After six months and 8,000 miles, our XC60 T6 Recharge Plus plug-in hybrid long-termer has returned to Volvo, and it was with much reluctance that I handed over the key.

Not just because its amazingly effective heated steering wheel and seats were coming into their own in keeping me nice and toasty as the winter weather bites, but more so for its overall excellence.

During its loan, the Volvo has been adept at dealing with anything I’ve wanted it to do, from short trips to the tip to make the most of its bountiful carrying ability and practicality, to longer trips involving several hours of driving on motorways or trunk roads.

The spacious cabin, with its premium feel and design was always a welcoming place to be, while the infotainment system with its built-in Google functions, such as maps, added great functionality.

Although the Volvo’s supreme comfort is noticeable in urban areas and on rural roads, it impresses most on the longer haul trips where the performance and refinement from the plug-in hybrid powertrain came into their own.

Combined, they made covering long distances effortless and enjoyable.

The XC60 had also proved impressively efficient. WLTP figures say the XC60 has an electric-only range of 48 miles from its 18.8kWh battery – putting the car in the 8% benefit-in-kind tax band – and, over the summer, this seemed realistic.

I have a 38-mile trip to our office and could complete this journey with an indicated six or seven miles left in the battery.

As it’s become colder, the electric-only range has, understandably, dropped, so the XC60 now runs out of charge and switches to hybrid mode around three or four miles from my destination.

On longer trips far beyond the range of the battery, it has proved pretty efficient as well: a 360-mile round trip to Bolton saw it return around 41mpg.

The biggest downside of the PHEV powertrain fitted to our XC60 is that it only has a 3.5kW on-board charger, which means it takes around four-and-a-half hours to charge from a wallbox, making ‘splash and dash’ top-up charges while popping into a supermarket, for example, much less useful than they could be.

Volvo has since addressed this issue and has started to install a 6.4.kWh charger to cars ordered in 2023, effectively halving the charge time when using a compatible point.

However, this was a tiny blemish on what was otherwise a really impressive package.

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Assistance systems make life easy

As anyone who knows me – and those who walk past me in the office car park smirking as I try to shuffle Austin Powers-style into a space – will be aware that parking is not my driving superpower.

The technology in our long-term Volvo XC60 Recharge has helped no end, though.

The first lines of defence are its front and rear parking sensors, and these are fortified by the XC60’s 360-degree camera system.

This uses four cameras – mounted in the front grill, rear tailgate and under both door mirrors – to generate a bird’s-eye view of the car which is displayed on the infotainment screen.

It looks a bit strange at first as the graphic of the car makes it look like a video game, while all of the surroundings are stretched and seem enormous: the legs of people walking by look about 12 feet tall, for example, while the grilles of cars look big enough to swallow a human whole.

However, the view also gives you confidence to manoeuvre as you can see exactly where everything is: lining up squarely in parking spaces is much easier, for example.

The system also allows you to select the four cameras individually, so if you wish to use just the rear-facing one as a traditional reversing camera, then you can.

Our test vehicle is also equipped with a heated front windscreen and heated steering wheel (standard on Plus models), and these are starting to prove great value with the onset of the winter months.

Best practice for electric vehicles (EVs) is to use heated steering wheels and seats instead of the heater to keep them warm, as this is more efficient than heating the whole cabin.

This is something I will be putting to test over the next few months to see if I can continue to make my 38-mile commute to the office on battery alone.

Over the warmer months I would often have eight or nine miles of predicted range left on the 18.8kWh battery when arriving at my destination, which is pretty close to the official WLTP range of 48 miles.

However, as with all EVs, this range will be negatively impacted by the colder weather, making it more difficult to achieve.

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Google system suffers gremlins

I’m a big fan of Google Maps and how it has been built into our Volvo XC60 long-termer, but the system has suffered from some gremlins in the past couple of months.

Occasionally the pop-up box in the top right of the screen where you enter your destination just doesn’t appear, but I can still use the navigation by activating the Google voice recognition feature to set my destination.

A more inconvenient issue came as I was setting off for a holiday in Scotland. I was about 20 minutes into my journey when the whole infotainment system crashed.

When it came back to life, I had been logged out of the system, unable to log back in with my Google account as the system told me that user log-in was “restricted”.

This quickly became very irritating as all my destinations no longer appeared and each time I used the navigation I had to go through around half a dozen screens to accept terms and conditions and so on.

Poring through the menus found no obvious solution and neither did Googling my Google Maps issue, so off I headed to the local Volvo dealer – Arnold Clark Stirling.

They found that not only had I logged out of my Google account, but I had become logged out of the account which sits above that – ‘Owner’ – which is why I couldn’t log in directly as me.

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Just "lovely"

I don’t know why it continually surprises me as Volvo has been making excellent interiors for many years now, but every time I get into our long-term XC60 Recharge T6 Plus I think: “This is lovely.”

