New Owner - XC40 Irritations!

Faults and Technical chat for the Volvo XC40
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Gnomeface
Posts: 62
Joined: Sat Oct 05, 2019 8:15 pm

Post by Gnomeface »

OK, the XC40 is a great car and my wife and I are extremely happy with it after the first 1,000 miles. However, I have found a few things that I don't particularly like or understand.

(1) The lights - they are good, but I've never had a car before where I can't tell whether the headlamps are on or not! Yes, I'm familiar with adaptive headlights (the Volvo's are better than my Mercedes) but why is there not a display to show when the main headlights are on? In daylight fog or rain spray it's essential that they are on for visibility to other drivers, but the auto setting may not have turned them on if ambient light levels are high. The XC40 just shows a small green light symbol for every position of the switch except "off". All my previous cars have had two light symbols - small and large, for sidelights and headlights - as well as the blue for high beam, and at least one car put its own headlights on whenever the wipers were on "continuous" (and changed the display to let me know). Am I missing a setting somewhere in the myriad of display options?
Also, this is one function where the old-fashioned rotary light switch is far superior to a fiddly little ring on a multi-purpose stalk that's virtually invisible from a normal driving position.

(2) My wife like to have Lane Assistance switched on, but I don't. I would expect this function to be linked to the Driver Profile but it isn't, so it frequently means one of us discovering that the setting is wrong whilst driving and then needing to use the central menu to find and reset it - which takes attention off the road ahead and is hardly conducive to safety!

(3) Exactly the same applies to Cruise Control - my wife likes Adaptive, I much prefer the standard setting. The obvious alternative to a menu setting would be to allow Adaptive/Normal to be selectable from one of the Cruise buttons on the steering wheel (like the speed limiter) but I can't see a way of doing it. Am I missing something here, as it's such an obvious thing to provide?

I've rearranged the options menu (nice touch to allow this, Volvo, just like an iPad) to put the above two settings at the bottom right of the screen so that they can be found easily whilst driving, but why not allow them to be in the Driver Profile?

Now I need to get familiar with all the voice commands.....
Family car - XC40 T5 Inscription Pro, Glacier Silver, charcoal leather, Intellisafe Pro and Xenium packs. Dog guard and mud flaps added since.
Fun car - Mercedes SLC

PeeBee
Posts: 46
Joined: Sat Oct 26, 2019 2:49 pm

Post by PeeBee »

Not much help I know, but I've had VW, Citroen, Renault, Fiat over the past few years and the light indicator is exactly the same as the Volvo. At least with the models I've had.
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kirsty_s2k
Posts: 286
Joined: Mon May 14, 2018 9:01 pm
Location: North West, England

Post by kirsty_s2k »

Point 1 - I raised this at my 3mth check and was told that Volvo believe it's unnecessary as the car will set the lights properly - I think it's bad as like you, I'd want to know if I need to override it and put the main lights on when in rain etc.

My hubby rarely drives mine so he just lives with the features I have enabled, but I guess it you switch driving often it could be frustrating.
Ex Owner. Sold Feb 2020
First Edition - Bursting Blue on 19" - D4 AWD Auto
(My other car is a 2002 Honda S2000 in Silverstone)
michael123
Posts: 168
Joined: Fri Apr 05, 2019 6:14 am

Post by michael123 »

Driver Profile function indeed can do some more things, quite basic thing I would like having Wi Fi hotspot option different for me and wife stored in a profile.
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