2023 Volvo XC90 Recharge Review: 500 Miles of PHEV Road Tripping

500 miles of driving, but only 30 of them using battery power alone.

volvo xc90 recharge in blue parked next to a road

Published October 16, 2023

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Updated October 17, 2023

The Volvo XC90 Recharge is, in my opinion, the Porsche 911 of family cars. It looks great. It drives well. It feels premium. It’s safe. And since EV equivalents haven’t hit the market yet, it’s an environmentally friendly pick. My sister-in-law described it to me as her “dream car;” dreams become more prosaic when kids are in the equation.

My XC90 Recharge loan overlapped with a family friend’s wedding in Northern Michigan over Labor Day. That offered me the chance to do perhaps the one thing I haven’t done in an XC90, short of track day, rock climbing or anything illegal: taking an extended family road trip.

a car parked on the side of the road — The Volvo XC90 is the dream car — for when your dreams become practical.

To learn more about our testing methodology and how we evaluate products, head here.

A road trip is not the Volvo XC90 Recharge’s ideal use case

Volvo’s theory behind the XC90 Recharge is that most trips owners take are startlingly short. They commute to work, pick up the kids from school and run errands to the grocery store. In most places, that will be less than a 30-or-so-mile round trip. Remember to plug in your XC90 at home and you essentially have an EV for most of your driving.

My road trip was the antithesis of that. My trip from the Detroit suburbs to the Leelanau Peninsula was 250 miles, mostly on the highway. There were no charging opportunities at the “resort” the wedding was being held at, which didn’t even have Wi-Fi. The closest public charging infrastructure was 25 minutes away in Traverse City. So, I would have lost most of the charge gained heading back.

We ran the Volvo XC90 Recharge on pure gas coming home and lost 0.1 mpg of efficiency.
Tyler Duffy

Using the battery didn’t offer much improvement in efficiency

We departed in the morning with a full battery after charging overnight. I put the car into hybrid mode, headed north and let the battery drain, which it did a little over 30 miles later on I-75. Some PHEVs like the Toyota Prius Prime perform a neat trick, reserving some battery life to function as a conventional hybrid. But the XC90 Recharge just lets the battery die and transitions into a combustion-powered XC90. I averaged 27.6 mpg for the trip.

Having that initial EV boost didn’t seem to make much of an overall difference. I returned home from Northern Michigan entirely on gas power. No one was in the mood to wait at a charger after a weekend in a tiny, non-air-conditioned cabin with extended family. And dawdling in southbound Michigan Labor Day traffic can swiftly turn your four-hour trip into a six-hour one.

I looped around Traverse City instead of doing a straight shot down I-75 on the way back, and it was about 35 degrees warmer than the trip up, so it wasn’t a perfect control test. But it was still mostly highway driving on the way back — and running purely on gas, I averaged a nearly identical 27.5 mpg on the trip home.

a volvo xc90 with its trunk open — Nearly 50 cubic feet behind the first two rows made packing up the Volvo XC90 Recharge a breeze.

The Volvo XC90 is the perfect size … for four people

Midsize three-row crossovers tend to be an either/or scenario. You can carry seven passengers or you can carry a substantial amount of luggage. You can’t do both at the same time. The XC90 Recharge was just the right size for a four-person, long weekend road trip.

Folding the third row expands the cargo capacity from 21.8 cubic feet to 49.6 cubic feet. That was enough to fit three carry-on-sized suitcases, a massive Nuna stroller, two garment bags, backpacks and other miscellaneous gear without doing any Tetris or impeding visibility. Our Yeti Roadie 24 cooler slotted between the two car seats. Our kids’ backpacks, a grocery bag full of snacks and juice boxes and my wife’s larger purse fit in the footwell.

the interior of a volvo xc90 — The wool seats in the XC90 Recharge look and feel like something that should be in a Volvo. But I’d probably take the Nappa leather and the seat ventilators.

Luxury features become irrelevant on a family road trip

The Ultimate Bright Edition XC90 came loaded with luxury amenities. Driving on a family road trip, I hardly noticed any of them. I wielded the crystal shift knob without a second thought. We used the fancy Harmon Kardon audio system to play Conan O’Brien’s podcast at a barely perceptible volume to avoid interrupting my kids’ movies. And once the McDonald’s french fry smell enters the cabin (and lingers), nothing will make it feel spa-like.

My tester had the optional Tailored Wool Blend seats instead of the standard Ultimate Nappa leather. I like the idea in theory: more humane, reduced carbon footprint, feels like a design touch that should be in a Volvo. But in practice, I spent most of my trip fearing some form of oil stain would embed itself in the light-colored seats (and being thankful we didn’t bring our dog). The Tailored Wool Blend also eliminated the seat ventilators, which would have been nice to have on the 94-degree day heading back.