Volvo V60 diesel PHEV

sgalvin

Congratulations.
Great time see a bit of Diversity in it the PHEV arena and you got what you want.

Was surprised the nox fee was what it was!
Has a quick look on my phone and saw I from a few quid to a few quid to several grand. Optima at 2.4 mg/km would have only cost me €12!

Soarer wrote: »

Right, a couple of minutes to myself.

The car when advertised on Autotrader had an asking price of £15,950.
Back and forth via email for a few days asking questions, then rang with card in hand ready to give a deposit.
Told them that the price was too high, Sterling is strong, taxes are crippling over here, yada yada, and the best I could do would be £14,800!
Got told they couldn’t do that.
I asked him where they needed to be, and he said £15,500.
Politely told him that, as much as I’d love the car, I couldn’t stretch that far, thanks for taking my call, and best of luck with the sale.

Less than 10 minutes later, he rang back saying their absolute bottom line is £15,250* as they have to put 4 new 18” tyres on her!

So I paid the £500 deposit there and then!

Because she’s a Selekt car, there’s a 12 month unlimited mileage warranty, which is transferrable to Volvo Ireland. He also said they’ll service the car and put a fresh MOT on her. I asked if it’ll be the 6 year service (as she’s 6 this month), there was a lot of tapping on the keyboard, and he agreed that it would be.
The belt is every 6 years or 108k miles, and is a ~£700 service in the UK!

In the intervening few days, I was back and forth with more questions.
Car only had a granny cable. Asked about sourcing a Type 2 - Type 2 cable. Was told it was £366! So shag that!
Asked about a Supagard upgrade while they were valeting her. Got quoted £399. Again, shag that!

Made my way over on Wednesday, and arrived at the dealership at about 15:00 (after they traveled the 40 miles to collect me!).

Car was on the forecourt waiting for me. She looked lovely to be fair. Opened the bonnet, and the sticker noting the cambelt change was there.
Was also nicely surprised that they hadn't thrown some cheap unbranded tyres on her, but Pirelli P-Zeros none the less!
Opened the boot, no granny cable!
Instead, a brand new T2-T2 still in it's wrapper!
Apparently another lad sold a car that had no charging cable at all, and it was being collected sharpish. So he took the granny cable from my car, and my fella ordered a new proper cable for me and threw it in FOC! Ace!

Took her for a spin after that. Lovely.
Back to the dealership, paid my money and hit the road.

Itinerary.
Wednesday 22nd.
Coach Cork – Dublin Airport – 07:30
Flight Dublin – Bristol – 12:30
Dealership by 15:00.
180 mile drive to Fishguard.
23:45 – Ferry Fishguard to Rosslare.
Thursday 23rd.
04:00 – Disembarked the ferry.
06:45 – Arrive home, brought kids to school, went to sleep!

Had to VRT her on the day I got home, the 23rd, as the car turned 6 on January 24th so she’d lose €250 from the PHEV grant for being an extra year older!
As I suspected, their system only calculated from the month of first registration, even though the date is recorded. So I had to pay €250 more than I should have. But the appeal has been sent away already, so hopefully there won't be any issue with that.

Total Cost:
Purchase Price - €17,442
Bus to Dublin- €18
Plane to Bristol- €10
Ferry - €156
VRT CO2 - €714
VRT NOx - €180
Miscellaneous (diesel/food/etc.) - €60

Grand total of €18,520, hopefully less another €250.

So a bit more than I was hoping to pay for any car (strong Sterling didn't help!), but hopefully she’s a machine with years of motoring left in her...covered by a 12 month unlimited mileage warranty.

* - The evening before I traveled, I got a call from the sales manager to say there was a problem with the car. There was noise coming from the vacuum pump on the brakes. He said they've no problem replacing the part, but it's a backorder and not available until February.
I said that's no good to me as I'm flying out in the morning.
So he said he can knock £500 off the agreed price of the car, as that would be the price if it were to be done at their garage.
That's great I said, but I'm sure my local dealer will probably charge a multiple of that to get it fixed over here (playing the game!), so you'll have to compensate me more than that.
He umed and awed for a few seconds, and then offered to throw in the Supagard protection for free as compensation.
So I agreed to that.

