WARNING: TwinEngine possible fault

[Rocket]

Hey Guys,

My TwinEngine was from the very initial batch produced in Jaunary 2020. The car was among the first orders delivered from Belgium. We encountered unfortunately a complete electric engine/transmission breakdown only after 8000 km. An immediate investigation has been started by Volvo Cars this Monday to find exactly what sequence of events could possibly be the cause. Ours seems to have leaked lots of oil which possibly was caused by mechanical failure of parts in the electric motor/transmission casing. The big problem is that at this point it is unknown if the oil leaking was the root case of the fault, or if the oil leakage was the result of it.

The most important bit of information for you if you own a TwinEngine is that due to the cover tray mounted below the engine compartment, you will not notice any oil loss on the floor. The inner sound isolation foam absorbs all the oil. Also note that there is no warning light or info message that can detect a problem with the engine.

If you either notice an increase in the high pitch sound of the electric engine compared to before, you probably are developing the fault. Also if you smell hot oil from the engine compartment after driving your car, that might also be a sign of developing the fault. It is as of now unknown if the fault is a design fault, or a production fault, or a series fault, or even a random fault.

When the mechanical fault takes place, your car will loose all traction from the electric engine, so pressing the accelerator in Hybrid mode will not deliver power at all, up until you press the pedal far enough for the petrol engine to come on, which then will result in the car jerking forward. All this will be very noticeable with a loud rattle coming out of the engine compartment.

My recommendation is take your TwinEngine for an inspection to a dealer and let them inspect the inner side of the bottom tray cover for any signs of oil leakage. I have a video which I made that I can share with you if you would be interested to view.

Cheers,
Rocket

[lfpcorreia]

Please share the video!

[4 character]

There is an oil gauge in one of the screens, so are you saying that you hadn't noticed no oil, or that it's a different oil that it's losing?

[HappyBlonde]

Hi Rocket,

I think I have the same problem than you. I am living in Spain and my car was one of the first ones received here. It was manufactured between March and April but delivery was at the beginning of June as dealers were closed in Spain due COVID.

Since June until now I have driven around 6000 km, 60% electric. At the beginning of July I travelled to north Spain, and after 1500 km I realized the oil level was low. At that time the car didn’t show any warning, but sensor bar was with a very few lines. Back in Madrid I went to my dealer and they say that was normal, maybe oil was not properly filled from the beginning and I could wait until the first revision (at 25.000 km) for oil refilling.

The next weeks I drove electric (city driving) and at the beginning of August I drove fuel again to the mountains, with the very few lines in the oil sensor. In the middle of my trip, around 600 km driven, the car started to orange flash asking for oil refill. I called Volvo Car Assistance and they said I cannot drive anymore and sent a truck to tow the car to the closest Volvo dealer. There they filled ONE liter oil, until the sensor was close to maximum, and I drove back to Madrid but 200 km later, the oil sensor was at half!.

I went to my dealer again, that time they opened the cover tray below engine compartment, and they found nothing, they did some testing, refill the oil again (another liter) and gave me back. I continued using electric engine until last week, that I drove fuel 600 km and just in 200 km I lost nearly half of the lines in the sensor.

I went to my dealer this morning again and they say “there is an issue reported” but not clear where the problem is and they have to open the engine and start to look for. As I need the car for working I cannot leave the car at the dealers’ for weeks, so they have to ask for a substitution car before it can be repaired.

Yesterday evening I noticed another strange thing, but I didn’t think it was related with the oil problem: when I drove electric back home I noticed a noise of the electric engine, that usually was quiet. I parked and the noise continued even with the engine off and the car closed. It was similar to the sound you notice in fuel cars after stop (remember I drove electric) but instead of lasting some seconds, it lasted minutes. In fact, I plug the car in, went to the garage door, then to the lift and from there (50 meters and two doors) I still was able to hear the sound…. I went back to the car, check everything was right (I though that may be the car was on!), went back again to the lift, and while I waited the lift, the sound stop….

Unfortunately I didn’t say anything about the noise to the dealer, but after reading your case, I think I have to.

I do not smell hot oil, but maybe that’s the next step….

Would be possible for you to share the video?. I cannot see any link in the post.

Many thanks for sharing your experience, and please update. I will do so.


XC40 T5 Twin Engine R-Design full options.

[Rocket]

Hi HappyBlonde,

Very interesting to read your story. In fact I have lots of updates for you all since my initial post. First of all, I uploaded the video I made the day the electric engine/transmission had failed:



There you can hear the rattling that comes out of the electric engine/transmission case. In the video, the petrol engine is idling in P mode, I could switch to PURE for the petrol engine to go off. The rattling would then stop, but the car would't be able to move at all purely on the electric engine.

