21st August 2021
I am keenly interested in the future of motoring in the UK and I am quite curious about how the legislation changes in 2030 and 2035 will impact upon those who tow a ‘wobble box’ for our holidays.
Having driven a number of pure battery electric vehicles (BEVs), I am actually excited at the prospect of owning and enjoying any car that can drive without polluting the local community. For some, only a BEV will do. For others, for various reasons, a plug in hybrid will be preferable.
There are many within the caravan community who are concerned about the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel engined cars and what it will mean for the future of their holidays. I have written previously about how I think that the fear mongers need not worry, but there is no doubt that range anxiety and cost are major stumbling blocks for an awful lot of prospective buyers.
The Volvo will remain an issue for many whose budgets won’t stretch as far as this model’s (as tested) £52,125 price tag, but it does take away the range anxiety issue as its 60 litre petrol tank can be filled at any normal filling station.
First impressions of the V60 are good. It was delivered by a well presented gentleman who drove it to my home, before heading off to wait for a colleague to pick him up at the garden centre a short walk away. The petrol tank appeared to be fully brimmed, suggesting that the last part of his journey (after having topped the tank up with petrol) had been completed using the electric motor.
My first trip out was started within a few minutes and was to drop my girlfriend off at work, before heading to a caravan dealers for some help with a gadget. That overall trip was 29 miles and I didn’t think that I would manage to complete this solely using the electric motor. Indeed, a couple of miles from home the battery range dropped from 1 mile to nothing. However, in spite of keeping to the speed limits (rather than backing right off to conserve power) I made it all the way home and reversed on to my driveway without the 2.0 litre petrol engine kicking into life. Or so I thought... It turns out that the switch between the electric motor and the ICE is so seamless that it possibly happened a few times without me noticing.
I therefore decided against using this as evidence of the car’s true electric only range, and planned to undertake a couple of separate tests later in the week to assess this properly. So, more on this later.
My first few journeys in the V60 were without towing; travelling back and forth from the restaurant where my girlfriend works as a chef, taking my eldest daughter to the shops and my youngest daughter just out for a drive. The car seems quite lively, as you might expect from its 5.2 second 0-60 mph time, and surefooted on the road. The steering is quite light, but has adequate feel to enable confidence behind the wheel.
It’s also a comfortable place to be. It took a bit of playing around to get the right seat position for me, but once there the ability to store two positions in the memory means you shouldn’t have to struggle finding the perfect position again. The seats are comfortable and the car I drove had ventilated, as well as heated, front seats. I know that Elon Musk has dismissed the need for cold air blowing through holes in the seats, but I am a massive fan. I have driven a few cars with this feature and I know it’s something I’d make more frequent use of that the (far more common) heated seats.
Charging the batteries can, of course, be done using the internal combustion engine (ICE). However, even though there have been great improvements made in the efficiency of car engines over the decades, this really isn’t the most environmentally friendly way of charging a plug in hybrid. Even if you source your domestic electricity from coal fired
power stations, you will contribute less to global warming than if you charge your Volvo using the on board ICE. If you, like me, are fortunate enough to be able to source domestic electricity through solar or wind energy, you can be assured that you are producing even less of the harmful emissions that damage our earthly habitat.
I know that many people have suggested that BEVs are unsuitable for caravan holidays, as most camping and caravan sites don’t have dedicated car chargers. I have previously argued that this really isn’t a barrier and that holidaymakers can simply top up their batteries when going to the supermarket or when they visit tourist sites on days out. Quite obviously, caravan sites don’t have petrol and diesel pumps; so why should you expect to charge your BEV on the site. As it happens, I don’t have a dedicated vehicle charging point at my home either. One of my neighbours does, and had very generously said that I could park my car on their drive and ‘borrow’ some electricity whilst I was driving the Volvo, but I don’t have one myself.
So, before taking advantage of their very kind offer, I decided to check out the feasibility of charging the car via a three pin socket (commonly called ‘granny charging’). The thing is, I don’t have any outdoor sockets at the front of my home. What I do have is a caravan that is plugged into the domestic electricity of the house, via a three pin socket. I decided to briefly check whether I could physically charge the Volvo using the granny charger, plugged in to one of the three pin sockets in the caravan.
I should stress that I am not sure whether this would generally be recommended; not because of the folly of believing you can charge a car via a caravan, but simply because my caravan is - when it’s on the driveway - drawing its power from one single socket in
the garage. However, I can say that it did work! I only kept it running for a few minutes that time, but it (the car’s computer) suggested that the batteries would be fully charged in about six hours. That isn’t much longer than the five hours quoted for charging from an ordinary domestic three pin socket.
Towing with the V60
A major part of this test, was to assess just how good the Volvo V60 Recharge is at towing a caravan. The car’s maximum towing limit is 2,000kg, comfortably more than the 1,450kg MTPLM of my six berth Venus. So, I was reasonably confident that it would cope well.
First off, I should mention the process of coupling the caravan to the tow bar. The tow bar swings out from its stowage point behind the bumper from a push on a button inside the tailgate. The socket for the electrics sits on the left side of the actual hitch base, so there is no need to go hunting further under the car to plug the trailer electrics in.
