Post by Big Blue on Aug 12, 2020 20:35:46 GMT
This is it. The one you've all been waiting for: what shit-box has Big Blue rented this summer that he's going to tell us was a great car but he'd never buy one?
Well firstly the finances. I rented a Golf as I always do hoping for an upgrade based on the fact that I have Executive Privilege Elite or some such status with Europcar. So free second driver, airport lounge access, some free weekend rentals, discounts at Accor hotels and two level upgrade WHERE AVAILABLE. I put that in capitals because I was offered a car as an upgrade and advised a price. I baulked then said OK and took the car. Then I wrote to Europcar customer services, told them I was upgraded but also charged when there were clearly upgrade cars available and they cancelled the additional charge. Great service after the event but French airports seem to do this routinely: when I arrive in Vienna the guy upgrades me without question. In Spain they rarely have anything bigger than a Golf anyway, at either Murcia or Alicante.
So that's sorted what did I get?
Volvo XC60 T8 Twin Engine. A PHEV, which is remarkable considering the debate had regarding PHEVs before I went on holiday. Perhaps it was sent to test my resolve and if it was, how did it fare? Well before we look at the why's and wherefores of my mindset, let's look at the pros and cons of the car. Let's start with the pros.
Firstly the cabin has so much space, especially the rear seats, that I'd really question the purpose of the XC90 if you didn't need 7 seats. It swallowed the kids and because we did a week of 14-people-in-a-villa-with-only-three-cars (we stole a fourth, my mum's DS4, on the last day to account for different travelling arrangements) it took 5-up in its stride. This is far more than the Gorilla can manage. It also has a lot of kit, but I guess being the T8 with some kind of fancy spec (Inscription) you'd expect that. It also had this gearshift which I assume symbolises luxury but to me it was far too reminiscent of a high-end butt plug normally covered in lube.
Let's have run down of the kit that impressed. Sat nav (see the cons section!); nice lcd dash, but again this is an utter waste of technology when all it does is look like the analogue dash dials with a bit in the middle and offers no configurability worth having; Apple CarPlay; heated seats; Comfort access; sunroof and all the voodoo cruise stuff with the addition of Pilot Assist. I liked the idea of pilot assist but you need to place your hands on the wheel far too often to make it feel like you are being in any way auto-piloted, which I suppose is the idea. You couldn't make use of that glass gear knob on the move if you catch my drift....
It had the giant sunroof and that was nice but the cover that slides across it to remove the glare is possibly the cheapest piece of cloth I've seen in a car since the seat coverings on my '78 Chrysler Sunbeam. The Gorilla's one makes you feel like you're in a car with no glass roof when closed; this one makes you feel like you're behind the shower curtain in Psycho. Nice big roof though.
I've written in my notes that the load carrying capacity is not unduly affected by the battery pack which lives under the hatch floor. I might have to change that as a later event showed that the boot is indeed compromised but not to the extent that you'd complain there wasn't enough space: the Samsonites and other luggage fitted easily enough. As I'd ordered a Golf I shouldn't complain about this:
Another plus point was that the volume and seat controls are analogue, and even though the heating is on the touch screen its always there to adjust as opposed to hidden in a menu. All in all the cockpit is a nice place to be.
So before driving it and the PHEV proposition let's look at some cons. The first one is a huge one and one that would make sure I never purchased this car ever. The parcel shelf. I just wrote "parcel shelf farce" as a reminder of it. In the Gorilla the shelf lifts up as the boot raises and sits back down when you close it. This thing didn't: you had to slide it up the runner manually then when you closed the boot (automatic) and sat back in the driver's seat you had a great view of the shelf at a 35º angle in your rear view mirror. It happened so often that I swore a lot about it - if a car is so loaded with kit, including a cut glass sex toy, why on earth is a powered parcel shelf not on the inclusion list? To add to this terrible scenario there is a dog/ parcel net but again unlike the Gorilla (where this pulls upwards and clips into the c pillar fixings) it is not all part of the removable parcel shelf attachment, you'd have to manually affix it and it comes in little bag, floating around the boot.
I've said that it's loaded with kit and it is but the menu of options on the touch screen is farcically complex and a royal pain in the arse. In fact the whole touch screen experience wasn't as good as it could have been with three menus swiped left and right, a pull down set of menus, tiny worded options across the top and a home button that didn't go back one step but exited whatever you were doing altogether.
So on to the SatNav. I initially thought it wasn't really intuitive enough compared to the iDrive in the Gorilla then I realised it was totally crap. Firstly you start to search by town - pretty normal. So it finds the town and you want to add the street. Nope. So you try to go back to enter street first. Nope. Have to exit and start all over with street. So say you're looking for "Chemin General De Gaulle" or some such. It lists out the (several hundred!) options by town but you can't look for the town. It was easier to use maps on the iPhone and connect to Apple CarPlay. It's a nice screen and gives good screen shots but to be usurped by a three year old iPhone isn't really acceptable. Also in keeping with my other CarPlay experiences there is no use given over to the dash screen for CarPlay - what bollocks is that?
