Why We Dumped the Volvo XC90 ｜ Pros and Cons

The 2023 Volvo XC90. In SUV years this thing is like a hundred years old. It came out a long time ago and as a former owner of this product I'm going to talk through in this video why I bought one, why I traded it in, and kind of the evolution of the pros and cons of the XC90. But when you look at what the material designers did, how they made this a classic looking exterior, namely compared to some of the modern SUVs that are absolutely hideous, you would never guess that this has been around since like circa 2015 in terms of design. It really is that good. You can drive this and buy it off the lot brand new and have like literally no issue and you would think it's a brand new design. The interior space is where most of the excitement is. I'll be completely fair to it. You have these satin alloy finishes on the door, you have these different materials, you have very very subtle ambient lighting without getting gimmicky, the upper door panel is leather with perfectly integrated wood, the speaker grilles look very very good, and then the XC90 is one of the only Volvo products that have a vertically integrated speaker array. So you have a bass driver at the bottom, mid-range in the middle, and a tweeter in the upper. And this is part of the magic why the interior space, or at least the Bowers in here, sounds so amazing and why it's one of the best tested audio systems we've ever done under 120 grand. The only thing that is better is the new BMW ix, which is also a Bowers & Wilkins setup. But for the age, the design of this interior, it's held up remarkably well. The seat usability, the storage is pretty decent, the only ding is like we've talked about since the dawn of time, their infotainment sucks. It was bad when they did the census design, it's bad when they updated to automotive. I can't believe a company that put this much money into this could just f**k this up so royally, but that's the problem with technology. Everything else looks beautiful, except the tech part. So the seats have been updated multiple times throughout the life cycles. They got away from that Nubuck leather in the R-Design, and now it's just regular leather seat. The fabrics have changed on the seat, and this is a good example in the 2023. It looks like a recycled almost like suit material. It's quite amazing until you realize, hey, you better be careful with it because it's going to stain quite easily. But overall usability, functionality, the seats are manual in the back, and the third row is very easy to get into. The big selling point of this, and I appreciate it more and more now, is the rear hatch usability. With the second and third row down, despite the numbers not really showing it, the overall cargo capacity with the second row down, or I'm sorry, the third row down is much bigger than what you find on the X7 and even like the MDX version. It's just the overall usability, the usable space, the load floor is lower, the hatch width at the top is bigger, so you get a lot more space. And I parked all these next to each other so you can kind of see that. That's a huge selling point for the XC90. The other part for me is, you know, when you get over the interior and exterior design, how does it feel to be in here? And it feels like a much more expensive space than it is. And almost every single person that's gotten into this has appreciated it. The way that the second row is cooled and heated and even the third row, it's a lot for your money. Let's just put it that way. Now, why did I buy one? I needed a hauler. I needed a hauler for my camera gear. I needed something that I could use for a car-to-car type shooting vehicle to put cameras on it and then go cross-country. So I wanted air ride. I wanted that comfort if I had to put this a little bit off-road so it could damp the cameras a little bit better than a sportier vehicle. And I wanted a really nice interior with an audio system. And I got this circa 2020. I got a 2019 model used with 10,000 miles on it. The reason I sold it, just getting right cutting to the chase, is it was a pile. Had a supercharger problem. They had to replace that. The car was running so rich that it burned out the primary cat. So then they had to replace the catalytic converter. It also had the Polestar tune, which I never switched to Polestar mode because it just drove like ----. It always had hesitation because I had the T6, which had supercharger, turbocharger, but it did not have the battery part, the hybrid part. Thank God. But it just never ran right. The transmission was jerky. It just was not a good drive train. I complained to the dealer multiple times about that and they just said that's what it was. And to add injury to insult, I barely got 18 miles per gallon. Like lifetime. It didn't matter how I drove, I always got ---- fuel economy. And out of a two liter, it was a big deal because my X7 that I replaced it with has a twin turbo V8 that gets the same fuel economy. And I'm not kidding. So, you know, the whole concept of this engine was to be modular so they could have one, two liter, they can scale out with more power, less power hybridization. And it was supposed to be more green. Well, it certainly wasn't more green in terms of fuel economy. The next problem I had