Reversing to the hitch was made incredibly easy by the ‘trailer mode’ on the reversing camera. There was no need to guess where I was, as the camera gave me a clear line showing where to position the car and I was able to place it exactly where I needed to be. The lack of adjustable air suspension (a feature I do have on my current tow car) was a slight issue, as I was unable to lower the hitch quite enough to lock onto the tow ball because of the steep slope of my driveway. Fortunately, being a heavy chap, I was able to apply the downward pressure needed to secure the connection and check everything for safety. Once off my sloping driveway, it was simple enough to ensure that the jockey wheel was safely retracted.
The route I took from Andover to Wimborne was via Salisbury and skirting around the edge of Blandford. It was about an hour and a quarter, most using single carriageway A roads, with some brief expansion to dual-carriageway. The Volvo towed strongly and I never once felt that the car was underpowered or unable to safely slow the caravan down.
There was a little bit of a feeling of push and pull when using cruise control to maintain slow speeds, but it wasn’t troubling. It certainly didn’t sow any doubt as to the V60’s credentials as a tow vehicle.
The two motors of the V60 combined with superb efficiency to deliver the necessary power and enable the car to tug the caravan from start to finish. When leaving a reduced speed limit, such as a 30mph zone through a village, even a decent incline didn’t dent the Volvo’s ability to bring us back up to 50mph relatively swiftly. In such cases I managed this by nudging the cruise control up gradually; 30mph to 35mph to 40mph to 45mph to 50mph. This was quick enough to ensure that I wasn’t slowing anyone behind me and, whilst I was obviously limited to 50mph when those who weren’t towing were able to legally travel at 60mph, I found myself catching up with cars that hadn’t slowed fully through the villages, but weren’t really increasing their speeds much on the open roads.
I should stress that I wasn’t ‘racing’ or driving aggressively. Much as Volvo have provided fully comprehensive insurance with the V60, I most certainly didn’t want to risk an accident and the resulting damage to the Volvo, my caravan or to any other road users. I was driving sensibly; towards the limit, but not over it, and not focussed on having to achieve the limit either.
That said, I did cover some sweeping, winding roads at a reasonable pace and found that the car and trailer changed direction smoothly and without drama, enabling me to feel confident in making swift, legal progress.
The fuel economy when towing was, I think, reasonable. I did not check it on the journey to Wimborne, but did remember to reset the trip computer for the return leg. The car showed that the petrol consumption was 31.5 mpg. I should point out that, having seen the battery levels drop in between Wimborne and Salisbury, I used the cars control system to select the mode where the petrol engine would recharge the batteries. I did this so that I could drive through the built up areas of Salisbury in ‘Pure’ mode, avoiding the use of the ICE completely in the populated areas and, therefore, ensuring that I didn’t add to the local pollution. I did the same thing before arriving home. This will not, I think, have optimised fuel economy.
Even so, the economy I achieved is much better than I manage in my regular tow car and I expect it would be possible to improve on this by understanding the car’s characteristics better and adjusting the drive modes to extract the best performance.
It worth saying that I had charged the car’s batteries overnight before towing the caravan home. I did this using the ‘granny charger’ which I passed through a window into the caravan and plugged into one of the ordinary three pin sockets. I did switch off the caravan’s air conditioning and we used the 12v system for charging phones and running my CPAP machine. That meant that the only other thing running off the mains electric was the fridge. All went smoothly and the car’s battery was fully charged when I checked it seven hours later. This, answers one of the frequent challenges when people say that the ban on new ICE car sales from 2030 (and plug in hybrids from 2035) will end the touring caravan holidays. One of the many claims from those who claim that BEVs can’t make sensible tow cars is that caravan parks don’t have dedicated EV charging points and that owners of BEVs will therefore struggle to charge their cars.
I did manage to get a decent charge from a three pin socket, which shows that the future of EV driving and caravanning is possible. However, I then noticed that the site I was on did have one dedicated EV charging point. This was a little park that didn’t even have a cafe or restaurant on site, but did have somewhere to charge your electric vehicle. Bearing in mind we are over eight years from the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles, it seems likely that many more camping and caravan sites will provide dedicated EV charging facilities.
The Infotainment System
The Volvo has two LCD screens; a good sized portrait screen gives access to the infotainment pages, whilst the car also has the ubiquitous active display binnacle replacing the old fashioned analogue dials in front of the driver.
The central display has three main screens. The central one gives access to the music, phone and satellite navigation systems. This includes the control of the CarPlay (or Android Auto) functionality, something I made reasonable use of. To the left of this screen you can access certain systems such as the onboard WiFi, software updates, information about the car’s operations and ‘driver performance’. Moving in the opposite direction you will find such features as the drive modes; ‘Hybrid’, ‘Pure’, ‘Constant AWD’ and ‘Power’. Some of the buttons on the touch screen are relatively small and I would not recommend trying to change settings whilst on the move, unless you absolutely know where the buttons you require are. Diverting your attention from the road to change settings on the large screen can obviously increase the risk of an accident.
