playing. So buggy... and still no HD Radio on the Volvo BEV's.

 

So the dealership has effectively thrown up their hands at the intermittent problems I've complained about. Apparently I should just live with random, prolonged loss of charge setting controls, along with no LTE or GPS.
From what I can best tell, they've been plugging the car into random charging configurations and "haven't seen a problem" - so there. This diagnosis is up to the level of a hard look and a kick to the tires.
They have at least observed the LTE drop out once, but they advise me that "new software released will be here soon to stabilise connectivity". They haven't even given me a workaround to fix the issues when they occur.
Meanwhile they keep pushing me to come pick up the car, with a non-functional rear camera. From what I can tell, the rear camera is mandatory safety equipment in Canada, sort of like brake lights, or headlights. I wonder if they're pushing cars with no brake lights on their customers as well :/.

FWIW I sympathize with the dealership service folks to a point. They have no control over parts availability, and chasing intermittent issues is no fun. If there's a software issue causing this, that's well out of the dealership service tech paygrade. But OMG, don't these vehicles have any diagnostics for - say - the charging controls at least?

Meanwhile Volvo Canada Customer Care are effectively telling me that "my call is very important" to them, but not offering any time schedule as to when they might see fit to materially address my "concerns". How infuriating.

 

Over on Swedespeed, XC60 T8 (PHEV) owners have been complaining about the same GPS problem, so it appears to be a Volvo-wide problem. One cause that was supposedly found was that the shark-fin (TCAM) antenna wasn't sealed properly and water was getting in to mess up the GPS detector. I have an XC60 ER T8 on order, and I'm having serious doubts after hearing about all these electrical/infotainment problems in Volvos for MY2021 and MY2022.

 

I believe the shark fin antenna issue has a recall bulletin for it. All they do is take it off and reseal. However, the modem for the LTE is not located there, i believe it is in the dash behind the glove box.

It does sound like they didn't bother to really diagnose the OPs car or did not communicate well with OP on what they checked or attempted.

 

Yups, you can say that again. My sense is that they didn't do squat except a stern sideways glance at the car. The "Service Manager" seems to have been ignoring my problems pretty hard. I'm now talking to the sales person who sold me this lemon, who's in turn talking to the dealership GM.
Incidentally, I tallied up the number of days that the LTE & GPS have been out hard, the last 6 weeks that I drove the car. It tallies up to 24% of those 6 weeks. In between hard outs, it was intermittent, so it's probably more like 50% - great reliability. Two wheels next?

 

Yeah, this isn’t just related to Recharge models, either. My wife has the XC40 Recharge, and I have the XC60 B5 (non-Recharge). The XC40 has had some of these issues, but the XC60 has been much worse and consistent. On the XC40, they replaced the TCAM unit (or maybe just resealed it as someone alluded to above), and so far hasn’t had any subsequent issues for several months. On the XC60, they replaced the TCAM and the frequency of issues has decreased, but still persist occasionally. The XC60 has definitely been worse than our XC40 Recharge. Bad enough that I’m giving it back in a couple weeks before my next payment is due, and cancelling the subscription (Care By Volvo). We leased a Buick Envision last week. I’ll drive the XC40 Recharge now, and she gets the Buick.

The XC40 is a 36m lease, and as long as the problems stay squelched, I’m happy with it - haven’t had the charging issues you talk about. The XC60 is a subscription where I can turn it in after 4 payments. At this point, keeping the XC60 when I can turn it in with no penalties, feels like I’d be rewarding Volvo for the crap show that is the new infotainment system. And I don’t care if it’s software or hardware - the end result is when the internet is unavailable, a significant portion of the car for which I pay ~$1k/m is unusable. I just can’t keep rewarding them for that. So back to them it goes.

 

Siggi, while I really like my 2020 V90 Inscription T6 wagon, if I experienced the same problems you've experienced, my approach would be to give the car back to Volvo and ask for my money back. Hopefully Canada has a "Lemon Law" in-place. Regarding the dealer's inability to fix you car, I'm not surprised. In a rush to introduce ever more intricate features, I sometimes wonder if the techs in the dealerships are able to keep pace with the innovations. I get the feeling that only the software engineers back in Volvo corporate are capable of (a) diagnosing problems and (b) providing remedies.

