I am trying to figure out (on my own since the manual has nothing!) how to drive this car. What is the most efficient way to drive? Are you supposed to drive it on hybrid all the time? Mine seems to use the 20 miles/ electric much more quickly than 20 miles (it may be the cold weather) but I am wondering whether once the battery is gone do I have to hit charge for it to actually charge off the engine? And does that waste more gas? It never seems to charge when I am driving in hybrid/ auto (and am doing city driving).
I am frustrated with the lack of information from Volvo about everything in this car and I miss my old carplay/ app in my XC90 (which the dealer told me it had and I didn't realize until I got home that it didn't - but that is my fault - it just didn't occur to me that Volvo would go backwards). I am not loving this car in any way. It is a disappointment.
Any help would be appreciated!

 

Economical driving | Electric motor and charging | Electric motor and charging | XC60 Recharge Plug-in Hybrid 2022 | Volvo Support (volvocars.com)

Here are a few tips from Volvo.

The cold weather will absolutely drain the battery faster. I think the cold weather has a direct impact on the battery itself and using the battery to heat the cabin will also consume it quickly.

I prefer things on the cooler side, so for me, I rely on the heated seat and heated steering wheel quite a bit. This helps get more miles from the battery. However, when it is very cold, and I use the auxiliary heater, then it will drain the battery.

Hybrid mode will not charge the battery, it will use the battery until it is empty and then the car will act like a traditional hybrid. Charging at home or at a charging point would be more efficient than burning gas to charge the battery... but you will get heat from the engine if you manually turn on the charge feature.

 

Are you sure that the battery is not depleted by making use of the heated steering wheel or heated seats??? This is a quote from the link that you provided on the relationship of the battery with regards to Economical Driving:

• In a cold climate, reduce heating of the windshield/rear window, mirrors, seats and the steering wheel.

Also, I'm almost positive that the battery will regain some charging in Hybrid mode due to regenerative braking, irrespective of whether or not the "CHARGE" function is used or drive is set to "B". No??

 

Sorry I wasn't too clear in my post. I'm sure it depletes the battery to use the heated seat and steering wheel (energy does have to come from somewhere), but it seems to be much less of an impact than running the auxiliary heater and heating the whole cabin.

The car seems to use the recovered energy from regenerative braking to act like a traditional hybrid. I've yet to really recover a material amount of energy while in hybrid mode. All of my trips tend to be fairly short. I only went on one longer trip of about 1.5 hours away. I don't recall ever recovering any range while in hybrid mode.

 

Thanks everyone. I guess my question is whether once you run out of the battery (after 20 miles or less depending on the weather) should you then hit charge? Or just keep it on hybrid? This is all in terms of getting the best gas mileage.... I still can't figure it all out. And I agree - when driving in hybrid I don't seem to get any more battery life. So should I hit charge instead of leaving it on auto? I wish there were an explanation of all of this somewhere!
Thanks again.

 

@jllanoff I too am disappointed with my XC60. This is my second XC60 (my first was a 2011), and I am surprised at the lack of detail information regarding battery usage. For example: I live in NJ and recently have had a snow and ice storm. My battery was run low as I put the XC60 in AWD mode. I was wondering whether power would be provided to the rear wheels if the battery was run to zero? I searched the owners manual and online forums, but could not find an answer. Would I have to put the XC60 in charge more in order to ensure the battery was sufficiently charged in order for the AWD system to provide power to the rear wheels when needed?

 

Yes - it's incredibly frustrating that the manual has so little information about anything. I am still not even sure what all the symbols on the dashboard mean and there is no way to figure it out.

 

jllanoff-
I didn't read this in a manual, this is just my thinking. But you are probably best to keep it in Hybrid. If you use the charge feature, you are essentially burning gas to recharge the battery, and burning gas is what we are trying to avoid. For max economy, I think it is best to charge the battery at home or at a charging point and use the battery up then leaving it in hybrid mode. To me, if you need to use fall back of gasoline that it would be best just to use the gasoline rather than burning it to charge a battery and then use the battery. I suspect that electric generation is best done by utility companies due to economy of scale.

I will admit that I will use the charge mode if we have winter weather and I plan on using the constant AWD, because I don't know if I need to have enough power in the event of needing AWD. I sort vary my modes depending on mood/needs at the time.

My sister was the first in the family to buy a hybrid and her Lexus shows the flow of energy, like if the wheels are being used to regenerate or if the battery is sending power to the wheels. It would be nice to have a little more data from the car about what is going on. I'm not sure if a 2021 has more details than the 2022. While I haven't had any problems with the Android Automotive software, it definitely feels like a work in progress.

But I'm not an engineer so who knows. I do wish the manual had more details as well.