The better idea would be to use the Volvo’s voice control. You can set the temperature of the climate control, make phone calls, change the music and set the satellite navigation using simple voice commands. This seemed to work pretty well, although I didn’t use it an awful lot.
The instrument binnacle was clear and easy to read. When in hybrid or pure modes, the display looked pretty much like it does in the image (above) and you can see the battery being used by the needle going north from the 9 o’clock position, whilst regeneration is shown by the needle moving south. This display did usually also show the electric only range, as well as the fuel tank range. If you switch to the power mode, the right hand dial changes to a more traditional, but digital, rev counter.
EV Driving Range
Okay, so my tests of the pure EV driving range have shown that, for the majority of motorists, it really is possible to complete most journeys without emitting pollutants in to the atmosphere around you. According to the Volvo website, it is possible to get up to 27 miles of electric only driving from the V60 T6 Recharge. However, the documents actually show the range to be stated as 31-34 miles.
The first couple of trips I did as a test of the EV range were from my home in a village near Andover, to my girlfriend’s workplace in a village on the other side of the town, six and a half miles away. On one evening, in the midst of the hottest weather recorded in the UK, I left home with a stated EV range of 25 miles. I drove sensibly, not too fast and not too slow, with the air conditioning and ventilated seats working hard to keep me from overheating. And with my music pumping through the stereo. I arrived at the pub with a claimed EV range of 21 miles, so just four miles lost in a journey of nearly seven miles.
I then sat in the car park with ‘motor’ running, air conditioning set at 17°, ventilated seats set to maximum, listening to music via CarPlay, with the iPhone plugged in and receiving charge from 9:55 p.m. until my girlfriend finished work at 10:33 p.m. The projected ECV range had dropped just one mile in that time. This did drop another two miles as I set off and the car recognised that we were going to be covering some miles at speeds that do draw energy. When we got home again, covering just shy of seven miles, the projected range had dropped to 13 miles. This suggested that we could do the journey twice... just about.
The following day, at about 10:45 a.m., we did do the journey again so that she could start her next shift. The car had been fully charged overnight, using the granny-charger plugged into my caravan, and showed an estimated range of 28 miles when we set off. As with the previous day, the car was working hard to keep my temperature down in the high heat of a record breaking British summer and the stereo was blasting out rock tunes from one of my driving playlists on my iPhone. Whilst I didn’t race, I did drive a little more swiftly than I did the night before. This time, as I was dropping off rather than picking up, there was no need to wait around the car park for her; it was just get there and immediately get back home. The predicted range dropped from 28 miles to 15 miles, which given the return journey was between 13.5 and 14 miles, seems pretty accurate.
The next test I set the car was a challenging one. I had charged the battery up and, having noted that (usually) the predicted range from the battery is 28 miles, I set a 28 mile round trip. But, it was a testing one. It is 14 miles from my home to Coombe Gibbet. It isn’t an ‘easy’ 14 miles though; tight twisty roads and lots of big, steep hills.
I had traffic to contend with, including oncoming cars that sometimes don’t drive to the conditions. In particular, with the hot weather following on from some rain the hedges and grasses at the sides of the road were severely impacting on the visibility of the road around the many bends. A couple of times there were cars which should have been driving a little more cautiously than they were; but I must stress that I didn’t need to take any emergency manoeuvres or braking.
Anyway, I really didn’t expect the car to be able to get there and back without relying on the ICE. I know that this journey in a traditional petrol or diesel car is not compatible with good fuel economy.
It was looking like I would fall short by a mile or two, at least, as the car’s predicted range was down to 11 miles when I set of on the return leg. However, the use of the regenerative braking not only helped me to make it back without the petrol engine kicking into life, but I still had three miles of range showing for the battery pack when I parked on the driveway. I was really impressed by the car’s ability to cover this mileage over such challenging roads.
Again I should point out that I had the air conditioning set to 17o and the ventilated seats set to maximum, both of which obviously draw some power, especially in such hot weather. I didn’t have the stereo playing as I wished to ensure I heard the engine if it did kick into life, which it didn’t, but I did still have my iPhone plugged in and the Apple CarPlay was delivering the route guidance.
These tests suggest that, in more ‘normal’ weather and with less arduous journeys, it would be possible to exceed the quoted electric only range quite comfortably.
Verdict
The Volvo V60 T6 Recharge is definitely a very competent car. Committed eco-warriors will quite possibly discount it, along with any hybrid, as ‘not enough’ in the battle against CO2 emissions. However, plug in hybrids do have a lower carbon footprint than traditional ICE vehicles over the life cycle of the car and, importantly, can be driven without any direct emissions when in built up areas.
For those who wish to be able to achieve zero emissions for certain journeys, but feel the need for an ICE engine for longer journeys, or for when towing a caravan, boat or other trailer, the V60 is a great choice.
It is the first plug in hybrid that I’ve performed a tow test with, but it gives me great confidence that these cars can offer a great alternative to the more traditional diesel tug. It also suggests that the concerns about the future may not be warranted. I hope to be able to present a full electric review in a future edition.
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