Thoughts on BLIS

I purchased my V60 in Hartford, CT. If you've ever been there, you've probably experienced the joys of its highway system. Connecticut drivers are prone to dallying in the left lane even at baseline, but I-84 through Hartford accentuates this highly annoying tendency by employing a large number of left exits. To make things worse, I-84 curves through the city, and drivers seem to stomp on their brakes whenever they sense even the tiniest bit of lateral g-force. The result? About 7 miles of absolute fucking chaos.

I've always tended to pooh-pooh driver aids. My Honda Fit didn't even have traction control (and with 109 raging horsepower, maybe it didn't need it) and my Ford Focus ST had traction control but nothing else. In spite of my grumpy-old-man attitude, I immediately appreciated the extra security blanket afforded by Volvo's blind spot monitoring system (BLIS) as I drove away from the dealership. It works extremely well when cars are approaching from the left or right, giving you a subtle amber light in the corresponding A-pillar. If you flip on your turn signal as if you're about the change lanes into the car alongside you, the light changes from solid to blinking. It doesn't beep, unlike Mercedes and some other manufacturers' systems, and I appreciate the subtlety.

So BLIS works very well when a car is approaching you. However, it doesn't work well when you are passing others. As you pass and a car transitions into your blind spot, the system will light up about 75% of the time. The other 25% of the time the system does not react. It appears that this behavior might be related to closing speed - it seems that if I approach a car slowly, BLIS will activate, but if I'm passing more quickly, it is less likely to do so. There is some inconsistency and I've been unable to determine if a specific closing speed will or won't activate the system.

Here's an example of BLIS working properly (the blinking is due to the camera - the light is actually constant):

And here's an example of BLIS failing to light up:

I don't think this is a deal breaker. Presumably when you're overtaking, you are already aware that the car is in your blind spot. Volvo's manual itself states that the goals of BLIS are to react when:

• the vehicle is overtaken by other vehicles
• another vehicle is quickly approaching the vehicle.

The manual mentions nothing about when you are overtaking another car. I personally find BLIS to be quite helpful. Yet, this illustrates why manufacturers need to be very explicit and clear when explaining the function and limitations of driver aids. Volvo does a good job of explaining the limitations of City Safety in its manual but is far less detailed in its explanation of BLIS.

If you're in the market for a Volvo V60 or S60, should you get BLIS? I'd recommend it. You should be aware that driver aids can occasionally behave unpredictably, and you need to fight the urge to become complacent. Nevertheless, I find it reassuring to have a helpful yet unobtrusive safety system in congested, chaotic places like Hartford, Boston, New York, or other urban areas.

For further reading, check out this old but great article in Wired about the benefits and pitfalls of driver aid systems.

Road trip report - Montreal uphill both ways in a snowstorm

Montreal, Quebec is an easy 180 mile drive from home and my wife and I love to head there for quick getaways. Even in the dead of winter, the city is full of character, charm, and great food. This past weekend we booked the lovely Loews Hotel Vogue in downtown and packed up the V60 for a road trip.

Unfortunately, the weather was not cooperating this weekend. We were hit by a moderate snowstorm on the way up but the V60 was completely undeterred, as the roads remained fairly clear. The outbound trip took about 3 uneventful hours.

Architecture is not one of Montreal's strong suits

The food and drink makes up for the lack of architectural splendor

On Sunday, northern New England and southern Quebec was hit by a big Nor'easter dumping around 12-18 inches of snow. We had a late checkout scheduled at the hotel (4 PM!) but the snow was already coming down heavily, so we left Montreal around 2 PM. By then, the roads were already a slippery mess.

The highway out of Montreal

The V60 was the perfect vehicle for this. Despite incredibly nasty road conditions, the car was surefooted and confidence-inspiring. As we hit Vermont, the skies darkened and visibility plummeted. Snowplows seemed M.I.A. as large stretches of highway were inches-deep with wet, heavy snow.

Looking good, eh?

