Greg & Wayne’s eXCellent XC40EV adventures

Did another “road trip” today. We charged up a bit overnight to 80% and then before departing pre-heated the cabin (it was only 6C when we left home! Met neighbours in Steiglitz and from there went into the Brisbane Ranges for a walk to check out the wildflowers and a picnic lunch. The neighbours were nice enough to take some pics of us driving thru a ford...probably as close to off-roading as we’ll ever go LOL! I did give the car a sponge bath and wax yesterday to make the bugs and crap easier to get off during future washes.

We started with 81% SOC, did 143.7 km and our efficiency was 22.7 kWh/100 km. Hoping that the new V1.7 software update arrives soon via the airwaves as it’s supposed to improve range and efficiency by a bit due to optimisation of various systems in the car.

The Volvo Cars app is still working very sporadically and often doesn’t show SOC etc. I’m going to ring the Volvo Aus help number about it.

Forgot to mention the car does quite well on the unsealed roads - quiet, good ride and of course with all that weight it’s stable!

We were messing around with the Google Assistant...trying to change the voice - at one stage when Wayne was driving we were able to get it to speak in a male British voice...but couldn’t do that when I was driving. Faffed around at home on our Android phone devices after the drive and still had no joy really trying to change the assistant voice. The only real way to do it was to set the language as English (USA) and that gives the option of about 5 annoying American voices, one Pommy female and one Aussie female...more investigation needed here. Maybe need to try setting language to English (UK)....would be nice to get the voice of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey...”I’m sorry Greg, I can’t allow you to do that”...maybe not!

I’d really like a proper posh British male navigation and assistant voice...someone to make me feel impotent...er, I mean important! ;)

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Here’s the article I wrote comparing the XC40EV to the 240EV for the Nov/Dec edition of Rolling Australia if anyone’s interested and not a member of one of the Volvo Clubs in Australia.

Drove down to Moorabbin to display the car last night at the Volvo Club of Victoria meeting (held at the awesome Chevrolet Car Club rooms!) It was great to see the level of interest amongst most club members (until the pizzas arrived). There were several "hecklers" asking questions like "but can you tow with it?" and "what happens in 10 years when the batteries are dead?" I'd like to think we helped educate those who were willing to listen and learn. We're not ones to say an EV is suitable for everyone, and yes, they do have some drawbacks, and yes, you have to drive it for several years before there's any environmental benefit vs. an equivalent petrol car. But, for many people when the prices come down and there are more options available in the marketplace, I think we'll see rapid adoption. The worry is will charging infrastructure keep up with the EV sales pace? We did a 15 min charge at one of the new Ampol petrol station DC fast chargers run by the EVIE network as we weren't quite comfortable with the car saying we'd only have 14% charge remaining upon our return to home. Until we have a bit more experience with it we will play it safe. We weren't sure whether the Chevy club would have a power point near the car space, but they did and in the 2.5 hours we were there we added another 8% to the batteries on the 10 amp "granny charge" cable which would have negated the need to charge at the Ampol charger earlier. We did see our best ever efficiency on the drive to Melbourne in warm conditions at 16.5 kWh/100 km. Return trip in cool conditions and going back uphill was more like 23.5 kWh/100 km. Total trip was about 280 km and we left home with 80% charge. Had we charged to 90% we could have done the trip with no charges and probably would have gotten home at about 10%. Every new drive gives use more data and higher confidence level.

Stopped at IKEA as well...should have gotten the requisite IKEA/Volvo pic...sadly the IKEA restaurant is still closed due to COVID so no Swedish meatballs. I think it will be opening again soon. Our next "road trip" will be down to Moriac on Saturday for a mate's 60th birthday BBQ.

