Automotive

As promised in my recent chat with Nicolas here are a plethora of images of the wonderful new XC90 from Volvo. I am going to write down brief comments with the images however I am going to write a brief review of the car myself as well a little later and post it as a response to this thread. The reason why I am not going to make the review itself the highlight of the thread is because there are countless reviews of the car online for anybody remotely interested to browse through. This will just be my own subjective and brief view of the vehicle. Enjoy! Filip



Highly attractive proportions in my view....




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Plenty of storage or another 2 seats in the third row for a total of 7 possible occupants. Afraid that the last row cannot sit large adults!




The plush, very comfortable back seats.




Rear door panel. The materials are top-notch not only in finish but also in the manner they are put together. Germans beware !




The view when you open the trunk which can be opened by motion gesture as well.




Rear 3/4 view is quite cool. This is the mid-range trim level which comes with the T6 gasoline engine. The other two engine options are the T5 and plug-in hybrid twin-engine T8.




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The rather serene driver space....




The roof control unit with all of the features you could ask for. I'll expand on some of them below....




Lovely, minimalist center-console. Swedish design at its best in my opinion!




The front tunnel with key function buttons and decent storage space.




The same when the storage is closed and you can view the beautiful genuine-wood finish. All of the materials are authentic.




Passenger seat. Volvo has spent 7 long years developing what are quite likely the best seats in the business. Comfort and Safety squared.




The front cabin.




Attractive LED headlight design named 'Thor's hammer' by Volvo. That feature is the daytime running light.




Great wheel design among other appealing choices. Pirelli tires are standard.




Rear seat climate control unit. 4 zones including vents at chest level!




Fully electric glove box which is opened by depressing the button I highlighted in orange on the left.




Storange in the back of the tunnel along with a DVD player and USB/AUX inputs.




The ultra-premium Bowers & Wilkins tweeter (part of 19 speakers) and the HUD just above the steering column.




Optional roof-rails and large-size moon-roof.




The 360 degree view camera is subtly incorporated into the front grille badge.




The 360 degree view camera in action on the center display. Crystal-clear display of images and colors.




The Head-Up-Display is seen projected on the windscreen.




The driver's digital display. It includes navigation and road-sign information!




Full-view of the wheel controls and driver display.




View from the driver's seat of the large moon-roof providing unlimited light, ventilation and surely lovely nighttime-sky vistas.

Now I am thinking of selling my Ford Expedition and getting this!

be a considerable upgrade .

Fantastic car and great value. Looks great as well.

I think so as well. Yes, it is in a price range not occupied by Volvo before but the vehicle itself is in a luxury category not occupied by Volvo before. Yes, for the money you can easily purchase a German car however it will not come with quite as many luxury features at the same price-point. Likewise, none of the German competitors offer as many safety features. This is where Volvo has always been at the forefront of the business. Cheers, Filip

The former XC 90 lacked something the new version has. No, what about the engines?
Best,
Nicolas

It is precisely as you paint it. Am busy currently but I will make the review post including engine options during the day . Cheers, Filip

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The T8 plug-in Hybrid.

407 hp
640 Nm

And that from a 4 cylinder engine (assisted by an electric engine). Personally I would definitely go for the Model X (as long as your daily driving isn't longer than 300 km). But that's just because I would love to humiliate a Ferrari or Lamborghini driving a SUV.

But this Volvo is a beautiful family car! The interior is finally up where it should be (for this price range). I can see myself buying this in a couple of years to replace my wife's Touareg Hybrid.

Usually you can get dramatic discounts on Volvos, so the quoted price is not completely indicative. Not sure if they will try and enforce more discipline going forward but most models here tend to change hands at 20-35% under the quoted retail price at the moment.

It becomes even better value in that case!

Would have considered this if I weren't living in Manhattan.

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Yellow cabs are always an option, indeed!

Got a Macan, which my better half uses much more than I do (walk/metro to work).

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they have truly succeeded in giving the 4 cylinder engine the power and torque output of a 6 cylinder engine by using both a supercharger to increase torque at lower RPMs and also a turbocharger to increase torque at higher RPMs. This is where these engines truly shine and the torque delivery is genuinely flat throughout the power curve. It is admittedly not a huge power curve in the T5 and T6 variants but it is more than sufficient for what any of the customers will actually need in real-life driving conditions. Unfortunately, I am literally preparing to end the day after having worked from 9am to 9pm so I simply don't have the mental presence to write my review today, I will do so 100% tomorrow during the day. In the meantime. I took a very good image of the vehicle sticker with all of the pertaining information and I am attaching it as a response below. Cheers, Filip

here is the sticker with all of the pertaining information. The standard vehicle features are on the left-hand side of the sticker and the optional features are listed under PRICING. I will unfortunately have to leave it at that tonight as the day was very busy for me but fear not, my short review shall be done tomorrow! Thanks for understanding (or not X), Cheers, Filip

Love the serenity, as you say...

I wish Volvo was more successful in USA... they are almost dead here.

One has to wonder if, in only a few years... virtually this whole design will have no application, when cars have no steering wheels or pedals...and cars are just vessels with, no doubt, walls of screens around the occupant.

But for now... I appreciate this vehicle.

How sad it will be when humans do nothing... nothing but sit passively all the time.



This message has been edited by Mostel on 2016-08-19 22:35:20

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that situation is not too far away ....