 

The 2021 model has an app (reached by swiping left from the main screen) entitled: "Driving Performance". Choosing that app provides a schematic showing what energy source is being used and if the battery is being charged. It also has a basic continuously updating graph of mpg/e-mpg. I'm unaware whether or not that app is also present in the 2022 Google infotainment system.

 

It's my understanding that AWD is ALWAYS available, even if you've seemingly depleted the main rechargeable battery, as a portion of that battery is always held in reserve. I also believe that the power for that system can come via the "back-up" battery which is constantly being charged via the alternator, but perhaps another poster can confirm or offer another explanation.

 

AS 'Docrog' explained below, the battery will never become totally depleted when using Hybrid mode unless you run out of gas and just keep going. Then ..... You could have an issue. This is my 2nd PHEV and I believe in the technology. Regarding 'all-wheel drive', when you're in Hybrid mode and under throttle or just low on the Hybrid batteries, it still has enough reserve to seamlessly kick in the rear electric drive w/o you even knowing it. The all-wheel drive is always there and most times you won't even know it kicked in.

I'm retired and most of my driving is local so my MPG on any given day can be into the several hundred MPG area. I usually fill up when the tank is out 3/4 just so I get some fresh on the old stale LOL.

The best rule is "Always" use Hybrid unless you have a solid reason for one of the other modes.

 

Interesting discussion, and not very promising to me, as a potential Volvo PHEV buyer. From my experience with two non-Volvo PHEVs, we drive in all-electric mode as much as possible locally, and then use the ICE (via "Hybrid" modes) chiefly when on out-of-town road trips. So we end up doing > 50% of our total driving in all-electric mode. But Volvos have problems with short all-electric range, and I'll share some stories about that here.

A little background first: back in 2017-2018, as a decades-long owner of three ICEV Volvo wagons, I was wanting to get a PHEV so that I could drive to work and back (and do local errands) in all-electric mode but still have the ICE (with hopefully improved "hybrid" mileage without charging from a plug) on long, cross-country road trips. I gave Volvo a heroic opportunity, which it royally failed. I test-drove, multiple times at a half-dozen Volvo dealerships, all the PHEVs then available (meaning S90, XC60, and XC90); their measly 10-kWh battery packs hardly got me past 10 miles of all-electric range (my roundtrip daily commute is 26 miles). I started looking at other automakers' offerings of PHEVs, and ended up buying a 2018 Panamera 4 E-Hybrid (24-25 miles all-electric range) and then, nearly 16 months ago, a 2021 RAV4 Prime for my wife (50 miles consistently of all-electric range in summer, 40+ miles in winter). I'm going for a new PHEV now, and was down to one candidate (Cayenne E-Hybrid, which just got an updated battery pack to 17.9 kWh) until I saw Kyle O'Connors "Out of Spec Reviews" YouTube video of the new "Extended Range" XC60 T8 that he test-drove with a Volvo battery engineer last October; that video was so very impressive that it put Volvo back in the running for me, and it's now a close "race" of the XC60 vs. Cayenne PHEVs. The "Extended Range" XC60 T8s are held up at American ports right now, pending EPA/CARB certification, but they'll supposedly start reaching dealerships in the next 1-2 months (bad time of year for PHEVs to be sitting at seacoastal northern ports!). So, I went to a local Volvo dealership today that had the 2022 R-Design XC60 T8 that I'm interested in, to see the vehicle and test-drive it, knowing that the "Extended Range" version would be very different; it's just that I hadn't driven an XC60 in some years, so wanted to see how it appears now, especially with the Google infotainment system.

Well, the test-drive today was horrendous. As is so typical of Volvo dealerships (why do we even have dealerships any more???), the car had only 3-4 miles of charge on the traction battery, despite my asking a day or two ago to have it fully charged for me this morning. They apparently plugged it in an hour before I arrived, so it must have been down to 0 miles this morning before they plugged it in. sigh... I wrote to the salesman afterwards and asked him to forward my email to his manager, in which I said that all EVs being sold at all Volvo dealerships should have at least 50% charge on the traction batteries at all times.. Makes you wonder; do these guys have a clue that Volvo is going electrified, quickly? (It probably doesn't help that Volvo made this absurd move of changing all its non-plugin vehicles to "mild hybrid B" vehicles now, but I think that the average IQ levels in sales departments at most Volvo dealerships is really low; that said, I do know of one Volvo dealership in my area that does charge their vehicles every night, and you can count on test-driving one with at least 70% SOC.)