Took a spontaneous "road trip" to get out of the house yesterday. Packed a sandwich lunch and headed from home to the west to Creswick. From there we drove up thru Clunes and Talbot. Heading towards our lunch stop in Avoca, we travelled through some very dry bush land. We stopped for a walk in the Bung Bong Nature Conservation Area. Penny enjoyed getting out to stretch her legs. Our lunch stop was in Avoca, which has a very wide centre median parking area flanked by trees and low stone walls for seating, so it was a nice shady place for a picnic. We chatted with a local who was walking past with his groceries - turns out he lived at the home across the road where we spotted a couple whippets. After lunch we headed to Maryborough to check out the new "Charging the Regions" charge point there. It's labelled as a 50 kW charger but we actually saw 57 kW (and a charging "speed" of 255 km/h). We didn't need to charge but decided we'd plug in for 10 minutes (and gained 11% charge). The temp on the car's instrument cluster was showing 39-41C. Needless to say we sat inside with the AC on while we waited. The thermo-fan came on high speed shortly after we started charging, so I suspect the car was actively cooling the batteries. We headed back home from there via Yandoit, Newstead, Hepburn Springs and Daylesford. At one point we overtook an over-size load farm harvester...I put my foot down and Jesus did the car take off. I kinda got a fright but for whatever reason I didn't let off the accelerator and we were around them in no time. It almost felt like all 4 wheels spun when I hit the accelerator as it was a bit of fine loose gravel on the road. I guess when the battery is warm the acceleration is even more instant - wowee! The overall trip average economy was 22.0 kWh/100 km - pretty much what we're used to. On the way to Maryborough we averaged 19.6 kWh/100 km but on the way back the AC (and I guess battery cooling) were working quite hard, so we got 26.1 kWh/100 km. I do get a bit jealous when I see people with Kona EVs and Tesla Model 3s posting their average economy down in the 15-16 kWh/100 km range, but I guess the vehicle and performance are so much different (AWD super-brick Volvo vs. FWD mini-SUV Kona vs. RWD aerodynamic Tesla sedan). I recently joined the somewhat satirical "I ruined the weekend" Facebook page that touts weekend the exploits of EV drivers in response to Scomo's infamous pre-election comments. It's been fun to see what can be done with an EV in Australia - I thought the charging infrastructure was a bit too sparse, but people are definitely getting out and about more than we are. Fun times?

Had a not-so-excellent adventure early this AM as I had to drop the EV off at Melb City Volvo for some warranty work. Driver’s heated seat, shark fin antenna coming adrift, and software update that will hopefully resolve the sporadic car mobile data connectivity issue. Apparently fairly common according to the XC40 and Polestar 2 forums. Have an XC60 T6 Polestar Enhanced as a loaner...has the 21-inch wheels and air suspension. The whole thing feels a bit agricultural compared to the EV to be honest. The stop-start is a bit jerky, the engine noise is just that - noise - not very melodious, and the road noise is about the same as the XC40. Oh, and it has this odd thing called a multi-speed gearbox that causes the engine to rev its tits off then drop down a bit and repeat multiple times when you put your foot down! ;) The ride feels a bit more “jiggly” and you feel more of the small bumps than in the XC40. I was also shocked that the XC60 has a conventional gear lever - I would have thought it would be the electronic style. This is a pre-MY22 so it is still running the Sensus infotainment system (not Android Automotive OS). The driver’s instrument display is incredibly busy - I found it quite distracting compared to the relatively sparse display in the XC40...anyway, different cars! Of course the range on 1/3 tank petrol in the XC60 is about the same as the range on a full charge in the XC40! Hmm.... Hopefully the dealer will be able to fix the issues on the EV and we’ll have it back soon.

Philia_Bear

@carnut222

You missed the bit about it being stupidly slow by comparison

LOL yeah, I don’t want to rub salt into the wounds of “petrol-heads” but TBH this XC60 feels plenty fast...I suppose it sounds faster than it is with the 4-cylinder engine wailing away...the XC40 is so freaking silent that it doesn’t register in that respect. Oddly the XC40 does have sort of a “rumble” when you really floor it - almost like there’s some harmonic or “beats” going on between the two motors - maybe because they’re identical but not going the identical speed due to slight differences in the tyre diameter or something? Or maybe it’s some sort of resonance in the mountings? Not sure! I noticed that in particular this AM when I undertook some idiot in a Mitsubishi SUV who looked like Mr Mole driving slow in the fast lane. When I had my chance (I was doing about 90) I hit it and left him for dead LOL! But yeah, I heard that “rumble” for sure that time. Hopefully it’s normal and not something about to implode! ;)