Volvo Concept 26

Concept 26: Making all driving time meaningful

So I finally sat down to write my comments on the car, specifically the one you see in the images above. This is a mid-range trim for the car and the MSRP indicates this. It retails for approximately $62,975. The base-trim XC90s retail in the low 50-thousands.This, even to a longtime automotive enthusiast, would certainly seem steep pricing for a Volvo vehicle. However, on second look it takes very little time to realize these cars (the 90 series) are not Volvo vehicles like you've ever seen before. Yes, they come with the nearly century long company pedigree of safety and quality first and foremost however they now offer a level of luxury on-par or even surpassing that of key German competitors in the marketplace. You can easily specify one of these cars with the top-end engine (T8) and trim-level (Inscription) to reach right around $100K. A big leap for Volvo indeed. As has been mentioned here already, the top-end T8 powered car boast a twin-engine configuration, a 2L I4 (318hp and 295lb-ft) powering the front axle and an electric engine (82hp and 177lb-ft) powering the rear axle. That configuration starts at around $70K and delivers around 400 total hp and 427lb-ft of torque which is good enough for a 5.7 second 0-60 acceleration time. The electric engine can run on its own power for some 13-14 miles. The MPG rating for it is 24 city, 27 highway. With that fact out of the way I will say that I actually prefer the mid-range T6 powered vehicle even though it delivers less overall power and a 20 - 25 MPG rating. It boasts the same exact engine with 316hp @ 5700 RPM and 295lb-ft @ 2200 RPM. Ample boost for luxurious urban driving if you ask me. I highly doubt anybody who purchases this vehicle will truly need any more power delivery than that. As great of a technological innovation and idea as the T8 engine indisputably is, it is brand-new tech and has thus experienced some issues with customers having reported vehicle stalling every now and then. This is of course not meant in any way to discourage those who prefer purchasing such a bleeding-edge tech engine, simply to objectively say that you can never expect the latest tech to work flawlessly straight out of the gate. All of the XC90s have 8-speed Geartronic auto transmissions with Start/Stop tech and brake regeneration. Other efficiency-enhancing measures include continuously-variable valve timing, electric water pump, intelligent heat management and low-friction camshaft ball-bearings. There are 4 possible drive modes: Comfort, Hybrid, Dynamic and Individual mode where you obviously get to set each specification individually to your tastes. The safety features are of course the major selling point as with any Volvo. The new suite includes adaptive cruise control which no longer needs to have a lead car in front of the vehicle to function, 24/7 (day and nighttime) pedestrian and cyclist detection with auto-braking, a chassis constructed from 30+% Boron steel which easily provides for the glowing 5 star crash test results, auto-collapsing steering column along with the central tunnel and brake/gas pedals for minimizing injury potential, blind spot and cross traffic alert, air-bags galore including the head-curtain and knee bags and last but not least the seat safety which includes crumple zones in the seat mechanism where the seat will collapse in case of the vehicle going off-road to prevent spinal cord injury.  Not that I know with absolute certainty but I do believe none of the competitors offer as many safety features standard and in most instances you cannot even pay to have all of those features on other vehicles because they don't offer them to begin with. I do know for a fact that only Mercedes implements Boron steel in their chassis to a notable extent but still not quite to the extent that Volvo does. Ultimately, if all of these outstanding features don't manage to sell you on the car then you're most likely an ardent brand loyalist of one of the other manufacturers and that's totally fine as well . I believe I've managed to cover the gist of the necessary information here, I clearly love the way the car looks and drives and if I were in need of a vehicle of this kind I would undoubtedly have it in my top 3 choices regardless of specific circumstances. Hope my musing has left you with some meaningful information and if nothing else a little more interest in this resurging brand! Cheers, Filip

I went into one, at my Volvo AD, just to see how it was inside. And I was very surprised by the level of quality, little attentions, and how good I felt inside. 

as they've pretty much phased out the 5 cylinder I highly doubt there will be any 6 or 8 cylinder offerings in the foreseeable future X). Who knows, hope is the last to die I guess . Filip

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Review, I've been driving an XC90 Inscription for almost a year along with a Porsche Cayenne 958 GTS. Its a great family car, very smooth, very comfortable, interior is well made although the materials feel lighter than the previous generation XC 90, the bluetooth connectivity is seamless and very easy, however when you go above 120km/h it turns the volume on the music down as some sort of preventative measure which is very annoying, sound insulation from road noice could be better. Its a big improvement over the previous generation XC90 which we had for almost 10 years but compared to my Porsche Cayenne it is not quite as well finished, the rear passenger window sun visors are automatic on the Porsche, on the Volvo they are manual, suspension on the Porsche is better, performance on the Porsche is better but then again the price difference between the Cayenne and the XC90 was around USD 30k so forgivable.

additional commentary on the car, especially when it comes from a lot of experience like yours does! When I said I'd consider 1 or 2 other vehicles beside the XC90 (if I was only looking to purchase 1) I literally had the Cayenne in mind along with a Mercedes perhaps thus your insight from having both is even more meaningful to me! Sure, the Cayenne is generally an even better vehicle overall but those improvements aren't quite as significant as the price difference usually is I believe. Again, if I was purchasing just one of them it would be a tough choice. Which one would you have if you had to settle for only one? Thanks for writing, Filip

That would be a tough choice, I would prefer a Noble M600, Lotus Evora 400 or Alfa 4c but due to an aging infrastructure and roadworks going on all over the place we need SUVs.
My Cayenne has sports bucket seats in the front which is not so comfortable for my parents, if I had no family obligations and no older passengers to deal with then the Cayenne GTS would be my choice, I've driven it hard and fast, its obviously not a 911 but seriously could out corner and out run the majority of sports cars out there making it an engineering marvel.
For Friends and Family duty the XC90 is an amazing choice, its not ostentatious and extremely elegant and refined.
S

My sentiments are definitely in-line with yours. For a genuinely sporty, personally appealing SUV I'd get a Cayenne GTS. For a primarily family-friendly SUV with all the safety tech you could wish for I'd get an XC90. Happy driving! Cheers, Filip