Since the day we took the car back to our Volvo dealer here in The Netherlands, I must be very honest, Volvo has treated the case 100% to our satisfaction. They first took in the car, provided us with a 2020 V40 replacement for the 3 weeks our car was at the dealer. We were able to visit the dealer at any random moment, and they kept us informed on literally all communication to Volvo Cars.

When Volvo Cars was informed about the case, they requested the dealer not to open the electric engine/transmission case, but only to dismount it from the petrol engine and send it back entirely to the engineering labs in Sweden for investigation. Volvo Cars shipped an entire new electric engine/transmission assembly. It took them about 14 days to have the new assembly at the dealer in The Netherlands. (see below)

Then it took the dealer 5 days to completely dismount the complete petrol engine with the electric engine and transmission and front axle all in one piece out of the engine compartment, then replace the transmission and mount back everything together into the car. It took them 1 day to pull off the complete front-end of the car. (see below)

2 days later they already had mounted the new electric engine/transmission back on the petrol engine and in the engine compartment. (see below)

Then one additional day to program the transmission firmware and pair it to the petrol engine, then also calibrate all settings to the car. They then also updated the car software to the latest release and tested all sort of software instructions. I must say that since I still was using the very initial vehicle software from January, I had noticed quite a lot of improvements on the handling of the car. The new release has completely altered the brake pedal behaviour we use to complain a lot about. It is now much more firmer than before, and it feels much more linear with respect to pedal pressure and break power. Also the B mode is truly now regenerating much more the rolling kinetic energy than before.

Anyhow, the important note here is that the oil leaking was not from the petrol engine, but from the electric engine/transmission casing. It is not known if the oil leaking was the cause or the result of the mechanical fault. Most importantly: the XC40 TwinEngine does not have any sort of oil level sensor for the electric engine/transmission case. No messages nor symbols will come ON to warn you about the electric engine/transmission case oil level being too low. Volvo has only a built-in temperature sensor in the hybridized transmission which if overheated will result in a dashboard message saying: Transmission warm Reduce speed to lower temperature or Transmission hot Stop safely, wait for cooling.

In the event this happens, an alternative gear shift program will be selected. Also a built-in protection function is activated that, amongst other things, illuminates a warning symbol in the driver display as below.

[---]

Wow, that's quite an amazing journey you've been on (so far) Rocket. Thanks so much for sharing, and also for the video and pics. I'm sure these will help others too.

[Travisthedog]

Sadly

I have similar issues.

I run a fleet of 10 T5 twin engines (probably the very early 2020 batch) and 4 of them have displayed oil warning lights within 1000 miles of new. Mine had been back to the main dealer 6 times, the last time for 10 days where volvo instructed them to remove a breather pipe and hand the vehicle back to me.

This ended after 300 miles with a catastrophic engine failure with huge plumes of white smoke coming from the exhaust and with oil being sprayed over the wheels and brakes casuing me to have a very near miss.

My car is at a garage in pieces 250 miles from my house, one of my other fleet cars is in a Volvo main dealers in Oxford and i have grounded 2 more vehicles in the fleet for safety reasons.

I have made a request to our lease provider to reject the whole fleet of 10 cars based on the fact that this fault represents an unaccepable H&S risk

Volvo seem utterly at a loss as to what to do and we feel like a bunch of beta testers who have been given a a load of pre release software to work with

So dissapointed

[lfpcorreia]

Sadly

I have similar issues.

I run a fleet of 10 T5 twin engines (probably the very early 2020 batch) and 4 of them have displayed oil warning lights within 1000 miles of new. Mine had been back to the main dealer 6 times, the last time for 10 days where volvo instructed them to remove a breather pipe and hand the vehicle back to me.

This ended after 300 miles with a catastrophic engine failure with huge plumes of white smoke coming from the exhaust and with oil being sprayed over the wheels and brakes casuing me to have a very near miss.

My car is at a garage in pieces 250 miles from my house, one of my other fleet cars is in a Volvo main dealers in Oxford and i have grounded 2 more vehicles in the fleet for safety reasons.

I have made a request to our lease provider to reject the whole fleet of 10 cars based on the fact that this fault represents an unaccepable H&S risk

Volvo seem utterly at a loss as to what to do and we feel like a bunch of beta testers who have been given a a load of pre release software to work with

So dissapointed

What a nightmare!! Keep us informed please!

[Deleted User 2507]

This is quite interesting, having said that I've done over 1000 miles in the first week and my recharge hasn't skipped a beat. I will check the oil level later just in case. MY2021 though in my case of course.

[lfpcorreia]

It might be possible that it’s not how many total miles we have on the clock.

Probably this happens depending on how many miles we did using the gas engine. Maybe even the regime is relevant (city vs highways)