I’ve had a 2023 XC40 B5 Ultimate for a week as a loaner. I wish I had gotten it instead of my 2023 S60 B5.

Even with the big 20” wheels it rides well — and this in spite of me not being a short side wall fan. The big wheels / short tire sidewalls do add some highway noise but not bad. Around town it’s quiet. Actually I’m impressed with how well it handles bumps and road imperfections. My S60 just seems stiffly sprung in comparison. It’s also very nimble and easy to drive.

Drove 5:30 today on interstate and some mountain state highways. Averaged 31.7 mpg.

The gap between the thigh extension and seat base did feel slightly uncomfortable under my left thigh. I ended up putting seat padding foam in the gap which resolved the problem.

My main complaint is the inability to fully extend my left leg. The dead pedal to much too close due to the wheel well. That forces my ankle to be at an odd angle. I can extend my leg to the right of the dead pedal but my foot is rotated. I have more legroom in a Mini Cooper. This and the S60s superior seat comfort are why I chose it over the XC40. But, given a second chance, I’d go with the XC40. The extended test drive allowed me to adjust to the issues I found on the short test drive. The size and ride fit my lifestyle more.

 

Last month, my wife and I took a 1200 mile week-long road trip up and down the east coast USA, seeing family and sightseeing. We bought "Storm" as a CPO from Volvo in Maryland w/78k miles. It's a base Momentum with pretty much every option and package, minus the Orrefors gear shifter Aside from getting the vehicle about 400 miles away from our home in August 2022, this was its first real road trip.

As it's my wife's car, she came from a 2001 S80 Executive (yup, with the factory TV, fridge, and sunshade!) here are some reflections on the vehicle :

• In Eco mode, which is we drove in the entire trip, we achieved almost 500 miles per tank; the mileage was 97% highway miles. I believe the MPG per the trip computer said 37 MPG at the end of the trip. This is a testament to great engineering, as it's tank is only 14 gallons. My XC70 with an 18.5/19-gallon tank gets 450 miles...that's a massive saving in fuel to go the same distance. We did add STP High Mileage fuel injector cleaner at every fill-up.
• While the S80's seats were comfortable, we found that on longer trips we had to shift around a little, get out, and stretch, and by the 3rd hour, our backs were starting to hurt. The XC40's seats are a pretty major upgrade--no back pain the whole way!
• We really like and appreciate the Pilot Assist/Lane Keep Assist feature! When it was getting late, I found the car merging itself back into its lane as I was hitting the rumble strips. After a couple of times of doing this, it suggested a coffee break! After we stopped for a "fika" coffee break, we put in on Pilot Assist. It took some of the stress out of driving!
• The only "issue" that we experienced was a TPMS alert going off saying all tires were low. While I didn't have a gauge, they all looked acceptable, so I re-calibrated it. No more issues!

Overall, I believe the XC40 is marketed more towards being a city car, but as with any Volvo...it enjoys a good little stretch every once in a while. Storm loves the open road! View attachment 198298
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Great mileage! Do you have the T5 or T4, and do you have AWD?

 

We have the T5 AWD. It really did perform well!

 

We have found our Xc40 to be a great road trip car. Its not our primary road trip vehicle - thats our V90 CC, but over the five years of ownership we have done a couple 3,000 mile trips and a couple 1,800 miles trips.

We love the XC40 seats - we often do around 850 miles in one day and found them to work well for us.