Volvo XC60 plug-in hybrid long-term test: report 4

The car Volvo XC60 T8 Plug-in Hybrid AWD Ultra Run By Darren Moss, Deputy Editor

Why it’s here To show that Volvo can match the best premium rivals for quality while also costing less

Needs to Provide comfortable and economical family transport while also functioning as a mobile office

Mileage 2103 List price £70,860 Best price £70,860 Price as tested £73,205 Official MPG 282.1mpg Test MPG 43.2mpg

3 June 2026 – Assistance and annoyance

With my fianceé’s family being from Stoke-on-Trent but us living and working close to London, we are frequent visitors along the M40 motorway corridor. We’ve learned to make a game of the journey, with the kids pointing out landmarks along the way and counting down the minutes until our pre-planned loo stop at Warwick services.

My Volvo XC60 makes such journeys a breeze, thanks to its plethora of driving assistance systems. Being in range-topping Ultra trim, my car gets blind-spot monitoring, adaptive cruise control and rear cross traffic alert – to avoid me reversing into the path of traffic – as standard, but every XC60 comes with automatic emergency braking, a driver attention monitor and traffic-sign recognition.

I mostly find these systems to be very useful. The adaptive cruise control is easy to set, and I like the graphic which clearly shows when the car has ‘spotted’ that there’s something in front of you and slows you down. But not all of those systems work well. The traffic-sign recognition, for example, sometimes glitches out and displays the wrong speed. Indeed, on the M25 motorway the other day the prevailing speed limit was apparently 80mph, and there have been times when I’ve passed a sign saying 30mph, but the car is steadfast in its assurances that I should be going 20mph.

Still, such occurrences are fortunately rare, and for long-distance cruising there are few cars I’ve run which seem as well suited to the task. The kids are well catered for, too, with USB-C charging points to keep their iPads topped up, and cup holders in the back of the centre armrest to stop their drinks from spilling.

With the children invested in whatever TikTok and YouTube serves up, my fianceé and I frequently listen to a podcast to while away the miles, and I’ve been enjoying the sound clarity that my car’s 1100-watt, 14-speaker Bowers & Wilkins stereo offers. This is another standard feature of Ultra trim, and it offers excellent tones and bass notes – especially useful if we need to wake the children from their nap with some energetic tunes.

One small grumble I have is that despite offering wireless charging for my mobile phone, the connection to Apple CarPlay is wired. And since I frequently use CarPlay to stay in touch with the office through WhatsApp, it’s a bit of a faff. 

I was so surprised not to see a wireless connection in my £73,000 car that I even looked it up on the car’s digital owner’s manual, but it seems Volvo doesn’t offer that feature on the XC60 at all.

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