Latest update is that he’s retained a law firm to sue Volvo into providing a refund.
Issues include: complete loss of throttle on the freeway, unable to lock the car, and infotainment screen blackouts (the screen which controls nearly every feature of the car). All in a car that cost over $150,000 CAD 😵
A pity. I love my Volvo, but it’s several generations old. The software (particularly driver assist) is arguably the best I’ve used, including current cars. The UI suffers from a small screen but everything just works and there’s real buttons. I do wish it had CarPlay of course.
No idea what to replace it with. Wagons are basically dead as a class (don’t say crossover); Volvo is apparently unreliable and besides, I can’t yet afford an EV with the range I need (I have one; it’s great; I need more range and that’s still more than I can afford). Ah well, hopefully I’ll have time to consider it before it dies; it’s barely 10 years old and I plan to have it another 10.
Worth noting - I don’t know where these are built, but my feeling is that the EV and software is more Chinese, and the design, chassis, interior, and gasoline engines are Swedish. It’s difficult to know, but it may be that the safety culture in the Swedish offices hasn’t been replicated in China. That’s always a risk with acquisitions and certainly not a Chinese problem.
I am not sure that the issues he has experienced are especially unique however. Pop into forums for BMW and Mercedes and there’s always a few people who got lemons.
$150k for a glorified station wagon, how the hell did we get here that vehicles are so expensive and the manufacturers still whine about not making money. This world is so fucked it’s not even funny.
The whole system just fucked this person over. A European car brand gets bought by a Chinese company so there’s already much less accountability to this one customer than if they had bought an American car (I know they are Canadian, but still). And with the car dealership model in North America and a lot of the rest of the world, it’s not like the dealership can just switch the cars they sell, so they have no leverage to do anything other than close up shop and have dozens of people lose their jobs if the cars start getting crappier like Volvos have been. I think the moral of the story is if you live in North America, don’t buy European cars, it’s not worth it, just buy North American cars or Asian cars, you will have a much easier time getting them fixed and having your problems dealt with.
If you’re in North America, Asian cars are generally gonna be Korean or Japanese, not Chinese. I’d probably say just buy Japanese cars frankly since IIRC they’re supposedly the most reliable.
that’s a high effort response, the reason I brought up the change of ownership was to highlight that the company now has a parent company so this person’s refund claims are bouncing all over the place from Canada to Sweden to China which would make it harder to pin down, the actual cars are still designed in Sweden so they are European cars even though a chinese company owns them, it would be like saying riot games is a chinese company although having a parent company has certainly affected the quality & direction of the cars
I had a worse experience with an American car… you just don’t hear about them, because when you finally are too tired fighting and opt for their crappy solution, they make you sign a NDA…
Asian cars have their own share of problems. Hyundai is well known for having horrible support, such as refusing to do repairs because a steel plate is scuffed (reported on by Louis Rossman) and delaying repairs because they’re using the available parts for new vehicles first (reported on by Technology Connections).
Similarly for NA manufacturers: Chevy had issues with their Bolt EV batteries, and majorly bungled the recall, in some cases taking years to replace them and telling customers “just park it outside in case it catches fire.”
Tesla has been accused of a whole bag of scummy tactics, fudging data and blaming customers in order to weasel out of warranty repairs.
But if this European car brans was bought by a Chinese company that means it is Asian.
Not buying European cars in North America is good generic advice.
Risky advice considering how North American cars are though.
Compared to something from the big 3? Er, I mean the big 2 now.
