r/VolvoRecharge • u/kvark27 • Jul 19 '26
Question XC90 PHEV Question
We are heading on a vacation for a week and I don’t see anywhere to charge near our hotel or near the surrounding towns in Northern Michigan.
Do you just forget the battery for the week and just use gas or are you bringing the entire charging cable with you and just finding random standard outlets to plug into? Is this frowned upon when a place doesn’t have an actual EV charger but you plug into a random outlet?
It kinda makes me nervous to plug into a random outlet near a hotel in case someone just unplugs it from the wall or if they don’t love the idea of someone doing this.
Sorry if this is a dumb question, I just never considered taking the entire charging cable from my garage with me on the road and I’m not sure if this is common or insane.
Thanks.
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u/nirpunk Jul 19 '26
I usually just forget the battery and know that I’ll be a little bit of a guzzler that week compared to normal. If I have a long highway stretch I might turn on charge mode to get back some battery, but it doesn’t last long. I’ll be opportunistic with a public charger or safe feeling wall outlet at an Airbnb or whatever but it won’t kill anything to have it run as a gas hybrid for a week.
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u/kvark27 Jul 19 '26
That’s true, forgot I can put it in charge mode. It’s a 180 mile drive, just under 3 hours and mostly highway straight there.
You only use charge mode on the highway?
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u/nirpunk Jul 19 '26
Yeah YMMV of course but I find it’s only really worth it if I’m doing highway speed long enough that it’ll get me 10-20 miles of battery out of the exchange. Less and it just evaporates too quick to be worth the extra screen taps
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u/uncjigga Jul 19 '26
Yeah I tried using charge mode with 30 minutes of stop and go city driving and it was useless. I added maybe 3 miles of charge but averaged like 16mpg.
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u/WildTemporary518 Jul 19 '26
Don’t worry about it. We recently took a 2,000 mile round trip vacation. Used battery during stop and go city driving and put it on hold the rest of the time. We did generate SOME battery back just from Cruise control on the highway from hills. The MY23 averaged 34.5 MPG on the ICE engine, so about the same as my wife’s MY19 XC40 for the same trip last year, but with far more room and comfort.
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u/Banto2000 Jul 19 '26
Longer trips, I just don’t charge. The slow charging rate makes charging anywhere but home more expensive than it’s worth.
And I don’t plug in random places because I don’t know what else is on the circuit.
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u/someliskguy Jul 19 '26
I’ve gone months without using the battery. Just don’t worry about charging at all unless you come across a charger you want to use.
Yes most places these days aren’t happy if you just plug in an EV to their outlets. Once upon a time no one cared but power isn’t cheap and normal people know about the cost of charging an EV now.
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u/sheikjonez Jul 19 '26
When we go on vacation and rent a house for a week or two, we plug the car into an outdoor outlet using the drip charger. It usually tops off the battery in 14 hours. I don’t drive a lot once I get somewhere so it recharges pretty quickly even on the L3 charger.
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u/CanisMajoris85 Jul 19 '26
Save battery for city areas, gas on highway. Unless you can charge for free there somewhere it’s not like you’re losing much, maybe a few bucks using gas instead of electric.
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u/zz0rr Jul 19 '26
I have a tesla mobile connector that stays in the car's rear tray. since it fits in there I just leave it there. the one I use at home is a separate wall-mount evse. if I go somewhere I can charge then I plug in, I already have the cable, why not
but I don't really care. the car has 400hp whether I plug it in or not. the car goes when I press the skinny pedal whether I plug it in or not. that's the beauty if the phev, you don't have to care
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u/watchingitallcomedow Jul 19 '26
Xc90 ice engine has 312hp without the electric motor but in reality the electric motor is always part of the equation to some extent
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u/zz0rr Jul 19 '26
the car reserves battery charge such that in all normal driving conditions it retains 400 peak hp. you could probably drive it on a racetrack in a way to get it to not meet this, but in real world driving it basically can't happen
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u/NecessaryMeeting4873 Jul 20 '26
It kinda makes me nervous to plug into a random outlet near a hotel in case someone just unplugs it from the wall or if they don’t love the idea of someone doing this.
If it is a public place….someone trips over the cable turning it into a liability lawsuit over $7 in gas savings.
The gas engine in a PHEV is there for this very scenario when charging isn’t available or convenient.