OK, so I started out with a PHEV with only 3-4 miles of range stated. I decided to get familiar (again, having test-driven an XC40 BEV last year) with the Google infotainment screen for about 10-15 minutes with the engine on in Charge mode (which yielded maybe 1 extra mile of traction-battery charge). After fiddling with the Google infotainment screen and then the instrument panel, and getting very frustrated -- because of the many missing features in both and because of the need to dive into so many sub-menus/sub-screens in the infotainment screen to get to things that the driver should be able to access immediately -- I started out on my short test-drive in Pure mode onto a 4-lane suburban road abutting a shopping mall with lots of traffic lights. I stopped at a red light, and when it turned green, I tried accelerating like I'm used to doing in our other PHEVs, and it felt like riding a bicycle -- almost no power to accelerate ... At the third traffic light, I turned left onto an on-ramp for the expressway and floored the pedal slowly; it took like 30 seconds to get to 55 mph, it was so sluggish, and I ended up merging with a big truck right on my bumper wondering why I was going so slow like an old grandpa. It was very frustrating, and I was trying to flip through menus and sub-menus to find the drive modes, and when I did, it would not let me get into the Drive Mode sub-menu. Flooring the car hard did not put it into Hybrid mode or get the ICE to come on, so I was limping along with that weak rear electric motor until I came to a stop off an exit ramp at another traffic light, when I put it back into Charge mode. Even then, it was not nearly as peppy as my other PHEVs as I got back on the expressway for the return loop to the dealership. (Our RAV4 Prime accelerates *quickly* and powerfully in EV mode without the ICE all the way to 86 mph -- it's so fun to drive and so peppy in EV mode, in fact, that I've never felt the need to change to HV, or "hybrid", mode with the RAV4 Prime when accelerating to start, merge, or pass.)

I wrote all this up for my salesman after I got home (as he was busy with another customer when I returned to the dealership) and asked him to share it with his manager. I wonder if there's something wrong with the XC60 that I drove today in its limited power, or if that's a problem because the battery was low (which is not a problem in our other PHEVs, I note). But even aside from the power issue and the problem getting to drive modes to change to get the ICE on (something that should be on the steering wheel like in my Panamera, or a button like next to the gear-shifter like our RAV4 Prime), there were huge weaknesses in the XC60 that I spent time in today in the infotainment screen and the instrument panel. No odometer showing in the instrument panel? When did Volvo drop that? Not having an engine-temperature reading is also bad in the instrument panel of any vehicle with an ICE in it. And still having an absurd version of a "power" scale with an oil droplet instead of a regular tachometer? C'mon, Volvo! And both my Panamera and our RAV4 Prime (my wife's car) have nice diagrams that you can show either in the infotainment screen or the center of the instrument panel showing the power going to each wheel from both the ICE and the electric motors, as well as (re)generation back and forth; how can Volvo not have useful displays like that, which we have on all the time to see at a glance what's going on regarding ICE vs. electric motors?

Well, I'm still going to give the "Extended Range" XC60 a chance at a test-drive before making my decision later this year. But it will have a lot of improvement to make over the MY2022.0 version that I drove today, for me to buy one. I seriously don't understand how anybody could buy the 11.8-kWh version of the XC60 T8. My wife can do two roundtrip work commutes of 22 miles each, easily, in her RAV4 Prime without using the ICE, starting with a full charge. Kyle O'Connor indicated that one should be able to get 32 miles of all-electric range out of the "Extended Range" XC60, which I would gladly take (I don't want a second RAV4 Prime, but the RAV4 Prime beats the XC60 in many more aspects than the XC60 beats the RAV4 Prime, including the RAV4 Prime being about $30k cheaper after tax credits/rebates). Kyle indicated that he'll do a test of the all-electric range of the "Extended Range" XC60 once he can get his hands on an American version this year, and I'll be eager to see that video; they're doing both "slow, around-town" all-electric range tests and also 70-mph highway all-electric range tests for PHEVs now -- the best YouTube channel for in-depth reviews of EVs now.

Over on Swedespeed, a European poster (from Belgium, I think) has been relaying his experiences with his new "Extended Range" XC60 T6 (yes, Europe is offering T6 and T8 versions of the PHEV there), which I've been reading avidly. He's been mostly happy, which leads me to think it's really a huge improvement in many ways over the out-going 11.8-kWh XC60 T8, as they've also removed the supercharger from the engine, and upped the horsepower and torque of the rear electric motor significantly, among other changes. Hopefully EPA and CARB will certify the "Extended Range" version very quickly. But I would never buy an XC60 "Extended Range" version without test-driving it first -- also problematical because these vehicles are likely to be rare this year, with many/most of them sold before they reach dealerships. I don't think that Volvo dealerships are telling any buyers of the current XC60 T8s on the lot that there's a much-better version coming shortly. This is why it pays to read forums and follow auto news online and watch YouTube reviews, with so much money being spent on buying new cars nowadays.