Today I rang my local dealer, and the vacuum pump is €360+vat, plus labour for fitting. So not too dissimilar to the £500 being charged in the UK.
It's not affecting the drive in any way, and isn't loud by any means. So I might just leave that off until her annual service.

So that's all she wrote folks. Any questions, fire away.

Soarer

sgalvin wrote: »

@Soarer, one question I think you should ask your new found friend is, does the engine have to run to heat the cabin and does it have cabin pre-heating.

For the Niro PHEV it has to run the engine to heat the cabin so eventhough you might be only doing a 5km run to the school/shop the engine would run to try to give you heat. And it had no cabin pre-heating. Both of those were design misses imo.

The point being, you might think you would not burn any diesel Mon-Fri on your short work commute but maybe you actually will if the engine has to be used to heat the car. Ask anyway, just to be sure.

Just to answer this.

She has a small seperate, diesel powered heater that can be used to heat the cabin even when in Pure mode. Obviously uses a bit of diesel, but nothing compared to having the engine fire up.

She also has cabin preheating, but it has to be set every day in the car. Unless it can be done from the on-call app. Need to get that activated.

Have has a couple of little issues with her.
All doors have keyless lock/unlock. The two passenger side doors don't work at all. Driver's door always opens, but intermittently won't lock. Driver's side passenger always works. Never checked them when I collected the car!
They'll all be swapped out under warranty. Fob works regardless, so not a big hardship.

Bigger issue is a "hybrid system malfunction" error that pops up intermittently.

A quick bit of Googling points to a problem with the a/c compressor and/or the ISG (Integrated Starter/Generator) module. These seem to be common enough problems on the early models. Thinking back, the error(s) popped up when the a/c was turned on. Another warranty job, which is lucky as people in the UK have been quoted £2k for the a/c fix! :eek:

Two weeks in, and still loving the car.
The last week or so is when I've finally settled into a bit of a routine.
Topped up coming back from the UK, just to register the odometer with Fuelly.
When I filled up again last week, Fuelly tells me I averaged 54.5mpg. Not bad. That mpg included the spin from Rosslare to Cork, and a 200km drive for work.
Since that fill up, I had to do a 100km trip for work, but most days I'm pottering around charging at home and at work (with the odd blast of Power for sanity reasons!).
The onboard consumption is sitting at 21.7km/l, which in old money is 61.5mpg. Again not bad, and that should rise further the more I plug her in.

So happy out, and would heartily recommend one if it suited your daily routine. Would definitely advise to buy from a dealer with a warranty though!
But they're relatively cheap to buy in the UK, €490 VRT for the D6 SE Lux, €180 NOx tax, and €170 per year road tax.

Shur where would you be going?!?

zilog_jones

That's great that the warranty is transferrable.

I'd recommend Spritmonitor over Fuelly as you can also record electricity consumption (assuming you have a means of recording the energy going into the charger): https://www.spritmonitor.de/en/

Soarer

Cheers zilog.

Can only monitor the electricity at home (work don't monitor), so it'd only be half a job.

Yeah, it's great the warranty transferred. Also got MOT Insurance cover up to £750, which is also transferable! Must just remember to book the NCT early to avail of that!

zilog_jones

Does the car not log electricity going in? Maybe it's buried in some menu somewhere.

Soarer

Just to follow up on this.

No Zilog, there's nothing anywhere.

As for the car....

Got the €250 refund on the VRT that I was hoping for. Nice to get a Revenue cheque in the post.
As for fuel economy, filled up on January 29th with the odometer reading 88,974km.
Just filled up there again for the first time since, and the odometer read 90,247km.
That's 1,273km.
Cost me €60 to fill her up.
According to Fuelly, that's 3.5l/km, or 80.2mpg.

Happy out with that.