Finally the build materials. This car felt like it could conquer the Russian Steppes in one fell swoop and the interior build was suitably luxurious and well screwed together, with one exception. The glove box felt like it was made from the kind of the kind of plastic I associate with my old dog Mk2 Golf GTI's glovebox. In a sea of leather clad (or faux-leather, I really can't tell or care) dashboard a slab of Soviet-era tenement block lift interior cladding stood out like a sore thumb.
Right: driving it. Well it handles far better than it needs to for what will only ever be a family bus. You can place it nicely and it controls its mass well enough. It has enough power to fly out of the toll booths, giving my nephew in his 3 1/2 yo A6 3.0 TDI Quattro a bit of a shock and is very calm and planted on the Autoroute at speeds that are illegal in the UK, although the Autoroutes are smoother than most of our motorways.
I've no idea what kind of ICE engine it has but I do know that when you're out of battery and at low speed its very harsh under low-mid rev load, but then sounds fine when you kick it down. As family fodder this isn't an issue as you're not buying this for the engine note as if it were an Alfa Duetto.
So, PHEV stuff. Here it is being charged at the villa I rented from an Italian widow who gave me assurance that having had a couple of attempted break-ins her new security company were "essentially the Nicoise mafia". We went out for the day without worrying about the fact that one set of sliding doors wasn't locking correctly.
Now I loved the serenity of battery-only start-up and cruising about town. I loved it a lot. Where we live in the UK this would be ideal for the largest percentage of our driving and the PHEV bit would give us the range to go further afield. My biggest gripe is that the charging psychology is bollocks. It uses up all the juice on the first available distance you drive no matter how fast the road (so on the motorway it's using electricity needlessly IMHO) leaving you with little electric-running when you hit a town or a traffic jam. The thing needs to use all that technology in those myriad menu options to look at your route and ensure enough battery-only running is available for towns you pass through without you having to select "charge with engine", which uses petrol unnecessarily. I'll go one further and propose that huge amounts of R&D needs to go into energy recovery from off-throttle running as that will be the future for PHEV and battery cars.
Where it did come into its own was in Monaco, where I did a full lap on electric-only at about 2330hrs, while the Gendarmes were questioning some chavvy Bulgarians in a wrapped Lambo and matching giant 4x4 as to the veracity of their ownership of such vehicles that they had been revving in Casino Square like the chavs they were. I got an electric parking place and free charge whilst being charged €100 for 8 drinks in the Cafe de Paris. Here it is (terribly parked) under the Casino Square with some close ups of the plug and charger.
I also benefitted from an electric parking space whilst visiting a mountain top village by le Lac du Ste Croix where no other spaces were available. A short walk to lunch overlooking the valley of the lake was the off-set for €4 of overpriced charging on that one. And that led me to make one important observation: you need to have a regular routine of town driving to make PHEV worthwhile from a home charging point of view. It was utterly pointless when we left Nice and went to stay with my mother who lives in a French town in the Var countryside. If you were an owner-resident and working you'd need to commute to Draguignan or the Coast making the electric charge saving almost zero compared to hybrid running. So it remained un-plugged-in at mother's.
Now for the rub on space. We left to catch our flight on Monday evening from Marseille to Heathrow in the XC60. Several hours later following an aircraft fault, a delay to the following day, no accomodation available and no help from BA (for which they have already received my expense and compensation claim) I was forced to rent a car at 2230 from SIXT, the only operator open that I have an account with, and drive back to mother's for the night. I've never hired a car for a day faster in my life: app, select, walk over the road, hand over credit card and drive out in..... an XC40.
I swear to whatever god I believe in that this smaller car had a bigger boot, almost no less interior space and drove as well as its big brother. Another nail in the XC60 ownership proposition for me.
So I started out saying that I'd conclude that I'd like the car, say it was a great family car but never buy one and so it is the case - the XC60 would not suit me at all. However........
I love the whole PHEV thing and where we live it's the most sensible answer. So the shock: it made up my mind that the Gorilla should be sold and replaced with a 530E wagon on lease. I never felt that the XC60 was underpowered at any time, I never felt the need to hear a glorious engine note (not that you hear much in the Gorilla's cabin anyway) but I loved the silence at low speed and at a standstill (without the stop-start that the MINI does). I'll see if it's possible from a financial record perspective before I market the Gorilla but it's half-electric for me for now.
I'd better add an edit that over just shy of 1,000 miles of utterly mixed driving use the fuel consumption was 34.47mpg. Now I am renowned for having the Jeremy Clarkson gibbon-right-foot but even so that's good for a biggish SUV. which was generally full.
