-Next time you are testing a new car, I want to go to Oslo Fashion Outlet.

Few people are more picky about cars than my wife. That’s why I was excited about how she would react to the new Volvo V90. For my part, I like Volvo better than most other cars.

I picked up a Volvo V90 T8 Twin Engine AWD. It is a hybrid concept with two engines, – a supercharged turbo gasoline engine at the front and a rear mounted electric motor. The petrol engine produces 320 hp and has a torque of 400 Nm from idle speed. The electric motor produces 87 HP and has a constant torque of 240 Nm. All in all, we talk about 407 HP and a torque of 640 Nm. Enough to match a supercar.

No racing car

The Volvo does not feel like a racing car. Don’t get me wrong. You can accelerate from 0-100 to 4.7 seconds and the specified top speed is 250 km / h. Enough to leave most traffic in the dust. But behind the wheel I did not feel any urge to test the limits. Gliding through the inner city streets of Oslo, I felt like a royalty. The wide, low-cut windshield and the aggressive front gave me a kind of “king-of-the-road” confidence. And while cruising along, I got associations to the BMW 5 Series. Maybe not so strange. I had chosen to drive on electricity, and voilà – there I was driving a rear wheel driven car.

Getting acquainted

As a guest driver for one day, I did not have enough time to explore all the options of the car. I just wanted to get on the road, but needed a few minutes to study the most elementary functions. Start and stop button, for example. It looks like a button but is supposed to be turned like a key. The gear lever must be pushed once for each step you want (R-N-D-B). To switch from Drive to Reverse requires two separate moves. Push it once to go from Drive to Neutral  – and push it again to go from Neutral to Reverse. Park is on a separate button. The handbrake is electromechanical, by the way.

There is a whole lot of configuration options. The infotainment system lets you configure steering, throttle, braking and climate system. I realized that I did not have time to go through all of them. I did not have time to recharge the batteries either. They were just under a quarter of full capacity. I might have topped them up in less than two hours. using my garage mounted EV charging station with a Type 2 cable on 16A, 3.7 KW currency. That would give a theoretical range of 44 kilometers.

Driving without external charging

The crux of running a hybrid car is that you can run solely on electricity as long as you have a charging station at home and/or at work. Nevertheless, I know people who never charge their rechargeable hybrid cars. They just drive. Then it’s important that the car manages to regenerate electricity by regular driving, so that it still can operate in hybrid and EV mode. I put the gear lever in “B” to capture energy from the engine brake. It is not very powerful, but still charging the batteries a little. I noticed that the car went well on electricity from standstill and while the engine was running without pressure. All in all, a nice balance between gasoline and electricity.

On the road

After having adjusted  the passenger seat correctly, my wife nodded with a vague smile. Evidently she had approved the interior, although she did not care much about the decor in brown wood. “A bit tacky”, she commented while eyeballing me: “You like it, right?” – When we specified the decor inside her last new car, I had considered wood-inlays, but she insisted on hi-tech metal. “Woodwork is for old people”, she said. Nevertheless, it seems more appropriate to be embraced by forest materials in a Volvo than in an Audi. Okay, I did like the brown wood, but said nothing to my wife.

Shopping

Oslo Fashion Outlet is a shopping mall for quality brands, like Hugo Boss, Gant, Helly Hansen, to mention a few. The prices here are a lot cheaper than in other magazines. I found a pair of discounted jackets at Gant and spent the rest of the shopping chilling on a sunny bench in the outdoor atrium while my wife searched through all the other stores. Then we had a nice lunch before moving on.

The street going from Oslo Fashion Outlet to the center of the small town Vestby is filled with warehouses any small town in the world would love to have. We popped into another shopping mall for groceries before we took the long way home. Not the motorway. The road that runs through the forests and accross farming landscapes.

Just before Nordby, we stopped at Riis Farm, a beautiful, classic manor house where the barn has been turned into a clothing store for fashion clothes. British, French and German quality clothes you don’t find in ordinary shopping malls, – not even at Oslo Fashion Outlet. The front yard made a nice sourrounding for the clothing magazine inside – and the Volvo outside. I find that the V90 is a real “estate car”, – as the Swedes say: “Herrgardsvagn”. A name that has followed Volvo ever since the 122 Volvo Amazon.

Feelgood

If I could only use one word to describe the V90 cockpit, it would be “feelgood”. The world’s most comfortable car seats designed for tall Scandinavians, head-up display, digital instruments, damped noise level, premium sound system, good company and plenty of power.

If I was to put my finger on something, it might be the noise from the 18-inch studless winter tires. It was not loud in decibel, but the sound had a whining character, like the wheels of a semi-trailer. I think 19-inch summer tires might be even more noisy, but perhaps in another pitch. Hopefully a bit lower. I also noticed that during slow braking the brakes slammed on the last meter or two before standstill, as if the handbrake automatically went on while the wheels were still rotating. I know, I should have studied the settings on the infotainment system. Maybe I could turn off automatic handbrake, – something like that.

Economy

It seems that large, conventional station wagons lose market shares to SUVs. I think most families choose the XC90 SUV instead of V90. Volvo’s T8 rechargeable hybrid system is not the cheapest powertrain on V90. The D3 150 hp 2 liter turbo diesel will work fine, although I would prefer the D4 190 hp. A quick search on V90s for sale, shows that more than 75% are diesel. Hybrid is beneficial if you have the opportunity to charge at home and/or at work. If you drive largely outside the reach of the batteries, you will achieve better fuel economy with diesel. Another factor to consider, is that the T8 drivetrain have many components we still know little about in terms of expected life time and maintenance costs.

Facts

Volvo V90 T8 drivetrain:

Engine volume: 1969 ccm (gasoline).
Power: 407 hp (320 hp petrol + 87 hp electricity).
Torque: 640 (400 Nm gasoline + 240 Nm electricity).
Transmission: 8-speed automatic.
Operation: 4-wheel drive via control-by-wire between gasoline engine (front) and electric motor (rear).

Volvo V90 dimensions:

Length: 493 cm
Width: 189 cm
Height: 147 cm
Wheelbase: 294 cm
Luggage compartment under the cover: 560 liters
Tank volume: 50 liters
Curb Weight: 1975 kg
Max. Trailer weight with brakes: 2100 kg
Max. Trailer weight without brakes: 750 kg

Prices (NOK):

Purchase price: 710 900, –
Technology Package: 16 900, – or Technique PRO: 26 900, -.
Technology package is a “must have” because it includes LED and NAV. Tech PRO includes head-up display.
Metallic paint supplement: 9 900, –
Tinted windows from B pillar and backwards: 4 100, –
Chrome exhaust pipe and diffuser: 7 295, –

Source: http://www.volvocars.com/en/
Owner: Hertz Bilpool