 

So the dealership upgraded the software to the newly released 2.0. This didn't fix the rear camera, but they tell me everything else is "amazing". I think time will tell whether the software fixes the connectivity issues. I certainly hope so, but somehow I get the sense that there are possibly multiple problems leading to the same symptoms. The car's been at the dealership for a couple of weeks now, and I've been randomly testing whether my app can raise the car throughout. Before the software update it seemed quite spotty, though I didn't really keep a log.
It's only a couple of days since the software was upgraded, but so far my app is able to get the status of the 100% of the time. Fingers crossed that the 2.0 software update has fixed that at least.

I've refused to pick up the car until they've fixed the rear camera. They couldn't by law sell the car in that state, and so I don't think the car is roadworthy without it. I also feel that the rear visibility out of the XC40 is atrocious, certainly much worse than my XC60. I wonder if the physical design of these cars has started trading off visibility for other design criteria, knowing that the rear camera will always be there?

Last week I finally got a call back from someone at the dealership who was empowered to talk turkey. He did commit to picking up my costs for loss of use, which is something. Sadly this didn't happen until after I'd consulted a lawyer and set the dealership a deadline for initiating proceedings.
I don't understand how Volvo thinks not talking to their customers having these problems is to their benefit, and the goddamn Customer "Care" is a bloody oracle. Friday I got an email from them stating that my car is fully functional and ready to be picked up at Volvo West Island. This is after the service manager at the dealership had informed me that the rear camera is still nonfunctional - sheesh.

 

IMO, buying a 2022 Google-based model, unfortunately, is at the "bleeding edge" of this technology with Volvo. As a first-adopter, unknown "bugs" are bound to be found. Perhaps it would have been better if (a) Volvo had delayed their Google-based implementation and conducted more tests and/or (b) just confined their initial Google-based implementation to just one model and tracked/addressed issues before introducing to all of their models. Their all-in approach has caused, for some owners and dealers, a lot of aggravation with these cars. As for the dealers and their service techs, there are a lot of unknowns and they're relying on Volvo for direction and quality parts and software to correct problems, as they arise.

 

That's fine, and the reason why I kept my 2015 XC60 is because I figured there'd be some teething problems with these cars. It's not so much the problems I'm complaining about as Volvo's treatment of a three time Volvo buyer. Fobbing me off to 1-800-Volvo Customer "Care", which is a bloody oracle is IMHO not a good customer satisfaction move on the dealerships behalf. Volvo Customer "Care" then telling me they'll "consider" my "request" for offsetting the cost I'm suffering while my brand new car is unroadworthy when they're good and bloody ready, without even as much as committing to any kind of time schedule is IMHO tantamount to extending the middle finger.

 

Just to add some perspective, the ill treatment of faithful car brand owners may not be something just in the domain of Volvo. Unfortunately, contrary to what we (myself included) would like to feel about our affinity for the car/car brand we have a relationship with, more-and-more I feel both many dealers and OEMs could care less. As consumers, we're just a source of income to them, for the most part. Yes, one can find a dealer that may be more accommodating and treat you honestly, (I feel my particular Volvo and Lexus dealers are top-notch), but many may just be looking at short-term profits versus long-term "relationships" with their customers.

Here's a a video from a long-time and very enthusiastic FORMER BMW owner. He has had a number of BMW vehicles over the years and promoted them heavily on his YouTube channel. Even for him, after many years of owning various BMWs, he has gotten to the point where enough-is-enough ... Hope you enjoy the video.


PS: "Loyalty", for our OEM/car world, may be a term from an ancient past. There are many factors that may be contributing to this, such as customer brand hopping via lease vs buy, and OEM/Dealers desiring short-term profit vs long-term customer relationship. Also, with the advent of the Internet and pricing information readily available, consumers are treating cars as a consumable commodity and (themselves) place less value on the dealership by just going with the lowest price, even if it's many miles from their home, and them expecting a nearby dealership to treat them as a "valued" customer. IMO, there are so many factors that have eroded "loyalty", and the OEMs, dealers and consumers share in this.

PPS: As for me, personally, I always have bought my new cars from local dealers, although I'll admit that I've been careful to shop around and check the price from other dealers. In my latest Volvo purchase, the price I paid to the local dealer was slightly more than what I could have gotten elsewhere, but the dealer's reputation, based on my research, won me over. To-date, I haven't been disappointed.

 

So I finally have a tentative repair date from the dealership. May 27, "if all goes well". Apparently they're changing a "whole vehicle harness", which may take "up to 3 days". Lovely business, a new car delivered Dec 30 in unroadworthy state from Feb 1 through May 27 - or longer, who knows. All may not go well.

