I just finished a 10 day 1250 mile trip in a 2024 XC90 B6 Ultimate rental. The car was beautiful and had only 12k miles on it. My experience with the car was overall positive. Sharing some thoughts while it is still fresh:

Pros

Very sharp looking car.
Very comfortable and well appointed.
The seat coolers actually work well. Seems like this should be a given but is not my experience in other cars.
Good fuel economy - 25.5 mpg trip average which I find quite good for an SUV this size.
B6 has good power. Very snappy off the line.
Park sensors and cameras worked very well.
Sensus infotainment system was better than I expected given some of the feedback here, although it was occasionally laggy.
Overall packaging was excellent. Great interior space despite being "mid-sized."
Interior materials were top notch.
I really liked the clear roof and shade system.
Auto tailgate was great. Thought I'd miss the split tailgate of the first gen but this was fine.
Thigh bolsters in seat were great along with overall seat adjustability.
HUD was great and worked well.
Driver assist functions (adaptive cruise and steering assist) were useful but not great. Cross traffic alerts worked well.
Lane departure warning worked well and was not obnoxious.
Start stop system was probably the best I've encountered although not perfect and I still don't like it. I'd say it definitely helped with fuel economy.

Cons

No wireless CarPlay is a strange omission in 2024.
No lock/unlock based on proximity is a strange omission in 2024. The handle touch based lock/unlocked did work well.
Auto high beams have to be activated on every start, which is a bit odd.
While the B6 power was good, it was laggy and somewhat unresponsive. On winding mountain roads this car did not want to play and was always in the wrong gear. Hit the gas and it lags. Press the gas a little more and you get a big downshift and it takes off. The capability is there. The programming is poor. Manual shifting helps a bit but has some delay as well. Maybe a Polestar tune would help. B6 also drops off in acceleration above a certain speed - i.e. passing on an uphill mountain road it starts out ok but then you start counting seconds as it gathers some momentum.
Electric power steering was ok but lacked feedback. It felt more like a good video game wheel.
Start stop system wasn't perfectly smooth when started from a stop. It was also annoying in parking situations. These are the two reasons I still don't like the auto start/stop.
Electric power brakes were not so smooth. Not progressive enough.
Volvo could put a little more effort into the exhaust tuning to make it sound a bit better.
Adaptive cruise control was dangerous and not usable in stop and go traffic. It would follow the car in front fine, but if that car stopped the system had delayed braking which could surprise the car behind. Once stopped the system would also not start on its own. You have to manual press the gas to re-engage. This is not up to the standards of competitors.
Steering assist "self drive" was helpful. Nice to have when opening a bottle of water. But at times it was confused and wandered like a drunk.
No auto park feature that I could find. Good implementations of auto parallel park on other cars have worked scary well.
Seems that car cannot be locked if key fob is not nearby. Why?
Button to put car in park does not give sufficient tactile feedback. A couple times I though I was in park and wasn't... Not acceptable for a Volvo.
Seems like a little more effort could be put into driver information functions common on just about every other car. We have a trip and auto trip gauge and not much else. Could not find any fuel economy history, battery usage, performance gauges. Nothing. It's like they ran out of time but this design has been on the market for a long time...what have they been doing?
I didn't find the stereo to be all that great. Too much bass and that bass was very muddy.

Concerns

Day one into trip we encountered an SRS failure. Drive to shop. etc. Some sensor issue. We figured out that this failure could be avoided if the passenger got in and buckled their seatbelt before the car was started. For a Volvo with 12k miles I think this type of issue is shameful.
One week into the trip the check engine light came on. It stayed on for the rest of that day. In the morning it was off and did not reoccur.
Random and sporatic turn signal bulb failure warnings.

Overall
Overall I enjoyed driving this car and it was perfect for our trip. This car is physically well designed and has great packaging, but has antiquated electronics and some seemingly poor programming. It makes me wonder a bit how seriously Volvo benchmarks the competition and whether their engineers have any enthusiasts among them. Many of the concerns I listed should be easily remedied if there was as much attention applied to the craftsmanship of the electronics and software as other areas. On the whole I think the pros outweigh the cons. However, the SRS fail, CEL, and turn signal gremlins would be the bigger concern for me. All completely inexcusable for an 8 month old car with 12k on it. When it comes time to replace our aging 1st gen XC90 V8 this is the one thing that would make me hesitate and stay away. Any others out there experiencing electrical gremlins?

I second a lot of your concerns, even before the CEL, SRS, and turn signal failures. Those are unacceptable. Our former 2017 had the same turn signal failures and required multiple visits to the dealer.

Our 2023 B6 has been great overall, with the exception of two electronic failures already before 10k miles:
-Rear auto brake reduced functionality and park assist reduced
-False TPMS light

I’m willing to bet Volvo has done the bare minimum when it comes to software and electronics. That’s apparently been the case since the first SPA hit the road in 2015. 9 years later, the same problems persist. They can’t even get their newest, most advanced EV’s on the road without serious issues.

Volvo could have grabbed a huge market if they simply made their cars more reliable.

 

Volvo could have grabbed a huge market if they simply made their cars more reliable.

True, but then they'd be boring like Toyota.
And nobody wants a boring car, that's why we're here - to enjoy the Volvo experience!

