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I picked up my 2023 XC40 Recharge last Sunday and have been driving it daily this past week. This is my first time owning a Volvo and, overall, I'm very happy with the vehicle. It's a solid little car and a lot of fun to drive. I purchased it for my second home in the desert, both because I needed a vehicle here and also because I installed solar panels in November, and wanted to take advantage of free energy 
.
In any event, I wanted to share some initial impressions/observations primarily to find out from this community if I may be missing some tricks. So, here goes...
1) Flakey electronics...in the course of this week, I've seen several occurrences of flakey behavior from the electronics (infotainment system) in the car. For context, my other vehicle is a 2021 Range Rover, so quirky electronics is a way of life for me. But I think I expected better from Volvo. Some specific examples...on Thursday morning, I was no longer able to turn on the map in my instrument cluster - the steering wheel button did nothing. I decided for the first time to use the Volvo Help Line button in the car, and the support agent was very responsive and told me how to soft-reboot the system (holding home button on center display for 30 seconds). That solved the problem. But then, from that point forward, every time I got into the car, I got an alert in the center display stating "Hold the call button for two seconds if you want to reach Volvo support" (or something like that) for which I had to tap "Cancel." I tried the soft-reboot, and that didn't clear up the problem, so I had to do the harder-reboot (holding down defrost button for 60 seconds), which did solve the problem. Certainly not the end of the world, but somewhat concerning/disappointing to experience on day #4 of ownership.
2) Road Sign Recognition...nice feature, have it on my other vehicle. However, in the XC40, the speed sign symbol starts flashing whenever I exceed the posted speed or when the posted speed changes, which I find super annoying/distracting. The only way to deal with that is to shut off the road sign recognition altogether. Would be nice if there was an option to keep it on but suppress the blinking. I like to know the posted speed - I don't need to be bothered every time I exceed it.
3) Guidance lighting...every vehicle I've owned for the past 15+ years has left the vehicle lights on for some period of time (30/60 seconds, whatever) AFTER you lock the car, just as an added safety measure when parking your car at night. I happen to park in a relatively dark area, so this feature is actually useful to me. However, the XC40 shuts down all the lights as soon as I lock it. There is a mention in the owner's manual that you can manually activate guidance lighting when you park by pushing the left stalk back before you exit the car. That's not working for me but, more importantly, why??? I suppose I can see this as a battery-saving feature specific to an EV, but even then, I would expect there to be an option to enable/disable it. Have I missed something here?
4) No range next to battery gauge (my greatest annoyance)...it took me a couple days to realize that the battery gauge in the instrument cluster (below the energy gauge) doesn't include a remaining range indicator. I poked around in the settings for a long time thinking I had missed something somewhere. I then contacted Volvo support and, according to them, the range used to be below the battery gauge but was removed with software update 2.4 due to customer feedback that the display was "too busy." What???? I drove a lot of EVs when I was shopping for one, and all of them had a range indicator either next to or near the battery gauge in the main instrument cluster. Every car, even petrol ones, have those these days. With the XC40, I need to look over at the Range Assistant in the center display to see that which (a) assumes that was the last app I used in that tile section and (b) takes up one of my four tile positions full time - how unnecessary. I have no idea which customers Volvo was listening to when they made this change, but it makes NO sense to me. Even more baffling...immediately to the left of the battery gauge is the trip odometer which you can switch on/off. It is a two-line display, so clearly there is plenty of screen real estate to support a second line below the battery gauge with the range. Why did they think that was too busy, but the trip odometer was fine? VOLVO - if you read these posts, PLEASE let us have a range indicator under the battery gauge again!
5) Audio on until you exit vehicle...this is a small, but still annoying, one. I get why you wouldn't necessarily want the radio to shut off as soon as you stop/park, but having it stay on until you actually get out of the driver's seat always catches me off guard, especially when I'm enjoying my music at a higher volume. I don't necessarily need to blast my music out of my car every time I park. My other vehicle keeps the audio going after I park/shut off the ignition, but it shuts it off as soon as I open the driver's door - that makes more sense to me. Why Volvo chooses to wait until you get out of the seat baffles me.
6) Finally, and I realize this is very subjective, I'm just not crazy about the whole Google thing. It's a personal preference - I'm an Apple guy - but it seems gimmicky and unnecessary. Give us Car Play or Android Auto as options to plug into like every other car - I don't need the Android OS in the car itself.
