The hybrid mode is primarily electric, except when the battery runs low, then the gas engine kicks in; or when you need more power. With my 2020 (smaller battery, weaker motor) I get 40km (about 25 miles) – which is very practical especially in the city – I can usually do my daily drive to the office there and back on battery alone – also you can charge everywhere, office on houseconnector or on street-wallboxes, 3 hours and this battery is full.
When you need power, meaning you go beyond a certain accelerator pedal position (~80% or more), then the gas engine kicks in. You really have to be careful not to overwork the usually cold engine right away – I pay a lot of attention to thermals in general, making sure the engine is warm before I do any high-rev driving or full throttle.
That’s definitely an issue with used cars too – who had it before (company car?) and how did they handle it… pretty difficult to find out.
I’m sure that in the standard “hybrid” setting the battery doesn’t get charged, yet I still get vibrations at idle for the first 1-2 minutes, what also scared me initially was when I changed spark plugs and noticed something about the spark plug connectors… until I found out (in various forums) that everyone has this (just like the harsh sounds from the stationary climate control that also sound “broken” but are normal, since everyone describes the same thing).
BUT – you don’t actually need the engine right then – it’s usually like this: you drive out of the underground garage (electrically) – even with an empty battery (up to about ~12 mph you can always drive, even with empty battery, there’s always ~20% reserve capacity remaining, after all systems like A/C need to be powered). Then I drive to the traffic light, and when I take off on the country road the engine kicks in (as I said, when the battery is empty) and you don’t notice any vibrations on drive. You only notice them when you cold-start the engine, then it runs for a while at the beginning to warm up the catalytic converter,
if you’re standing than still during warmup – I shift to neutral, the vibrations seem less that way. – because when the engine is warm (meaning it’s been running for ~1 minute)
Normaly (if its warmed) it shuts off at traffic lights anyway (start/stop) – but this isn’t the classic annoying start/stop like on the old models – it works really well. Even with an empty battery, when there’s rush hour traffic I often drive 10-15 minutes stop-and-go purely electric – since even the empty battery can still drive 6-12 mph for quite a while.
PURE is basically the same thing, just ECO, where the A/C is on ECO and supposedly (according to the display) the range is 3 miles more.
AWD immediately starts the gas engine, then both engines work together.
Dynamic/Polestar is the same as AWD, just with maximum power (you definitely notice there’s significantly more power and it’s not just changing the gas pedal characteristics).
In my opinion, it only charges in dynamic mode.
For the Hybrid/Pure setting you have 2 additional settings: Charge – THEN it charges and I don’t notice any difference, no vibrations or anything, but it uses more gas. And “Hold”, which adds the gas engine and maintains the battery capacity when you want to use it later.
As I said, I have a 2020, there was a facelift and technical update in 2022, more battery (I think that really makes a difference) and stronger/better motor – I would really like to have that in hindsight, we’ll see either it’ll be an improved variant like that or directly an EV as the next car.
I used to work at Volvo myself, but that was a long time ago when we were still working on 5-cylinders; but I asked my colleagues… the T6/T8 is supposedly a totally problem-free car despite all the technology, my car’s history confirms this too (it was a workshop customer) – there was nothing, absolutely nothing except service on the car. All the others are running perfectly too.
On the other hand, my colleague showed me what’s currently annoying them in the workshop – there were many mild hybrids sitting around, they’re apparently causing the most problems right now – I wouldn’t buy one.
You don’t buy a T8 to save money, it’s a performance hybrid, but it doesn’t actually use that much more fuel than my old v90CC diesel (which I had before) – that’s pretty crazy somehow. If you can charge at home with solar on top of that, the math works out, drives economically in daily use and when you want it you’re at 60 mph in 4.5 seconds – that’s definitely fun.
PS: The figures will probably be somewhat different/worse with the XC90, it is quite a bit heavier than my S60.