 

So "all did not go well". The back story is that the harness in question goes from the tailgate to the sharkfin, up the door posts, and forward through the "firewall" (is that still the name?) into the hood or frunk or whatever it's called in an EV. To replace the harness, they "gently remove the interior", including the seats, the headliner, the dash and who knows what else. Then they replace the harness and reinstall the interior.
I'm hoping they're not going to leave me with a goddamn a squeaker & rattler at the end of this ordeal. This car is extra quiet, and it'd be salt in the wounds if I have to suffer rattle and hum due to this @!$# problem for the rest of my lease.

Sadly the car is still in the shop. Last week they waited on a specialized tool for "the evaporator" - which I found surprising - though I guess if you "gently remove the interior" you'll have to disconnect the AC.
This week - so far - they're waiting on a new camera. Apparently there's NO WAY for Volvo to expedite the shipping of a new rear camera for a car that's down, or otherwise there's NO WAY for a dealership to predict when a thing shipped from point A will make it to point B.

All in all it seems Volvo has "optimized" their logistics such that:

1. They do not stock these harnesses, but rather knit them on demand.
   This takes ~2 months of wall clock time. It's not that there's a supply chain problem, as the ordering info for these harnesses are per VIN, and always seem to be made on demand.
2. They can't predict that a job that's been planned for 2.5 months will require a specialized tool, until the job stalls due to lack of said tool.
3. They can't possibly ship or predict the time to ship a new rear camera for a car that's down.

Further, infuriatingly, Volvo customer "care" cannot:

1. Confirm that they're aware that the car has a manufacturing defect(!!!).
   Am I going to be billed for parts and time at the end of this? I'm half starting to believe that's the plan.
2. Tell me whether Volvo has a policy to, or will generally offset customers for costs due to loss of use due to manufacturing defects(!!!).
   It's all "case-by-case", and it was too much trouble for the rep to "read the whole file".
3. Tell me whether it's consistent with Volvo's policies to push customers to drive cars with mandatory safety features non-functional due to manufacturing defects(!!!).
4. Commit to any kind of timeline or process for offsetting my costs.

In the meantime their logistics have no trouble collecting my monthly lease...

 

Siggi, in your post #9, from what I understand, the main issue with your leased car is that the rear camera isn't working properly. From your post #14, again from what I understand, Volvo and the dealer plan to replace your car's wiring harness ... I assume to repair the rear camera issue. To properly deconstruct your car, and then install a new wiring harness, IMO, would require a huge workshop just for you car, since they will have to carefully rip everything out of it, store the parts and then reassemble. I can't begin to imagine how many labor hours will be needed for this job. I'd be surprised if your dealer has a suitable facility to properly do this work. Also, wiring harnesses are not the type of parts that are on-hand in a parts warehouse, thus I'd be surprise if the dealer could provide a viable ETA. This just seems nuts, but I may be missing something.

If Volvo has committed to replacing the wiring harness in your car, at their cost, perhaps it might be worthwhile to approach them about having your car replaced with another vehicle. The repair that you've presented will probably cost many thousands of dollars in labor, alone, plus the cost of parts, which will be probably be multiple thousands, as well, plus the loaner car to you. Again, if I've interpreted what you've said correctly, it might be cheaper Volvo, and better for you, if Volvo agreed to replace you current car.

 

Not working properly as in not working at all. The car also had other problems that may be related, or that might have been software problems - it's hard to say. Loss of LTE/GPS, loss of charging controls. Random, seemingly spurious, warnings would pop up about assistive cruise control, adaptive headlights, park assist and so on.
All of these problems started at the same time, so it seemed likely to me at the time that they were due to a common fault. Since visiting Volvo forums, I'm not as sure. Seems many/most/all the XC40 Recharge suffer those problems.

The bulk of the work is already done, from what I understand. They're now *just* waiting on a new rear camera - but again they seem to have no way to expedite this or to predict when such a thing might show up.

The never offered me a loaner.

It's hard to have a discussion with a stonewall. The dealership doesn't return my calls, and the only person I can talk to there is the sales person, who tells me he's entirely powerless.