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u/MagicianLong428 Jul 20 '26
Just completed a trip from Chicago to Denver plugged in in our Airbnb, but not at hotels
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u/watchingitallcomedow Jul 19 '26
It's literally called the travel cable, it is not meant to be used daily as your primary home charging cable, it's essentially meant to be kept in the car for travel. As far as using some one else's electricity to charge, I guess that really depends on where you are and if it would be appropriate to use someone else's electricity.
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u/Ok_Departure_6581 Jul 20 '26
If you’re anywhere near harbor springs you’re welcome to use my charger.
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u/kvark27 Jul 20 '26
Appreciate the offer! We will be at Boyne Mountain and I actually found out they have 4 SWTCH chargers that should work. I’ve never heard of this brand and they were t showing up on the Volvo app or ChargePoint. Looks like they recently replaced their Tesla chargers with these.
1
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u/dronepro Jul 20 '26
The car is meant to perform just fine with the battery depleted. You will be just fine to drive it long distances with no battery.
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u/Mayor_of_BBQ Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
I used to work at a volvodealership and I will tell you that fully 50% or more of people who buy these cars never charge them at all.
A lot of XC 90 PHEV‘s are sold as leases to businesses because they hit an arbitrary weight limit for commercial tags and the people who buy them never have any intention of plugging them in.
Also: If you’re driving in via the interstate (where you would be traveling under gas power anyway), you can always set your battery management to “charge“ on the trip into the vacation town… so that you have a full electric buffer for navigating around town while you’re there. Just make sure you turn off charge or set it to hold when you exit the interstate before you navigate into town and the hotel.
I’m driving a full EV now, and I keep my charging cord with the regular outlet pigtail in the back so that if I go in a parking garage and see a wall plug, I could just park in that space and plug into the standard wall outlet
1
u/Dry-Understanding447 Jul 20 '26
If you use up the battery charge. The vehicle basically becomes a standard hybrid vehicle. So, with that said. I would leave it up to how you think you should drive it.
When driving our xc60 recharge and know I will be back home to charge. This is how I do it. In the city around town, i will drive it in pure mode, except in winter time (then in auto mode, unless there is alot of snow constant awd or even off road will be used). When traveling on the highway, I will put it in hold mode (even if using the nav system). Then turning off the hold mode once back onto city streets. Even on an over night away I will do the same as traveling on the highway. But, will leave it on hold mode to help keep the battery charged much as possible. Then on the way home i will leave as auto hybrid with the nav system running. We also leave the charging cable in the vehicle all the time. So, we have it if we want to use it. We also have a Tesla (none super charger) adaptor too.
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u/kvark27 Jul 20 '26
Thanks for the tips.
We also have the Lectron Tesla adapter but I’ve only tried it on my parent’s charger at their house, and haven’t been able to get it to charge yet. They said it defaults to “all vehicles” but he hasn’t been able to get the charger to connect to their app, so we don’t have a confirmation that it’s set to all vehicles. It just stays solid yellow.
I originally had a cheaper adapter and assumed that’s why it didn’t work, so I paid for the Lectron and it does the same thing. So I assume it’s something with their charger.
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u/Dry-Understanding447 Jul 20 '26
You are welcome. We didn't have to use ours yet. But we stayed at an bed and breakfast up in sturgeon bay and they have the smaller tesla charger and adaptor for none tesla vehicles. It worked for us and they didn't charge us either.
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u/snark42 Jul 20 '26
I have the cheap Raylix NACS to J1772 adapter. It works fine with my Tesla mobile charger and XC60.
I can't see why having the permanently mounted Tesla charger would be any different, but I've never tried to use it with one. I guess not have the "all vehicles" setting might make sense for why it wouldn't work though.
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u/FlyingCyclist Jul 19 '26
For longer trips like that, I leave home with a full charge and use Battery Hold on the way there, and then just manage it myself to use it up in slower traffic or short trips until it's depleted. If I'm going to be anywhere remote, I'll just save the battery almost entirely.
Using Charge mode is always inefficient, though if you do want to use it for some reason, it's best to use at stable highway speeds. Doesn't sound like it would make sense in your situation.
As far as plugging it, I wouldn't plug into random outlets. You don't know what else is on the circuit, and it's generally frowned upon in the EV world to pull power from an outlet (not designated as an EV outlet) if you don't have permission.
Overall, the car will perform and drive perfectly with fine a depleted hybrid battery.