It took us about 5 hours to cover the 180 mile return journey including an extended probing screening at the border. I couldn't have asked for a better car for the treacherous drive. The front seats remained super supportive and I can see this being an outstanding car for long road trips. The only real issue remains the terrible, very bad headlights. Terrible! Sad! On dark country highways, there simply isn't enough illumination from the low beams to keep a safe view of the road ahead. I'd highly recommend checking out the xenon headlights if you are considering the V60 or S60.

The car is reporting 26.2 MPG for the journey on 87 octane, and the hand-calculated mileage is 25.5 MPG.

Afterthoughts

Minor nitpick: The front parking sensors get iced over too easily, leading to false-positive beeps in the middle of nowhere.

Minor victory: There is, it turns out, a way to adjust the defroster intensity! When you hit "max defrost" the system immediately turns the fans to hurricane force. In my past cars there was usually a "normal defrost" setting, but not in the Volvo, as I've previously mentioned. You can, however, manually turn the fan speed knob down to quiet the cacophony. Success!

Looks good, drives good

The V60 drives GREAT in the snow. As someone who has always driven FWD cars, having AWD makes a noticeable difference in confidence and capability. Also, something about a Volvo in the snow just looks... right.

Wipers don't lift up easily

We're getting a big snowstorm today in New England and typically people around here lift up their wipers when they park, to prevent snow from accumulating on the blades and freezing. I tried to do this and... I can't! The driver side wiper impacts the rear edge of the hood and doesn't raise up. The passenger side lifts up completely, but rests against the edge of the hood. Maybe Swedes don't lift up their wipers. Or maybe it's a silly design mistake. I think it's a silly design mistake. I would have expected better from a company based in snowy Scandinavia.

[Addendum] Thanks to commenter Jonathan, I've discovered the magic "service mode"!  I tried this feature and, in fact, it works like a charm. It lets you completely lift up the wipers.

Center stack ergonomics and iPhone connectivity

Ergonomics and infotainment are tough to evaluate properly when buying a car. When you test-drive the car, it can be hard to pair your phone, dig through every feature, and evaluate ease-of-use while the salesman is hovering nearby. Far too many reviewers gloss over usability issues and fail to provide specific comments or complaints. PC Magazine did review Sensus (Volvo's infotainment system) but focused on bits that no one will ever use, namely, the web browser and 3G connectivity.

One reason I started this blog was to provide some more in-depth evaluation of the V60. When it comes to controls/infotainment, what I really care about is:

- Is this system easy to use and ergonomic?
- Will I be distracted when I'm trying to use this system?
- Are there bugs or glitches?

I could spend days writing about each detail on this car, but I'll try to write only about center stack ergonomics and iPhone connectivity today.

Center Stack Ergonomics

When you first get into the V60 (or S60, or XC60), the center stack can be intimidating. It looks like a sea of homogeneous chicklet-sized buttons. After a short period of acclimation, the layout becomes fairly logical, and I vastly prefer buttons over touchscreens. When driving, it's far less distracting to push a button and have that immediate feedback, compared to swiping and scrolling through touchscreen menus - a task often made worse because you're outstretching your arm and the road may be bumpy. Furthermore, I think knobs are the best human-car interface for most tasks. It's precise, easy to grab without looking, easy to operate with gloves, and provides tactile feedback as you scroll through the detents. I don't know what Honda was thinking when they removed all knobs from their infotainment system and replaced it with a linear touch-based volume slider. Terrible decision.

There are some ergonomic oddities with this center stack, however. Think of some common tasks you might want to do:

"I want to synchronize the left and right climate zones." Sorry, you literally cannot do this. For unclear reason, there is no way to couple the left and right climate controls. If you've got both set to 67 F and you want to change to 70 F, you have to turn both wheels.

"I want to defrost the windshield, but I don't want max defrost." Every car I've driven in the past has two defrost settings - regular, and max. In the Volvo, you can only do max defrost. I don't know why this is not simply called defrost, but there you have it.

"I want to turn the climate control/HVAC completely off." In order to do this, you have to actually turn the small fan speed wheel (marked "Auto") counter-clockwise until the fans shut off. There is no Power button, strangely.

"I want to defrost the mirrors." Actually, the rear window defroster denoted by the square window button also turns on the mirror defrosters, according to the manual. Good to know.

