Nearly two years ago now, our family replaced our beloved 2017 Volvo XC90 with a 2024 Volvo XC90. The original XC90 had a catastrophic mechanical failure, due to reasons beyond its control^[1]. This led to our insurance company totaling the car.

When seeking a replacement for Erin, we initially thought we’d get a slightly-newer version of the same car, but quickly discovered two truths of July 2024:

1. The used market for Volvo XC90s was not very robust
2. Our XC90 was the “beater” trim, but was really well-optioned, which meant finding a like replacement was like finding a unicorn

Before long, with the knowledge that time was not on our side, we realized it’d probably be better just to get a new XC90. Furthermore, at the time, there were really great financial incentives for the plug-in hybrid model, so that’s what we bought: a 2024 Volvo XC90 Recharge.

In the last couple years, we’ve been extremely happy with the car^[2], and I thought it may be useful to share why. Doubly so since it appears PHEVs are taking some lumps right now.

To briefly recap, a plug-in hybrid means that Erin’s car has both a traditional internal combustion engine, as well as an electric motor. However, unlike traditional hybrids that have been around for twenty years, hers can be plugged in using the same connector full-electric cars use.

Unlike a full-electric car, her car gets only around 30 miles (50km) of range on a full charge. (And, surprisingly, it still takes around 8 hours to charge from empty.) After that, the ICE has to take over.

We live in the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia; this means that to do anything we need to drive. However, we’re lucky enough to live close to darn near everything, and as such, we rarely need to go more than about 5 miles to get to a store/appointment/etc.

Generally speaking, Erin will run a couple errands every day; it’s quite rare she cannot do this within one charge of the battery. Further, if she has both morning and afternoon errands, she can usually top the battery enough in the interim to make it all work on just electricity.

When we go to tailgates in the fall, we can usually make it roughly ⅔ of the way there on battery alone. For the remainder, the car automatically and unobtrusively switches to gasoline.

For vacations in which we take the car — usually a beach between 2-5 hours away — we just… drive the car. The battery depletes quickly, but then we just use gasoline. As we’ve been doing since we started driving in the late 1990s.

For us, the car really is no-compromise.

In fact, since we took delivery of the car in July of 2024, we have put roughly 12,000 miles (20k km) on the car, and have put in only 120 gallons of gas, across only 12 fill-ups. While it’s not at all a fair metric, the car’s effective lifetime fuel economy is 90.9 MPG.

The best tank of gas we got was effectively 469.3 MPG. That is not a typo.

Her last car’s lifetime MPG — across 7 years — was 19.1 MPG.

Our use case is unique, in that Erin has no regular commute, and we live very close to darn near anywhere we need to go frequently. However, for people in a similar situation to ours, I cannot recommend a PHEV enough.

The argument could absolutely be made that, in buying a car that has any internal combustion engine, we’re optimizing for the wrong thing. We could just rent an ICE car for the vacations, and have a BEV for the other 99% of our trips.

On the surface, that’s not wrong, but Erin buying a BEV wouldn’t really improve anything for us. That’s the whole point I’m trying to drive at with this post: her car is effectively a BEV for 95% of our trips with it.

My car, however, absolutely should be a BEV. I just can’t bear to part with it…