And it is. Volvo has proved adept at striking the right balance between traditional premium and contemporary design, and the XC60 is a great example of this.

First impressions of the cabin focus on the classy mix of black and silver materials, with the quality of build and materials excellent throughout. The leather seats live up to expectations, being really comfortable and supportive.

The full-length panoramic glass roof also gives the cabin an airy feel.

The driver interaction with the car adds to the premium experience. The TFT instrument panel is customisable and the way the information is displayed reeks of class – my preferred setting is to have the Google Maps-powered navigation displayed between the speed and power dials.

The XC60’s central infotainment system screen is mounted upright instead of in the widely-adopted landscape position.

This has always made sense to me, particularly as someone who uses sat-nav a lot – the portrait orientation lets you see further up the road ahead which is surely more important than seeing what’s to the left or right of you.

The touchscreen is also used to control a variety of other functions, such as media, heated seats and air-conditioning, but there are also a number of buttons and knobs situated in the screen area which are less fiddly to use.

One of the more basic requirements of a large SUV is also well catered for: space.

There’s plenty of room for four adults, and although it can accommodate five, anyone who draws the short straw and has to sit in the middle seat in the rear will find legroom significantly restricted due to the prominent transmission tunnel.

The boot provides a capacity of 468 litres, which is 37 fewer than that of the regular petrol or diesel models due to some electronics sitting under the boot floor, but it’s still a decent size.

If needed, practicality can be increased further by folding the 60/40 split rear seats to form an almost flat load floor.

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More efficient than expected

First impressions of our long-term Volvo XC60 Recharge T6 Plus plug-in hybrid suggested that it was going to be an impeccable car for long journeys and, so far, it has proved to be exactly that.

Work has meant I needed to do 380-mile round-trip to Bolton from my Norfolk home, and over the mainly dual carriageway and motorway route it was as comfortable and refined as I expected – and I was expecting a lot.

However, my hopes for the fuel economy were much lower though as, once the battery has run out, it relies on its 2.0-litre petrol engine to power what is a large and heavy vehicle: not usually a recipe for economical driving.

With the outward route programmed into the built-in Google Maps navigation, the car does not simply exhaust the battery and then just go on to using petrol, it adapts the power source to the route and circumstances: in the end, I was just around 20 miles from Bolton when it reached an indicated zero miles left in the battery.

There wasn’t the option to charge at my destination so I headed home with an empty battery, but still achieved an overall fuel economy of 42mpg: much more than the mid-30s I was expecting.

Another exciting discovery was just how good the Harman Kardon Premium Sound pack is.

I tend to listen to podcasts while I drive and there is a real richness and clarity to voices, while on the occasions I have put music on (largely either Heart Dance, Absolute 90s in recent weeks to give an example of the types of music played), the speakers have proved equally outstanding.

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Volvo XC60 Recharge T6 Plus joins our fleet

Volvo’s XC60 has long-been one of the best premium large SUVs, and now the most fleet-friendly version – the plug-in hybrid Recharge – has joined our long-term fleet.

In the T6 Plus specification of our test model, the car has a P11D price of £60,495, CO2 emissions of 24g/km and an electric-only range of 48 miles.

The 2022 model year XC60 Recharge models also feature a new larger battery with 18.8kWh instead of its predecessor’s 11.6kWh, and a new, more powerful rear electric motor now developing 147PS.

This gives it a combined power of 355PS, giving it more overtaking power than you should ever need.

This doesn’t come at the expense of its tax appeal though: Its efficiency figures put it in the 8% benefit-in-kind tax band, meaning a 40% taxpayer choosing the Volvo faces a monthly company car tax bill of £161.

Our test car is the mid-range equipment grade in the new, simplified line-up of Core, Plus and Ultimate, which replace the existing Momentum, R-Design and Inscription trim levels.

Standard equipment on our test model includes leather interior, climate control, heated front windscreen, 12-inch TFT instrument panel, blind spot indicator, 360-degree camera, rear collision warning with mitigation support, and LED headlights.

One particular highlight for me is its infotainment system. As part of a tie-up with Google, the system integrates a handful of its services into the car’s media system, including Google Maps for navigation.

Google Assistant is used for voice-activated functions and Google Play allows the user to download apps to the car itself.

I’m a long-term user of Android Auto, so it will be interesting to me to find out how this experience compares to using Android Auto in the traditional way.

First impressions are very good. The XC60 was already one of the most handsome large premium SUVs and the optional Denim Blue paint on our test car enhances its looks further.

The cabin is plush, roomy and comfortable, while the car – as expected - rides and drives really well.

The early electric-only range has also been encouraging: So far I’ve managed to do all my 38-mile commutes to and from the office on electricity alone, which will hopefully keep my visits to the petrol pumps to a minimum.