New XC90 T8 fails to start

[Philip Fisher]

Now that I have had a few days to get over it, I thought that I should post the following information in case anyone else has the same problem.

I took delivery of my XC90 T8 on 1.3.16 first thing. Drove it to work and also went out for a run at lunchtime in it. I then went to move it at 3.30pm and it wouldn't start. When you turned the start knob, the dials initially span round and back again, but then the gear selector did not appear on the dash. Much mucking about did not get it to work. I rang the dealer and they talked me through the problem, still wouldn't start. We performed a full reset, still wouldn't start. We did manage to get the gear selector displayed (by a long hold on the start button) but still it would not start. We could hear the actuator changing the gears but no drive.

The dealer turned up with a courtesy car and my car was recovered to a recovery compound to sulk for the night on it's own. I went home to sulk as well. It was then recovered to the dealer in the morning. When it was delivered to the dealer on the following morning it threw a proper hissy fit and refused to come off the trailer by not allowing the handbrake to release.

The dealer had it for 2 days (I was abroad with work so this was no problem) and they discovered that the software for the VDDM (Vehicle Domain Dynamic Module) was corrupted. Volvo had taken an interest in this problem and Sweden remotely connected to the car to help to identify why this corruption had happened. The diagnosis was that when the towbar software was installed it caused a conflict with and corrupted the VDDM. They re-installed everything and got it all to work properly. They are now apparently going to have to re-write the towbar software to fix the conflict for other vehicles.

I don't know if this is a T8 towbar issue or an XC90 towbar issue. I am guessing it is a T8 one as there possibly aren't many T8's with towbars out there yet.

So I got the car back on the 4th and am happy with it so far in my 3 days of ownership. The dealer were good, delivering me an XC90 D5 to allow me to get to the airport and then keeping me updated with progress and explanations. I am just hoping that this is one blip at the start of ownership and it will be plain sailing from here on in.

Cheers