 

CometGuy,
I tried hard to read your whole post but sadly it was about 12 words too long and my eyes gave up the ghost. But I think the jib of your concerns was range. If so, here's my take on the XC60 T8 as it is my 2nd PHEV.
Mine is a '21 so the range is around 20 miles on battery only. I'm retired and it gets between most of my daily driving so I'm a happy camper with that. But here's where it can get really good. I'm driving about once or twice a month from home here in North metro Atlanta to Athens GA now. It's about 120 miles round trip. My NAV system in the car allows me to set home as my destination with my address in Athens as a 'waypoint'. The cars computers take over there calculating distance, current traffic speeds, elevation, and stops and managing the battery use with gas for the whole trip. It's like magic. What would normally be mileage in the mid low 30's for just gas in this car, I usually average around 48-49 mpg almost every trip. I consider that pretty great for a car with a total of 400hp and the size of the XC60. If you want more, you'll probably need to go total electric w/o gas backup.
Just my 6 bits. BTW, I traded in a RAV4 Hybrid Limited. They wanted too much over sticker for the Prime and it wasn't available in the Limited trim. I also have owned the Honda Clarity PHEV which did have a 40 mile range. It died when someone backed into me at about 40 miles per hour. Was a nice car but now only available in CA and in a sedan w/o sun roof.

 

lol... sorry for it being 12 words too long, and thanks for the very helpful reply... Yes, that 48-49 mpg sounds excellent to me, as I do at least one long, cross-country road trip every year on the order of 7000 miles round-trip. (We were lucky to get our 2021 RAV4 Prime back in 2020 and paid only MSRP for it. After tax credits and state rebates, the Volvo XC60 T8 new will now cost almost exactly twice what our SE Prime cost us new in 2020.)

 

We're about 6 weeks into our ownership of an XC60 T8 Recharge, and so far we're loving it. I do have a comment/question related to this thread. It seems to me that if you do primarily local driving, as we do, it's 'best' practice to just use Pure mode, no? I can see using Hybrid while on a longer trip but if the goal is to minimize our usage of fossil fuels why not use Pure most of the time? A related question (let me know if I should start a new post): After the most recent software update (I am not aware of this happening prior) I've seen an odometer-type display on the right-hand side of the dashboard; it has two quadrants: Power and Charge. When I'm accelerating, the needle moves into the Power quadrant. When I'm braking, it moves to the Charge quadrant. I'm aware of the Hybrid / Charge mode, but as I said this happens while in Pure mode. Anyone else seeing this? Any idea what's going on? Is it the case that in Pure, if I brake, it's actually 'charging' the battery??

Thanks in advance for any insight.

 

I'm assuming yours in a '22 model year and mine is a '21 operating with Sensus while yours is Google. But that aside, the mechanics are mostly the same. I'm retired and like you I drive mostly local and can get buy most days just operating on the charge. You are correct in that using Pure, you're using less energy. That's because things that also run on the same battery powering the car operate with a lower drain in Pure. Also, you can accelerate a little harder w/o cutting on the gas engine. If I'm running to Costco say which is about 18 miles round trip, I'll usually use Pure just to save the juice. And at today's gas prices, saving more than battery juice LOL. But if I'm going to Publix which is about 4 miles round trip, I just leave it in Hybrid mode but accelerate more carefully to keep from using the gas engine. After a while, you can tell the difference in ride and handling between 'all-wheel' drive and just rear drive (electric motor). This is my 2nd PHEV and after a year now, I'm thinking it's the best car I've ever had (see signature line below), it's been quite a few.
Hope you're having the same enjoyment.
BTW, sounds like your gauges are about right. In time, you'll figure them out. You can also go to the manual easily from the center display. If your 1st PHEV, there is lots to learn there.

 

I'm curious why you'd use Hybrid mode for a quick jaunt to the grocery store? Seems to me that would be a perfect time for Pure.

 

It's just a personal choice, sometimes it's in Pure. If you manage the throttle carefully it really makes very little difference IMHO. A/C definitely works better in Hybrid mode.

 

My family farm is on another state and when I get there I would need the 4x4 to get to the house, so I was also worried about the battery being depleted and not having it available.
I went to the dealership and they explained the battery is never going to be 100% depleted and you will always have the back electric motors available when needed.
From everything I watched and read, I think the biggest advantage is being able to charge the car for smaller distances. As for a self charging híbrid, this is not the best car for it.
I also saw one video that the person was saying that when you plan your trip on the car Google map (not in CarPlay) it will already decide what is the best use of the battery based on your distance. I’m not 100% sure about that, because I saw it only on 1 video, haven’t heard it anywhere else.

 

Had my 2023 XC Recharge for one month. Mostly drove locally in Pure, but did a 300 miles round trip last weekend. The Google map routing tried to optimize the battery usage by using the ICE on highway (the gas icon at around 3 o'clock on the power meter), and switch to electric battery in local street (the gas icon at around 1 o'clock on the power meter). That make sense as the ICE is more efficient on highway speed while the electric battery is more efficient during slower start-and-stop traffic. By the time I reach the destination, the electric battery is used up.