Well, I see it’s been a while since our last update. A lot has happened - my parents visited for a month so we used it to pick them up and drop them off at the airport, plus a bit of local touring. I had to laugh as when we picked them up, we put most of their luggage in the back, but dad put his large backpack in between them in the back seat. I said we should have used the frunk (froot?) On the way back to the airport to drop them off, I said put it in the frunk, which he did. When we got to the airport and parked and unloaded everything, I said to Dad “Where’s your backpack?” He panicked as he forgot we put it in the front LOL! I didn’t let him go too long as I didn’t want him to have a heart attack.

We miraculously also got our first over-the-air (OTA) update in February. Interestingly we got notifications through the Volvo Cars app on our phones that the OTA update was ready to install. The app generally is pretty useless for the Android Automotive Operating System - AAOS - cars, compared to the Volvo Cars app for the Sensus infotainment systems, but they seem to be improving the functionality with updates. When we took the car to the dealer they updated it to V1.8.1 software, which includes an app on the car’s centre screen called “Range Assistant”. All it basically does is tell you what’s contributing to the energy usage - with 3 small dials - “Speed”, “Climate”, and “Driving Style”. It also gives a range estimate (previously you had to ask Google “what’s my range?”) and an upper and lower bound on that predicted range. It also allows you to turn on eco climate, which limits the amount of heat/AC and I think puts the climate system into the recirculate mode. We never really use that function, and in fact I found with the temperate weather, we can set the AC to “off” and the temperature to “LO” and the fan speed to 1, which basically just draws in fresh outdoor temp air at low fan for some circulation. This means the heat pump isn’t running at all so you’re basically not wasting any energy. I found that if it’s say 17C outside, and you set the climate to 20C, the heat pump will actually run and bring the temp up to 20, so you waste a bit of battery when in a typical car you’d be using excess engine heat to do that, or in a 240 you’d have the heater control jammed over to the left and hope you don’t bake LOL!

Anyway, a few updated statistics. The average energy consumption as reported by the trip meter is about 216 kWh/100 km in just over 5000 km. We’ve charged 95% at home using excess solar, with a few public charges just to try it out. We’re laughing now not having to stop for petrol with the high prices, but of course it is false economy having spent so much on the car. I figure the petrol savings will take close to 100,000 km to make up for the difference in price between the XC40T5 R-design and the EV version. That’s at $1.80 a litre and assuming 10 L/100 km in the petrol version, both of which might be a bit optimistic!

Most of our driving is 110 kph freeway or 80-100 kph rural roads…at those speeds the max range from 100% to 0% would be about 350 km. Of course you’d not want to do that, so the practical range is about 300 km if you charge to 90% and drop down to 15%. In city driving at slow speeds, the max range would be about 400 km. I do know I can make it from our place down to the Volvo Club meeting in Moorabbin with about 20% remaining when I get home (from 90%). If it were winter and using the heat, that might be a stretch unless I charge to 100% before leaving.

We pretty much keep the car charged to 80% so it’s ready to go, plugging in at about 10AM when the solar cells are producing enough excess solar to cover the charging. The slow charging works fine for us as we don’t take long drives back-to-back so we can charge up over a few days after we take a long drive.

I did look at what it would take to get to Sawtell - would be easily doable with a few charging stops, but I decided it’s too much driving since we already committed to the SA Cruise/Rally in Broken Hill/Quorn/Adelaide at Easter. So hope everyone has a great time iN Sawtell and I look forward to the pics! Unfortunately we can’t take the EV to the SA Cruise as there’s no charging stations between Broken Hill and Quorn, so we’d have to backtrack to Mildura, then cut across to Adelaide and back up to Quorn. If we were just heading from Melb to Adelaide, it would be no drama. Early days yet - let’s hope the charging infrastructure grows faster than the number of EVs on the road or all hell will break loose when trying to take a road trip!

Waiting for these to pop up all around Australia - “Electrify Australia” would do!