Well firstly the finances. I rented a Golf as I always do hoping for an upgrade based on the fact that I have Executive Privilege Elite or some such status with Europcar. So free second driver, airport lounge access, some free weekend rentals, discounts at Accor hotels and two level upgrade WHERE AVAILABLE. I put that in capitals because I was offered a car as an upgrade and advised a price. I baulked then said OK and took the car. Then I wrote to Europcar customer services, told them I was upgraded but also charged when there were clearly upgrade cars available and they cancelled the additional charge. Great service after the event but French airports seem to do this routinely: when I arrive in Vienna the guy upgrades me without question. In Spain they rarely have anything bigger than a Golf anyway, at either Murcia or Alicante.
So that's sorted what did I get?
Volvo XC60 T8 Twin Engine. A PHEV, which is remarkable considering the debate had regarding PHEVs before I went on holiday. Perhaps it was sent to test my resolve and if it was, how did it fare? Well before we look at the why's and wherefores of my mindset, let's look at the pros and cons of the car. Let's start with the pros.
Firstly the cabin has so much space, especially the rear seats, that I'd really question the purpose of the XC90 if you didn't need 7 seats. It swallowed the kids and because we did a week of 14-people-in-a-villa-with-only-three-cars (we stole a fourth, my mum's DS4, on the last day to account for different travelling arrangements) it took 5-up in its stride. This is far more than the Gorilla can manage. It also has a lot of kit, but I guess being the T8 with some kind of fancy spec (Inscription) you'd expect that. It also had this gearshift which I assume symbolises luxury but to me it was far too reminiscent of a high-end butt plug normally covered in lube.
Let's have run down of the kit that impressed. Sat nav (see the cons section!); nice lcd dash, but again this is an utter waste of technology when all it does is look like the analogue dash dials with a bit in the middle and offers no configurability worth having; Apple CarPlay; heated seats; Comfort access; sunroof and all the voodoo cruise stuff with the addition of Pilot Assist. I liked the idea of pilot assist but you need to place your hands on the wheel far too often to make it feel like you are being in any way auto-piloted, which I suppose is the idea. You couldn't make use of that glass gear knob on the move if you catch my drift....
It had the giant sunroof and that was nice but the cover that slides across it to remove the glare is possibly the cheapest piece of cloth I've seen in a car since the seat coverings on my '78 Chrysler Sunbeam. The Gorilla's one makes you feel like you're in a car with no glass roof when closed; this one makes you feel like you're behind the shower curtain in Psycho. Nice big roof though.
I've written in my notes that the load carrying capacity is not unduly affected by the battery pack which lives under the hatch floor. I might have to change that as a later event showed that the boot is indeed compromised but not to the extent that you'd complain there wasn't enough space: the Samsonites and other luggage fitted easily enough. As I'd ordered a Golf I shouldn't complain about this:
Another plus point was that the volume and seat controls are analogue, and even though the heating is on the touch screen its always there to adjust as opposed to hidden in a menu. All in all the cockpit is a nice place to be.
So before driving it and the PHEV proposition let's look at some cons. The first one is a huge one and one that would make sure I never purchased this car ever. The parcel shelf. I just wrote "parcel shelf farce" as a reminder of it. In the Gorilla the shelf lifts up as the boot raises and sits back down when you close it. This thing didn't: you had to slide it up the runner manually then when you closed the boot (automatic) and sat back in the driver's seat you had a great view of the shelf at a 35º angle in your rear view mirror. It happened so often that I swore a lot about it - if a car is so loaded with kit, including a cut glass sex toy, why on earth is a powered parcel shelf not on the inclusion list? To add to this terrible scenario there is a dog/ parcel net but again unlike the Gorilla (where this pulls upwards and clips into the c pillar fixings) it is not all part of the removable parcel shelf attachment, you'd have to manually affix it and it comes in little bag, floating around the boot.
I've said that it's loaded with kit and it is but the menu of options on the touch screen is farcically complex and a royal pain in the arse. In fact the whole touch screen experience wasn't as good as it could have been with three menus swiped left and right, a pull down set of menus, tiny worded options across the top and a home button that didn't go back one step but exited whatever you were doing altogether.
So on to the SatNav. I initially thought it wasn't really intuitive enough compared to the iDrive in the Gorilla then I realised it was totally crap. Firstly you start to search by town - pretty normal. So it finds the town and you want to add the street. Nope. So you try to go back to enter street first. Nope. Have to exit and start all over with street. So say you're looking for "Chemin General De Gaulle" or some such. It lists out the (several hundred!) options by town but you can't look for the town. It was easier to use maps on the iPhone and connect to Apple CarPlay. It's a nice screen and gives good screen shots but to be usurped by a three year old iPhone isn't really acceptable. Also in keeping with my other CarPlay experiences there is no use given over to the dash screen for CarPlay - what bollocks is that?