was the air ride. I wanted air ride, but clearly their implementation was not nearly as good as other brands. It didn't ride any better than the coil spring version. In fact, I feel like it read road much worse. Um, and so I had clunks from that. I had a leaky, uh, air spring in the back that they had to service. And, uh, I think there was a few more things like the braking system is horrible. This has one of the worst break setups I've ever been in, in a vehicle. It reminds me of something from like the eighties. If you took this on a road trip and leaned on the, uh, cruise control or active cruise control, where it's breaking for you, you do any down, downhills, you're going to warp rotors. Like you don't even have to break hard. If you're on the brakes and anything on a road trip, you're going to warp rotors. I went through three sets in like 25,000 miles. And it's just common to this. They undersized the rotors and calipers. There's not enough cooling to them. So that's another huge issue with it. Tires were super inexpensive. The winters and the summers were pushing $400. That sucked. Um, and just the overall performance wasn't what it needed to be. Uh, that, that was it. But the deal breaker for me is when I had a So the roof leaked water into the center, uh, sensor pack here. And it was leaking in a road trip that we took to Tennessee to do the Nissan Z video had this thing loaded full of gear, met the Nissan rips to do this. And I'm driving around with a towel on the dashboard. And when I took it to the dealership, they're like, we don't know if we can fix it. They had to take the roof apart, take the glass apart, try to do it because the channels weren't blocked the water drainage channels. So there was something else going on in the roof. And I'm like, I'm done with this thing. And that's when I decided to trade it in. And as much as I got a great deal, at least I made like 10 grand on it, but then I threw it all away on the X seven, the used X seven, because now that thing is depreciated like a rock. This thing's on the old spa architecture. So it was double wishbone front multi-link in the rear. And overall, everything was really flat underneath. Like when you look at the exhaust system, especially even that was flattened out. They did a really good job in terms of packaging for this time, but I feel like this architecture compared to newer vehicles, it leaves a lot to be desired despite it looking very like upscale and premium. I'm going to talk about in the drive, why I think, you know, there's some serious problems with ride quality and all of these cars on this architecture, but overall, you know, 360, when you look at the body, the hatch, the suspension design, I feel like they put a lot of money and effort into this for like a brand new ground up reboot. Now, is it anywhere near is like reliable or sought after is the previous generation Volvo's, you know, they have a rabid following this brand. And, you know, I feel like if they were able to improve any of this and we'll see what the X 90 brings is that's like the evolution of this into a fully electric vehicle. I hope that they've addressed some of this in that model without being even more unreliably like electronic wise, because if it's anything like this in terms of electronics and software, I really hope that they figured it out in the next gen and tried to make some of the mechanical parts better, but let's take this for a drive. I'm going to walk you through the pros and cons of that. This is likely my last drive in the updated XC 90. I'm going to walk you through my experience with this car and the evolution of it. So I'm The way that the updated recharge dumping the supercharger performs with the extra electric power is way, way better than this used to be at any of the iterations. So I would say if you're looking to get this and you want the power and you want their best, the best iteration of the XC 90, the updated recharge is it. It always has adequate power when you have a full charge or mostly a full charge on the battery pack. And you just even put it in hybrid mode. It's surprisingly fast and refined compared to how it used to be. Of course, you can put it in power mode and it just kind of gives you the best of all the power. But I found that it's completely pointless. I just keep it in hybrid drives great. When you put it in pure, it just goes into EV only mode and it's, it's slow. Like there's not enough electric power from the motor to propel this. So don't think of it as a pure EV. You can tool around in pure mode and go in electric only, but it's not the greatest. Now we go into, if you're looking at a used XC 90, I would avoid the T8 altogether because with our experience before they made this revision with the supercharger, there was a lot of check engine lights, a lot of like software calibration issues. It's something I would definitely stay away from and stick with the T5, just the turbocharged only variant, which I know is a hard pill to swallow. And I would absolutely stay away from the T6 with the supercharger and turbocharger based on my experience. It just was not good. Tuning was weird, has strange bucking hesitation. It's always pulling timing, not the best setup. But again, all of these, if you're going to buy this, all of them