I had a horrible experience with my XC90 plug in hybrid. It took months of back and forth with the dealership and thousands of dollars to find out that it's dangerous behavior (refusing to stop without flooring the break with all my might) was due to a wire harness a critter had chewed on. Very similar response from Volvo in my case. No accountability and very low competence. Avoid Volvo.
Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
231–240 of 436 posts
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#232New cars are a fool’s game for most people, imho. Unless you just insist on having the newest thing, they rarely make sense. Couple that with the relentless electronic gadgetry and phone-home surveillance and I may never own a car produced after ~2020. Our current stable: 2007 Mazdaspeed 3, just keeps going. All buttons, no screens. 2016 Porsche Cayman, one small multifunction screen, display only, no touch. Buttons…
This is just a silly statement. Your 2007, 2016, and 2016 vehicles were all new cars in 2007, 2016, and 2016. There are plenty of 2020-era cars that are, so far, remarkably reliable and cheap to maintain and repair. It's simply that Volvo and Polestar are quite bad at making vehicles.
Sure but if they bought those cars in 2010 and 2019, then there would've been plenty of time for quality issues to show up in those models.
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mazdas too. I find Toyota's suspensions and driving dynamics terrible. Mazda represents a perfect combination of good Japanese reliability and good handling dynamics. I also like that they still offer a proper automatic transmission in their cars (as opposed to the CVT epidemic in other makes), as well as naturally aspirated engine options (whereas many other makes only offer turbos now). The days of their collaborat…
Yessss. Happy to hear this. A Miata has been on the wishlist for a while now.
My mother has had two of them and they are very fun to drive -- even completely stock. The first was a 91 (how I learned to drive a manual transmission) and the second/current is a 2005. The newer one is more powerful (not sure how many HP but it seems significant) but I still prefer the older one. The design was peak 80s Japanese functional minimalism and there was no magic behind any of its features.
However, as it applies to the parent comment, I can't actually say too much about reliability, as both of them were driven primarily on weekends and _maybe_ 2K miles per year.
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#234Volvo sadly no longer stands for Swedish quality and safety. What you’re buying is essentially an overpriced Chinese car with Volvo stickers. And I’m saying this as a Swede. Buy German cars, specifically within the Volkswagen auto group (Audi, VW, Skoda etc) if you want reliable quality.
> Buy German cars
VW ID.4 owner here. The car is pretty good mechanically, but the software is garbage, or more specifically hot dumpster fire.
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#235I wouldn’t buy Tesla again but I’ve never experienced software issues in mine. Although some of the menus could be re-arranged for clarity, it’s otherwise clear and responsive. The app is great and the third party apps are even better. I’ve not heard positive things from VW or MG owners in terms of software either. Is there any good alternative to Tesla in this domain?
I'd guess Rivian SW is good, because Volkswagen's SW got so bad they hired Rivian to rewrite it for them. (That contract is the only thing keeping Rivian afloat right now.)
Rivian software is pretty meh. I've never had a safety critical failure while driving, but have had multiple other issues including being trapped in the car unable to exit until after a reboot. Worse -- rivian has no mechanism for reporting software issues. If you don't want a service appointment (which is available in 3 months!) then don't bother reporting it.
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
I own an XC40 BEV (now renamed EX40) and it's a much better car. The SPA platform was pretty mature by that point. I sat in an EX90 demonstrator a year ago at the dealer and was told not to touch anything inside the cabin. The car wasn't ready back then and, from reading owners forums now, it's still not fully baked.
The Polestar 2/EX40 probably have the most mature software of that lineup. Not without issues (and certainly underpowered pre-‘24), but relatively stable by comparison. I don’t understand the logic of having each Polestar model running a unique software stack rather than progressively improving one system across all models - but must be a downstream impact of the fractured Geely badges.
Also the Volvo C40 (same platform). I've been driving it since January and other than the software being slow to start up when it goes into sleep mode, it's been stable.
They did recently issue a software recall for the backup camera, so now when the backup camera crashes it goes into 360 camera mode instead of just a black screen.
Overall I'm happy with this car though and would recommend it.
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
For a long time Consumer Reports has ranked cars as Japanese > American >> European, European cars have some luxury cachet but if you want a car that starts when you turn the key look elsewhere. American cars came a long way since the 1970s when they really were trash.
"European" cars are not really a category. French/Italian/Spanish cars are very different from German/Volvo, and even these groupings are a stretch. Then you have Dacia too, and I have no idea where to even put it. Plus you have some luxury British cars, which are again veery different. In-group std is greater than between-group std.
>"European" cars are not really a category. /Spanish cars are very different from German/Volvo
VWAG owns the largest Spanish car maker, Seat/Cupra. 100% of cars Seat/Cupra sells are VW derivatives. Whatever you imagine the difference between Spanish cars and German cars to be, it is not real.
>French/Italian
Renault is a very different company then Stellantis (Fiat, Citroen, Peugeot).
What you should compare is the parent company making these cars.
>Plus you have some luxury British cars, which are again veery different.
Lotus is a Geely brand, just like Volvo is a Geely brand, some of their cars are on the same platform. Fiat, Citroen, Peugeot are Stellantis brands.
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#238New cars are a fool’s game for most people, imho. Unless you just insist on having the newest thing, they rarely make sense. Couple that with the relentless electronic gadgetry and phone-home surveillance and I may never own a car produced after ~2020. Our current stable: 2007 Mazdaspeed 3, just keeps going. All buttons, no screens. 2016 Porsche Cayman, one small multifunction screen, display only, no touch. Buttons…
Yes, anecdata from me as well, but the larger issue seems to be cars that run critical functions through the media or entertainment system only. My neighbor had a hybrid Volvo that was towed to the dealership multiple times because the car wouldn’t start when the media center froze. It was always fixed for free but ultimately they decided to sell it as it wasn’t worth the hassle.
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#239New cars are a fool’s game for most people, imho. Unless you just insist on having the newest thing, they rarely make sense. Couple that with the relentless electronic gadgetry and phone-home surveillance and I may never own a car produced after ~2020. Our current stable: 2007 Mazdaspeed 3, just keeps going. All buttons, no screens. 2016 Porsche Cayman, one small multifunction screen, display only, no touch. Buttons…
I'm pretty excited about the Slate, bezo's car startup. No built in UI, bring your own device, including screens and sound. Potentially avoids all the overstuffed software issues in modern vehicles
Re: Unsafe and Unpredictable: My Volvo EX90 Experience
#240Volvo sadly no longer stands for Swedish quality and safety. What you’re buying is essentially an overpriced Chinese car with Volvo stickers. And I’m saying this as a Swede. Buy German cars, specifically within the Volkswagen auto group (Audi, VW, Skoda etc) if you want reliable quality.
I rented an Audi Q7 for a week recently. The drive quality of the car is excellent. But the software is terrible. Just getting CarPlay to work every time is a challenge. I will not be buying an Audi any time soon. As more and more of the vehicle's experience becomes software controlled, manufacturers who don't have good software development teams are going to lose out. German companies don't seem to understand the gr…
>German companies don't seem to understand the growing importance of software
VWAG is now on attempt number two of fixing their Software problems.
They tried Cariad, the result was your experience. The next attempt is giving billions to Rivian.
If you believe that these companies do not understand how important software is you are totally delusional. Literally Billions worth of money have they spent trying to fix that.