7 minute read
Petrol Heads’ Corner - Volvo XC 60 Plus
David O’Neill*
I was looking around for something to review and my son, who works for Ebbett Volvo as a salesman, suggested that I try the XC 60. He duly supplied me with the “XC 60 Plus T8 all-wheel drive plug-in hybrid”- that’s a mouthful…………. Notwithstanding the name/description, it was a surprise package.
Specs:
It is in the mid-range SUV territory. It’s 4.7m long and sits fairly high off the road.
Cargo capacity is 468L and a whole lot more when you drop the seats and it has 5 seats.
It is all wheel drive with an 8 speed automatic and develops 335kw and has maximum torque of 709Nm.
According to Volvo it accelerates 0-100km/h in 4.9 seconds. Volvo also said it has a top speed of 180km/h – didn’t go there.
It weighs 2150kg and maximum laden weight is 2.6 tonnes, so it’s pretty heavy.
The plug-in hybrid thingy gives it the extra boost because it’s only a 2.0 litre motor. I have always thought of Volvos as being rather staid and conservative cars. I hasten to add that I am not yet retired nor conservative so I can say these things.
However, I was nicely surprised. The car drives beautifully. It accelerates well, corners well and has quite taut suspension and is incredibly roomy for a midsize wagon. When the back seats are folded down, it has a ton of room and it really was a very comfortable car. We gave some friends a ride in it over a short distance and they commented that the rear seats were hard. This may have been because they normally didn’t sit in the rear or the seats were truly hard – in any event, would you care – probably not. Back seats are for the kids and they won’t care, or if they do it will just be another whinge about travelling anywhere further than into town. Front seats are always better than back – that’s for real.
The car’s list of standard features is enormous (they even refer to having blond headlighting as a standard feature – whatever that means).
It has all the technology you would expect in a car of this type and for this price. The standard price for this car is just under $114,000. The car that I had was around about $120,000 brand new. However, it is the top of the line Volvo XC 60. XC 60 signifies whereabouts in the XC range it is. The XC 40 is obviously smaller and the XC 90 is the 7 seater.
Like any car you hop into for the first time, use of the controls is relatively bewildering, and with practice it gets better. The touchscreen was very good and it had this regenerative power charging on the car. If you put it into this regenerative mode when you are going down a hill with your foot off the brake, it would charge up the battery. I suggest you wait for a steep hill though. The regenerative feature almost stops the car dead.
The battery has about 60kms charge in it and that gets it around town very easily. For example, if you were going to work using the battery, you would probably get a week’s driving out of it, and when you got out on the open road, it would revert to petrol.
These hybrid-type vehicles are probably where the motoring industry is heading. My suspicion is that electric cars have had their day and that people are favouring hybrids over full electric cars more and more. I noticed the car had a road user charge sticker. I was aware NZTA were insisting full electric vehicles purchase RUC but not hybrids. It seems unfair to me because hybrids still use petrol a lot more than electric cars and to insist that hybrid car owners buy RUC seems unfair. I might be wrong saying this because it is possible hybrids are in a different class to fully electric cars.
Even in petrol mode the thing sipped petrol at a very, very miserly rate. For example, we drove from Hamilton to Pauanui, which included the Kopu/Hikuwai Hill, and the tripmeter suggested that the car had averaged 4.9L/100kms. That is an incredibly economical rate of consumption of petrol and one I found almost unbelievable. On the way home I took careful note of petrol usage. I had a fully charged battery so was able to travel for 60 kms before the motor kicked in. We travelled approximately 135 kms and averaged 3.9 litres/100 kms. That’s about 5 litres of petrol for the return journey, taking into account the Kopu/Hikuai Hill. Not bad!!
I hasten to add that I wasn’t mucking around but I wasn’t trying to find the top speed either.
The bits and pieces inside the car worked very well. I thought the touchscreen was very good and easy to cope with. I didn’t get a chance to try all the heating options because it was too warm for that. There are plenty of storage cubbyholes in the car, the boot is very big and there is good visibility out all sides of the vehicle.
The technology in the car is what you would expect of a vehicle made for 2025, namely wireless phone charging, ability to search up Google services, Apple carplay and the like. I was surprised that when I went to try Apple Play I was told(by the car) that I needed to plug the phone in. I would have thought Bluetooth would have been available for this. Mind you that is a minor grizzle.
The charging of the electric motor doesn’t take very long. Overnight for the battery to be fully charged.
One of the things that I like about this car was that it came with a handsfree power tailgate. This is one of those situations where you wave your foot under the back of the car and the tailgate opens. It’s an ideal thing to have when you have your hands full. You wave your foot under the back of the car and the tailgate pops open, and it works better than the same system in my own car.
Cornering was pretty good. It did the usual SUV lurch around the corners like a drunk, but by and large it was responsive and easy to drive. I think it’s a worthy competitor and substitute for that mid-size SUV range. It’s priced competitively and, I think, that it boils down to which marque you prefer. The other vehicles in the same category are the Audi Q5, Range Rover Velar, BMW X3 and possibly the Porsche Macan (although the Velar and Macan would be more expensive than the other two).
The Volvo and the Audi are about the same size. The BMW is a bit smaller and the Velar is either the same size or ever so slightly bigger.
All in all, a really surprising amount of satisfaction in driving the car. I liked it a whole lot more than I expected I would.
*David O'Neill is an almost retired Barrister from Riverbank Chambers in Hamilton who will continue to contribute reviews of vehicles for At the Bar, extolling the virtues of petrol power!
