TL;DR We took delivery of our XC40 Recharge yesterday with a full battery and I am still undecided about having purchased an extended warranty. We had $2,500 in rebates as California teachers and Volvo threw in another $1000 teacher discount and financed at %0.99 for 60 months. Technical details in another post. Overview We took delivery of our XC40 yesterday, I am going to divide up my initial reactions over a few posts. I am going to do a bit of biography here to put my comments in the proper context, please don't use this to steal my identity. My wife and I are teachers in San Diego. This fact impacts the rebates we have available to us so it is germane. This is going to be my wife's car so I haven't driven it yet. I have 30 years in a prior professions as an application developer in fields related to hardware control and internet, therefore the technology is a huge focus of my attention. We both drive nearly 50 miles each way in different directions to our respective schools. Going electric was a big deal for me because gas prices are not going down and I want to model good environmental behavior. My wife was interested in the immediate power and performance offered by electric vehicles. We are both in sight of retirement and ensuring stability of our finances is important. We buy nice things and keep them forever: This car replaces my wife's 2005 Ford Five Hundred that she drove off the lot new. That car will go to our oldest son who just got his permit. I drive a 2013 Kia Soul I purchased in 2015 to replace my 2002 Chrysler Town & Country that I totaled. We both are using Google Pixel 2 phones that should be replaced but we keep putting it off. Speaking of the Pixels, we are a Google household. We have Nest and Google Home products and use them for lights, temperature and security. We also use Google Voice numbers despite how difficult Google has made that. History I have a series of post from when we ordered to today. You can see that we had to wait a bit, first for Volvo On Call software fixes and then for something with the heat pump. I received a call from the dealer late Thursday, the same day Volvo notified us it was being release from the port, that we could pick it up as early as Friday. Prior to the Sale Carlsbad Volvo sent a credit app by email. The app itself was probably not theirs, but it was a poor piece of software and apparently I erred in submitting it so we had to redo this when we arrived at the dealership. We also sent in copies of driver licenses and proof of insurance ahead of the day. Day of the Sale We arrived at the lot just after 10AM as previously arranged. We were met by our salesperson and he brought the car out from being cleaned up and had us go over the vehicle and take a drive. We returned and dealt with the sales process including the credit app as mentioned previously. We had a "live check" from our credit union at 3% for 75 months but the dealer was able to give us %0.99 for 60 months (this rate was new for them on Saturday) and so that came close enough to my target to make sense. In addition we had $1000 from SDG&E's Champions for Clean Air rebate (teachers), $1000 from Volvo's Affinity program (again, teachers) and during the financing part of the day we also got the $1500 CVRP (California.) It is unclear even today if this is the same $1500 I applied for back in February but I suspect it is. There is currently an 84 day wait on CVRP applications. Technology Issues Our salesperson did have an issue linking the Volvo On Call IDs to the car. He claimed the issue was with the system. We were able to complete this step manually in the car later. Extended Warranty I am the type of person who immediately passes on extended warranties. I wasn't even expecting this to come up during the financing and hadn't prepared for anything but a "no" response. However, the price to extend the vehicle warranty to match the battery/drive train was ballpark where it should be, Volvos tend to be less reliable and expensive to repair and this is a version 0 of the car in some respects. All of these factors as well as a view towards retirement influenced me to believe that extra coverage might be warranted. The big problem for me was that the price of the warranty was not reduced because this was an electric car. There are a lot fewer things that could go wrong on this car. The finance specialist gave us a break (I think it was 20%) and so I went ahead and rolled it into the price of the car. It was not more significant than the cost of a major repair so I felt OK. (Meaning, I'm still conflicted about having purchased an extended warranty without going through the contract in detail.) Time on the Lot We spent about 3 hours on the lot. A lot of this time was spent watching TV. I think that this time could be reduced. The dealership did not go over the car in detail with us. Something I'm not sure I would have the patience for and my wife is fine relying on me to figure all the doodads out. Thoughts Volvo dealers are under a lot of pressure from the factory. Volvo wants to sell cars online at a fixed price and have dealers deliver and service them. This is not going over big with the dealer. If this happens the dealer needs to make some changes. They need to look at how the sales process at Tesla works and adopt some aspects. Currently the sales team sits across the desk and looks at a computer. At Tesla it is a cooperative process, you share the computer with the salesperson. I imagine financing still goes on behind closed doors but I think that overall we should have spent less time sitting across the desk from someone or watching TV while something went on in the back room. There was still too much paper. Although to be fair much of this was government mandated some of it surely could be resolved with e-signatures. Volvo, across the board, needs to tighten up its communications. They would benefit from a user portal where I could have gone to see status or communicate with customer relations and my salesperson. I would also have liked to see extended warranty information presented earlier in the process. It feels slimy to have it suddenly pop out when you discuss financing and then for them to do an ad hoc price drop.
Forgot to mention, we were given the option of a charger or $500 in ChargePoint credit. We chose the credit because I am currently in the process of installing solar with a charger and the vendor already added the charger in the contract. We're going to need the credit until we get the charger up and running.
Thanks for the great write up, I also really like the color. It should provide more than enough range for your requirements. Probably a wise idea on the extended warranty being a new type ( it may come in handy down the road, I hope it included EV specific items as well). Glad to see you received a discount, I personally check ahead and present other quoted extended warranty purchase prices which usually is effective bargaining tool. I am really impressed with this EV and look forward to more reports
Terrific write-up and I like how you mentioned the time spent at the dealership and specifically pointed out the not-sharing-the-screen part. The buying process shouldn't feel like dealers have to hide something. Also, that whole "back room something going on" that takes forever. It would seem to me it would be of great benefit to everyone to eliminate that.
Really love the car, wish it were mine. My wife is much more patient than I would be able the house not being ready for charging. We have a buggy infotainment system that keeps crashing so it's going back to the dealer on Monday.