 

Siggi, thanks for your reply. The good news is that it seems like Volvo and the dealer are sorting through your car's issues. The bad news is that it happened in the first place. Concerning the dealership, again it looks like they are doing the repair work, but need lessons on customer communication. Just so I'm reading you correctly, did the dealer actually disassemble your car's interior, replace the wiring harness and then reassemble it? You should receive complete documentation from the dealer, in the form of an invoice, that states, even if under warranty and at no charge, what was done, along with the labor hours. You should have this, particularly if, down-the-road, problems develop. Would you mind posting it on this forum to show what the dealer did with your car?

 

Siggi, your story has become part of a 'saga' that seems to be an issue for Volvo on 2022 and maybe higher models. I usually spend some time on the forums of cars I've owned (while I owned them) as I could impart some 'learned' wisdom to new owners. Wow, in your case and the case of other 2022 Model Year owners I'm at a complete loss as to what to say other than I'm very glad I bought mine as a '21 model a year ago last month. Having spent 20 years in the industry selling cars from Lincoln Mercury, Porsche / Audi, Accura, and for awhile, leasing what ever people wanted, I've seen some troubled waters. It will happen from time to time but this issue with Volvo is something totally new to me. An example of 'It Happens' was I left Porsche and Audi when 60 Minutes did the story of un-intended acceleration in the Audi 5000 back in the mid 80's. People were putting the foot on the brake and accelerating or driving through their garage wall into the dinning room. Not a good image for a car maker but the problem was really simple and placed out of proportion by the 60 minutes story. The brake pedal was fairly wide and placed to close to the throttle. You can figure out what happened with that image. At the time of the story we (dealers) were already shaving off the inside of the brake pedal while the factory re-designed new ones and the problem wasn't a problem anymore. But the damage was done and I left Porsche and Audi to finish my 20 year run with Accura. It took Porsche & Audi several years to recover it's image from that debacle.

Have you spoken with anyone to determine if your situation could be covered under the 'Lemon Law'? I'm not suggesting you do that, just curious if you've looked into it. They didn't even offer you a car to drive?? Yikes!

From reading the various stories on here including yours, it seems their cars have been above average in features and quality until 2022 M/Y when they introduced the new system running on Google. I don't know how that could impact your situation but .... With the exception of the HVAC unit (electric heater when running on battery only), mine has been perfect. And I've heard of others with the same issue so it must be related to a part from a vendor that's not up to snuff. I'm just glad I got one of the last 2021 models but it's a T8 Hybrid, not totally electric like yours.

Best of luck going forward to you. I'm sure hoping Volvo gets a handle on this quickly for the future of the car. Covid has made this a bad time for any kind of hiccup because of labor and parts shortages.

 

Yups, I would concur.
That's what they tell me. I picked up the car yesterday, apparently they robbed a camera from another car to get mine out of the shop. There's very little evidence that the interior has been cycled in and out of the car, but of course there was some rattling I found when I drove the car around the block. They took care of it right away, but I'll be surprised if other squeaks and rattles aren't going to manifest in due course.

The invoice wasn't ready when I picked up the car, but the service manager promised to email me a copy as soon as it is. He did a quick calculation on time and materials and he estimates this comes to about ~12k before tax. Of course my loss of use comes to about half that again between wear and tear on my other car, fuel, insurance on a beached EV and miscellaneous.

Now I asked the service manager, given that the car's been in severely degraded state or in the shop for 4 months due to a manufacturing defect, won't the warranty (4 years/80000km) automatically extend by that time. Apparently not so, though I might be able to negotiate a warranty extension as compensation for the trouble :/.

 

Thanks, Siggi. Will definitely like to see the invoice once it's delivered to you. At $12k, that indicates a substantial amount of labor time, and possibly parts costs, contributed to the repairs. Plus, hopefully the invoice will give you factual information regarding what was done to your car, which might be helpful down-the-road if you encounter related issues. Regarding the warranty extension, I'm not surprised none was offered. It's not something that I've ever heard done, but it was good to ask.

From your experience, these are my takeaways:

1. You had some significant and costly issues that Volvo recognized and approved a costly repair.

2. Your dealer, ultimately, worked on your behalf to get the necessary approved to do the expense repairs, even though their customer communications may have been something that could have been improved.

3. Although having a car under repair for an extended amount of time is worrisome to me, I think it was inappropriate that Volvo did not offer a loaner car for your use. The only thing I can assume was that Volvo considered your car driveable while awaiting for replacement parts, which I believe was the cause of the delay in repairs.

Good luck with everything. Hope all of this works out for you.