Finally the build materials. This car felt like it could conquer the Russian Steppes in one fell swoop and the interior build was suitably luxurious and well screwed together, with one exception. The glove box felt like it was made from the kind of the kind of plastic I associate with my old dog Mk2 Golf GTI's glovebox. In a sea of leather clad (or faux-leather, I really can't tell or care) dashboard a slab of Soviet-era tenement block lift interior cladding stood out like a sore thumb.
Right: driving it. Well it handles far better than it needs to for what will only ever be a family bus. You can place it nicely and it controls its mass well enough. It has enough power to fly out of the toll booths, giving my nephew in his 3 1/2 yo A6 3.0 TDI Quattro a bit of a shock and is very calm and planted on the Autoroute at speeds that are illegal in the UK, although the Autoroutes are smoother than most of our motorways.
I've no idea what kind of ICE engine it has but I do know that when you're out of battery and at low speed its very harsh under low-mid rev load, but then sounds fine when you kick it down. As family fodder this isn't an issue as you're not buying this for the engine note as if it were an Alfa Duetto.
So, PHEV stuff. Here it is being charged at the villa I rented from an Italian widow who gave me assurance that having had a couple of attempted break-ins her new security company were "essentially the Nicoise mafia". We went out for the day without worrying about the fact that one set of sliding doors wasn't locking correctly.
Now I loved the serenity of battery-only start-up and cruising about town. I loved it a lot. Where we live in the UK this would be ideal for the largest percentage of our driving and the PHEV bit would give us the range to go further afield. My biggest gripe is that the charging psychology is bollocks. It uses up all the juice on the first available distance you drive no matter how fast the road (so on the motorway it's using electricity needlessly IMHO) leaving you with little electric-running when you hit a town or a traffic jam. The thing needs to use all that technology in those myriad menu options to look at your route and ensure enough battery-only running is available for towns you pass through without you having to select "charge with engine", which uses petrol unnecessarily. I'll go one further and propose that huge amounts of R&D needs to go into energy recovery from off-throttle running as that will be the future for PHEV and battery cars.
Where it did come into its own was in Monaco, where I did a full lap on electric-only at about 2330hrs, while the Gendarmes were questioning some chavvy Bulgarians in a wrapped Lambo and matching giant 4x4 as to the veracity of their ownership of such vehicles that they had been revving in Casino Square like the chavs they were. I got an electric parking place and free charge whilst being charged €100 for 8 drinks in the Cafe de Paris. Here it is (terribly parked) under the Casino Square with some close ups of the plug and charger.
I also benefitted from an electric parking space whilst visiting a mountain top village by le Lac du Ste Croix where no other spaces were available. A short walk to lunch overlooking the valley of the lake was the off-set for €4 of overpriced charging on that one. And that led me to make one important observation: you need to have a regular routine of town driving to make PHEV worthwhile from a home charging point of view. It was utterly pointless when we left Nice and went to stay with my mother who lives in a French town in the Var countryside. If you were an owner-resident and working you'd need to commute to Draguignan or the Coast making the electric charge saving almost zero compared to hybrid running. So it remained un-plugged-in at mother's.
Now for the rub on space. We left to catch our flight on Monday evening from Marseille to Heathrow in the XC60. Several hours later following an aircraft fault, a delay to the following day, no accomodation available and no help from BA (for which they have already received my expense and compensation claim) I was forced to rent a car at 2230 from SIXT, the only operator open that I have an account with, and drive back to mother's for the night. I've never hired a car for a day faster in my life: app, select, walk over the road, hand over credit card and drive out in..... an XC40.
I swear to whatever god I believe in that this smaller car had a bigger boot, almost no less interior space and drove as well as its big brother. Another nail in the XC60 ownership proposition for me.
So I started out saying that I'd conclude that I'd like the car, say it was a great family car but never buy one and so it is the case - the XC60 would not suit me at all. However........
I love the whole PHEV thing and where we live it's the most sensible answer. So the shock: it made up my mind that the Gorilla should be sold and replaced with a 530E wagon on lease. I never felt that the XC60 was underpowered at any time, I never felt the need to hear a glorious engine note (not that you hear much in the Gorilla's cabin anyway) but I loved the silence at low speed and at a standstill (without the stop-start that the MINI does). I'll see if it's possible from a financial record perspective before I market the Gorilla but it's half-electric for me for now.
I'd better add an edit that over just shy of 1,000 miles of utterly mixed driving use the fuel consumption was 34.47mpg. Now I am renowned for having the Jeremy Clarkson gibbon-right-foot but even so that's good for a biggish SUV. which was generally full.