 

I don't own a XC90 but haven't heard a lot of good about the SPA platform XC90. My garage (volvo specialist, not a dealer) used to have a SPA XC90 and loads of troubles with the electronical system (alternator, etc. etc.). Shortly after they finally had it fixed, a piston developed a hole (D5 SPA engine) and that was the end of the 5 year old volvo. At the moment he was telling me this, he had two other SPA volvo's with strange electrical problems and issues waiting on repair and bought himself an older 2014 XC60 (P3 chassis). And they had almost continually T6's and T8's with failed ERAD's in repair.
As for driving; my uncle has a v90 t5 and my parents have a XC40 T4. Both of them have had zero issues with their cars (but don't drive a lot). In my experience, the V90 is a nice car to drive, but the strangeley enough, XC40 is imho horrible; the steering is very 'distant' (no feedback), the brakes are way to sensitive and also give no feedback, the throttle pedal is way to light and the seats are abysmal.
Anyhow, although i really like the design of the 'new' SPA volvo's, i'm not sure if i'd every buy one due to the build quality, software and electrical issues and off course the lack of buttons.

 

The reliability concerns are really a shame on what would otherwise be a good choice despite some of the other cons mentioned. When it comes to reliability boring is exactly what the goal should be. Hopefully, I can delay any decisions on a next car for a while.

 

So my 2017 T6 is different:

Seat cooling works enough to say that it works. I've only been in two other cars with cooled seats, and they we both quieter and more powerful. They were both Ram 1500s of the previous two generations, so I had assumed they would be toward the lower end of the spectrum, and maybe I'm just wrong and they're above average lol. Does it need to be stronger? No, but I'd love it to be quieter on the higher settings.

Start-stop is rough. It will turn the car off as you're creeping forward, and then the car will stop moving forward. Restart feels shaky (but I recently changed my torque mount, and that could have easily been a contributor. The car will fail to restart sometimes - like it just decides not to try, and then you have to restart the car yourself. It doesn't seem to work well in drive-thrus or for long lights, because it'll stop/restart multiple times.

The adaptive cruise part of PA works great unless you have the distance maxed out and you're taking a corner. PA overall has been flawless for me in traffic, and for highway use, exactly as you said - "helpful [...] But at times it was confused and wandered like a drunk." I find that something about PA makes long drives less tiring. I can finish a 7 hour drive and still socialize somewhat when I get there, whereas in my old outback I needed to wind down.

I just have whatever the Regular audio system is below the BW and it's still the best sounding car I've been in. Not sure if there's extra sound deadening/damping for the BW or anything, but road noise is the limiting factor in sound quality by a country mile.

I think the big issue is that Volvo did a big push in 2016 to make the XC90. The design language was beautiful and holds true even today, but the tech that was great in 2016 has not held up well after 8 years, and they don't seem to have the appetite to do a considerable update of any kind. AAOS is still lacking in so many areas, despite years of development, and updates seems to be like playing russian roulette. The XC90 is selling as-is, probably due to the visuals and comfy interior, so maybe they're just not incentivized to spend development dollars on a real refresh. Also evident in the lack of features/persistent bugs/stagnation of the phone app.

 

There seems to now finally be some used car deals that are more attractive from an availability and pricing perspective. At least in my area the available supply has taken a drastic tick up in the last month or so. We are going to try to be more proactive on the replacement of our current XC90 rather than waiting until it becomes urgent (transmission flaring regularly now.)

The second gen XC90 is still on our shopping list despite everything above. There are very few SUVs that are similar in terms of size, 3 row, features, performance and price range. When looking at alternatives there is always some box not checked. We'll be looking at some options this weekend. I'll post back here if we decide on anything.

 

My wife and I found a gorgeous, well priced 2023 XC90 Recharge and went to check it out today. The dealer also had a variety of other cars including the BMW X5 and X7, as well as the Porsche Cayenne. After looking over the XC90 and test driving it, my wife lost interest in even looking at the other options. We ended up buying the car and driving it the 200+ miles home. This particular model addressed several of the cons I had expressed in my original post wrt the B6.

• Due to the big electric motor, throttle response was immediate. In hybrid mode the car has decent power on the electric motor alone. If you happen to be running on electric only, there can be a lag and lack of smoothness if you call for enough power to cause the gasoline engine to start. Given the nature of the system this seems somewhat expected. If the engine is already running the transmission downshift may still be somewhat laggy. However you are really hauling at this point so the electric motor does a good job hiding it. The car does not have the Polestar software - that may help the downshift response. With all of the immediate electric torque my wife described the car as feeling "light." I guess that means it feels smaller than its size and weight.
• The start/stop system is a complete non-issue on the Recharge. You don't need the gasoline engine to run for the car to move which means starting from a stop is completely smooth and the awkwardness in parking situations is gone. You don't even realize when the gasoline engine is running or not.
• The B+W stereo is good

Fuel mileage on the test drive with a little charge in the battery was 53mpg. Trip home mileage was 25mpg which is pretty good given the 75mph speed limits and headwind.

Interior is very nice but this blonde interior color is going to require wearing a clean room suit when driving the car...

Now I just need to hope that the gremlins I encountered on my rental B6 stay away.

 

Pics or it didn’t happen 😃

 

 

Update after a week or so. So far no major surprises over the info I posted earlier. A few other observations:

Pro
- PHEV system is better than I expected. It is possible to do most local driving on electric only even at highway speeds.

Cons

• The battery takes way too long to charge on a standard 120v wall outlet. It takes something like 16 hours on the circuit I have in the garage.
• The heads up display doesn't like polarized sunglasses. However, this is true of every HUD I've used.