So, that's about it for now. I'm sure I'll discover more interesting things about this vehicle the longer I drive it. And again, overall I think it's a great car.
.In any event, I wanted to share some initial impressions/observations primarily to find out from this community if I may be missing some tricks. So, here goes...
1) Flakey electronics...in the course of this week, I've seen several occurrences of flakey behavior from the electronics (infotainment system) in the car. For context, my other vehicle is a 2021 Range Rover, so quirky electronics is a way of life for me. But I think I expected better from Volvo. Some specific examples...on Thursday morning, I was no longer able to turn on the map in my instrument cluster - the steering wheel button did nothing. I decided for the first time to use the Volvo Help Line button in the car, and the support agent was very responsive and told me how to soft-reboot the system (holding home button on center display for 30 seconds). That solved the problem. But then, from that point forward, every time I got into the car, I got an alert in the center display stating "Hold the call button for two seconds if you want to reach Volvo support" (or something like that) for which I had to tap "Cancel." I tried the soft-reboot, and that didn't clear up the problem, so I had to do the harder-reboot (holding down defrost button for 60 seconds), which did solve the problem. Certainly not the end of the world, but somewhat concerning/disappointing to experience on day #4 of ownership.
2) Road Sign Recognition...nice feature, have it on my other vehicle. However, in the XC40, the speed sign symbol starts flashing whenever I exceed the posted speed or when the posted speed changes, which I find super annoying/distracting. The only way to deal with that is to shut off the road sign recognition altogether. Would be nice if there was an option to keep it on but suppress the blinking. I like to know the posted speed - I don't need to be bothered every time I exceed it.
3) Guidance lighting...every vehicle I've owned for the past 15+ years has left the vehicle lights on for some period of time (30/60 seconds, whatever) AFTER you lock the car, just as an added safety measure when parking your car at night. I happen to park in a relatively dark area, so this feature is actually useful to me. However, the XC40 shuts down all the lights as soon as I lock it. There is a mention in the owner's manual that you can manually activate guidance lighting when you park by pushing the left stalk back before you exit the car. That's not working for me but, more importantly, why??? I suppose I can see this as a battery-saving feature specific to an EV, but even then, I would expect there to be an option to enable/disable it. Have I missed something here?
4) No range next to battery gauge (my greatest annoyance)...it took me a couple days to realize that the battery gauge in the instrument cluster (below the energy gauge) doesn't include a remaining range indicator. I poked around in the settings for a long time thinking I had missed something somewhere. I then contacted Volvo support and, according to them, the range used to be below the battery gauge but was removed with software update 2.4 due to customer feedback that the display was "too busy." What???? I drove a lot of EVs when I was shopping for one, and all of them had a range indicator either next to or near the battery gauge in the main instrument cluster. Every car, even petrol ones, have those these days. With the XC40, I need to look over at the Range Assistant in the center display to see that which (a) assumes that was the last app I used in that tile section and (b) takes up one of my four tile positions full time - how unnecessary. I have no idea which customers Volvo was listening to when they made this change, but it makes NO sense to me. Even more baffling...immediately to the left of the battery gauge is the trip odometer which you can switch on/off. It is a two-line display, so clearly there is plenty of screen real estate to support a second line below the battery gauge with the range. Why did they think that was too busy, but the trip odometer was fine? VOLVO - if you read these posts, PLEASE let us have a range indicator under the battery gauge again!
5) Audio on until you exit vehicle...this is a small, but still annoying, one. I get why you wouldn't necessarily want the radio to shut off as soon as you stop/park, but having it stay on until you actually get out of the driver's seat always catches me off guard, especially when I'm enjoying my music at a higher volume. I don't necessarily need to blast my music out of my car every time I park. My other vehicle keeps the audio going after I park/shut off the ignition, but it shuts it off as soon as I open the driver's door - that makes more sense to me. Why Volvo chooses to wait until you get out of the seat baffles me.
6) Finally, and I realize this is very subjective, I'm just not crazy about the whole Google thing. It's a personal preference - I'm an Apple guy - but it seems gimmicky and unnecessary. Give us Car Play or Android Auto as options to plug into like every other car - I don't need the Android OS in the car itself.
So, that's about it for now. I'm sure I'll discover more interesting things about this vehicle the longer I drive it. And again, overall I think it's a great car.