should have a warranty. If you can find one CPO'd best route to go, you'll probably save a lot of money and you'll be very happy with it. The thing about the XC 90 that's kind of plagued this platform since it was new, and I talk about it in a lot of the Volvo products, is the body structure and the way that they have the suspension set up. You would think, you know, double wishbone, a lot of aluminum stuff, you know, adaptive dampers, air ride. You would think this thing would ride like a dream. And its biggest issue is it doesn't matter if you have air ride or you don't have air ride. It's just, there's a lot of oscillations through the suspension into your driver's seat. It doesn't matter what speed, but if you hit these like subtle, like this dip here, they're like mini speed bumps. And what you get is this low frequency isolate or oscillation in the ride. It's like this. It just always has this like shutter that you feel through your seat. Your body becomes part of that frequency of hitting bumps. And you always feel it through the steering wheel. You always feel it coming through the wheels, through the body, into your seat. They've not figured out a way to control those low frequency impacts. And it, it always has that washboard effect. The, the worst, the payment, the worst it gets, what it feels like is the tires are overinflated by like 30 PSI. That that's the, if you, if you really want to feel what it feels like, that's what it is. And compared to its luxury competitors, that's what the XC90 does the worst. You get into a Volvo pro, I'm sorry, you get into an Audi product, you get into a BMW product, you get into the new MDX, and those are just far superior in terms of ride refinement. The other thing that kind of is always set me off about this, and obviously with the updated version, you lose drive modes. You only have hybrid pure and power mode, which is just essentially how it controls the electric motor. It doesn't allow you a lot of flexibility. And of course you can't really do anything with stability control. So this thing is hyperactive in terms of stability control. And it's front wheel drive. It's a front wheel drive architecture. And it's not to say that it doesn't manage the power well, namely with e-all wheel drive, but it doesn't matter if you have the e-all wheel drive system or the traditional on-demand setup, it always feels front wheel drive. So the problem with it for a premium product is you'd think with, you know, having a really good suspension layout in the front, that it would be able to manage the front end. And every time you go into a corner, it's, it's literally like driving a front wheel drive car. You can't, it doesn't stay on its intended path. So if I, if I take this here and I go and I accelerate, I mean, it's literally trying to push you off the road and all you feel is the stability control, like off, off, off, off, like trying to control it where the other competing products, including the MDX, which is front wheel drive biased, but the SH all wheel drive system with the torque vectoring in the back gives it, it gets rid of that under steering feeling and rotates the vehicle naturally, naturally. And that's not what this does. And unfortunately it's one of the biggest deficits of the Volvo products. And they, they just can't compete on that level in terms of ride refinement and handling. Now, as I talked about in the interior, they do make up for it in other ways. And, you know, these are hyper safe vehicles. They're hyper well-built in terms of body structure. They're just, you know, it is what it is. You know, you got to take it for what it is. And the fact that this is an older platform, and I'm hoping that the EX90 fixes some of this stuff, their next generation, solve some of these body issues and ride quality issues. But as it stands, you know, I like this thing. If you're getting it used with a warranty for a much lower price than like 60, 70,000, if you can acquire an XC90 with all miles for in the $40,000 range, 40 to 50, I think you're going to be really, really happy for what this offers. Namely, when you look at the competitive Lexus products that are coming out now, the new updated Lexus SUVs are not the greatest thing. And this is an amazing alternative to that. That's really the best competition. If you want to go up from this in terms of ride refinement and like handling the MDX or the type S is incredible, amazing riding vehicle. And even the regular MDX is just supple riding. It, you have the best drive train. But I mean, anyway, I think I've beat this to death. I'm in a way, I miss owning this. I really think it's good for the price if you're getting it right. And I'm really hoping that I'm really hoping that Volvo takes a lot of what made this good and carries it on to the future generation products. But thanks for watching. I'll see you in the next video. Unlock unparalleled synergy by subscribing to Savage Geese, the ultimate paradigm shift in automotive content consumption. Leverage our disruptive thought leadership to catalyze your knowledge growth and drive a holistic understanding of the vehicular ecosystem. Don't miss this game changing opportunity to become an integral stakeholder in the Savage community. 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