Battery and Range Management - Volvo Recharge Plug in Hybrids 

You are welcome.Enjoy the car

Preconditioning just means setting the cabin temperature to generally heat the car and try to get it it to 72 degrees. This gives the optimal environment for the battery to operate most efficiently. You do this through the app but you can also manually switch the climate control on too. I definitely recommend this for cold winter conditions to get the best possible range and for comfort too. I think your mechanic was talking about charging cycles. Most of the articles I have read on this say that a charging cycle is a complete 0 to 100 %. Whether that is 5 charging sessions of 20% or two 50% sessions, they are both still one cycle. I therefore am less concerned about frequency rather than charging to 100% regularly or fast charging in a pure EV. But I encourage you to research on charging cycles because it is slightly controversial and I have heard many views on it. The PHEV is so easy because they took all the guess work out. There is no setting for amps or to limit the battery. It takes care of all of that for you. Thanks for watching and commenting on an interesting topic.

As always thanks so much

Adam thanks so much I appreciate. I found myself on many Zoom calls with many of my clients, after their cars were delivered. Many of whom were not comfortable with technology. This just as reason for doing YT videos instead. Appreciate any topic ideas you may have thanks

Agreed! I’m leasing mine and had zero handover. Still so much I just can’t work out…

John thanks for watching and for sharing your method. I think it is great that you are planning round trip and using the GPS to get maximum use of the battery. I don't drive PHEV everyday so this is useful to share. If you left in hybrid and let the car control everything I think you would still get good economy but I think you are probably getting a much better result by using all the options. Thanks

Lihang thanks for the comment. My understanding is that you need to set a destination. After that two conditions need to be met you - you need to have hybrid drive mode selected and the battery usage should be in auto mode. Those were the only things that I saw in all our material. Having said that one problem I have been having is that we don't get any PHEVs in inventory. They all get sold before reaching us and supply has been short for awhile. I therefore have not had much opportunity to physically try out all the functions in the new PHEV Google system. I would love to hear from all of you owners out there on any PHEV related subjects.

Gary I have not heard anything about one being more reliable than the other. I would love to hear what others have experienced. Occasionally I have had app connectivity issues so if I had to guess I would say the car indicator is more reliable. If I come across anything relating to this I will get back to you.

@@JebRevsUp It cleared up. We speculate that a system update "disjointed" the connections.

Can you give more specifics? It is not perfect but I can tell it is adjusting to my route. Eg. Drive to richmond two weeks ago. Forgot to charge the XC40 so took the S60 instead. Even though I had full battery gas engine kicked in immediately for nice clear roads and saved battery then I hit roadworks for miles and used up all the battery and continued on gas. That couldn’t be random so I’m curious to know your experience as a PHEV owner.

Tawan, that is fantastic question. As far as I am aware the only way you can add a waypoint is with selecting from the categories shown. Eg ..fuel, restaurants etc.. the second method is as you mentioned using the voice function. Excellent feedback and I hope Google does add the ability to manually type waypoints in future updates. Thanks for watching

@@JebRevsUp Thanks a lot for your answer, please keep make a good content💪

@@JebRevsUp FYI, I just come back from updated software from version 2.4 to 2.5, for now adding stop by typing is working!!, Thanks to you and google 🎉🎊

That is such awesome news! I saw an update was available but didn't activate it yet. I will do so today itself. Happy Holidays to you.

Thanks for commenting. You are right that Tesla does use a different system and definition of preconditioning. In the Volvo manual preconditioning is used to describe and parked climate control before you drive. Even the XC90 gas cars manual describes using parking climate as preconditioning which is definitely not the same use in most other EVs. However you are right that it is parking climate and not battery heating such as Tesla or I3 etc.. it is powered by high voltage battery not the 12 v and 30 mins of preconditioning prior to driving does cause the battery to heat up as a result so here is Volvos manual recommendation for the XC40 - “In a low temperature for the high voltage battery, performance is temporarily reduced until the battery is heated. Connect the car for charging and use preconditioning to avoid driving with reduced performance. The car can then heat the battery prior to driving without the State Of Charge (SOC) and range falling.” I am therefore using the manufacturer recommendations in the following. We all know EVs don’t like the cold so I try to do everything possible to prolong range so in addition to preconditioning I also check tire pressures. Try to use seat heating and keep cabin climate lower and use range extender at 50 % to maximize range if on a longer drive.

What's a range extender? Btw, Thank you for wonderful efforts and time:)