I estimate I made the two-hour drive from our home to State College, Pennsylvania, about 10 dozen times over the past 16 years, either to visit our son while he was there attending Penn State University there or to go to a Penn State football game. (Often, the two went hand-in-hand.) Yesterday marked the first time I would do it in the XC90.
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The first all-electric Volvo XC40 will apparently debut this year. Automotive News reported yesterday—and we don’t think this was an April Fool’s Day joke—that Volvo will introduce the electric version of the XC40 before the end of this year.
Read MoreAt some point in my formative years, I learned that white cars are the easiest to keep looking clean.
Not actually clean, of course. White doesn’t repel dirt any better than black, red, blue or silver. I mean looking clean, as in not showing dirt as much as those other colors.
Interstate highways tend to be the quickest way from Point A to Point B. They’re also deadly dull. So, when we took the XC90 for a weekend jaunt to Atlantic City recently, I was happy to follow a back-road route mapped out by Waze. (Nice to have that on Apple Carplay now.)
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Volvo has one of the freshest and most attractive lineups of cars and SUVs on the market, but continuous improvement is the name of the game in the auto industry. Volvo has just announced new features and design elements for the 2020 XC90. Here are details, and other news from Gothenburg.
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So, yes, a concession. Of all the new technologies I gained access to when I upgraded from my 2003 GMC to the 2019 XC90, a tire pressure monitoring system wasn’t the one that most excited me. Glad to have it, sure. But it’s hardly as sexy as, say, Apple CarPlay or Pilot Assist.
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The XC90’s odometer clicked past 1,000 miles last week, an apt time for our first status report.
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It almost felt like the parking gods were gunning for me.
Walking toward the XC90 in the back corner of Garage 1 at Dulles International, I saw it from at least 50 yards away: a chrome-plated metal baggage cart, rolled up hard against my SUV’s passenger side rear bumper. My pulse quickened. With less than 1,000 miles on the odometer, had my new ride suffered its first ding?
Read MoreOur first road trip in the new XC90 wasn’t one I was expecting to make. Four days before Christmas, I received a phone call from my sister telling me Mom had fallen and broken her right ankle in two places. As a result, she would not be joining the family on Christmas day at my sister’s house, as she customarily does along with my stepfather, but rather would be recovering from surgery in a hospital two hours away.
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You know how annoying the driver is who approaches you with his high beams shining in your eyes?
The other evening, I was that guy.