Infotainment - iPhone Interface

As you can see above, Sensus displays menus in a list form and the user uses the right upper knob (labeled "Tune") to scroll through these menus. Embedded within that wheel are the contextual OK/Menu and Exit/Back buttons. 

If you have your iPhone connected via Lightning cable, you can browse your phone contents within Sensus. It's not immediately clear how to browse - In the default Now Playing screen, you have to actually turn the Tune knob at least one detent to enter the track list, and then click Back one or more times to get to the main menu shown above. It's an ergonomic misstep forced by making OK and Menu share a single contextual button.

Note: If you connect via Bluetooth streaming, you do not have any browsing capabilities. It streams what's on your phone only, and you must use the phone for all control such as browsing through tracks.

Within the submenus, scrolling is extremely intuitive with the right scroll wheel. It's very easy to do with peripheral vision and a minimum of attention. You can also use the thumbwheel on the right side of the steering wheel, although this is less ideal for scrolling through long lists. You can also search through your lists with the number pad. Just use it like you're typing on a dumbphone, albeit without T9 predictive capabilities (the young kiddos these days will scoff).

Bugs:
I had previously mentioned that occasionally the connection will fail and cause the audio to skip uncontrollably. This is remedied by going into a different source such as Radio, and then immediately switching back. This has happened three times in about 1000 miles of driving.

Another bug: the Podcast section is completely garbled. The podcasts are there, but they are listed under the wrong titles. For example, my 99% Invisible podcast episode "222 - Combat Hearing Loss" is showing up under This American Life. They seem to be completely mislabeled and there are two entries for 99% Invisible, both containing the wrong things. So, the Podcast organization is very, very broken.

That's it for today!

Road trip report - Beer run to Maine

I took the V60 on a short road trip this weekend to Maine Beer Company in Freeport, Maine, stopping off in Portland for food. Maine Beer Co. has been around since 2009, makes absolutely fantastic beers with minimalistic white labels (their stout, Mean Old Tom, was my favorite), and has the annoying motto "Do What's Right." We also wandered around the Portland Head Light, which has been in operation since 1791. Portland is chock-full of fantastic restaurants, breweries, and fancy third-wave coffee bars manned by mustachioed baristas, and should be a destination for any New England foodie. We had an incredible lunch at local institution Duckfat before proceeding to Freeport.

General Impressions
I'm happy to report that the V60 absolutely eats up highway miles without much to complain about. The ride was quiet with just a moderate thrum from the Dunlop winter tires, buns were kept comfortable and toasty by the amazing seats, and the base sound system was solid although not spectacular. My backseat passenger didn't have any complaints about the legroom over about 160 miles of driving, but I still wish Volvo had made the rear accommodations more spacious.

Infotainment
I did have two separate instances where the "iPod" link started to skip uncontrollably like a 1990's CD player. I needed to switch to a different source i.e. Radio, and then switch back to resume playback from my iPhone, which was hard-connected to the system via Lightning cable. The fact that it's still termed iPod is a clue to the age of Volvo's infotainment system, yet it works extremely well overall. The rightmost wheel on the center stack acts as a classic iPod clickwheel - turn to scroll through Artists, Albums, etc. and click the center buttons to select options ("OK" and "Back"). I think this system is vastly preferable to touchscreens that are both more distracting and less precise.

MPG
I achieved 26 mpg on 87-octane and drove 398 miles (~90% highway around 70 mph) before the low fuel warning came on. The EPA-estimated 29 mpg highway might be achievable in the warmer months. It's a decent performance for a heavy, AWD car in cold weather on winter fuel.

Afterthoughts
Minor victory: You can enter addresses into the navigation system while driving!!

Minor nitpick: The LCD display is totally underused while navigating. It gives you a giant arrow as you approach a turn, but doesn't provide any further info such as the street name or exit number. You have to look at the main screen for that.

Tank One MPG

I filled up for the first time yesterday, and the hand-calculated MPG was 21.5. This was almost 50/50 city/highway - 150 mile trip home after buying the car, nearly all local afterwards. The computer was reading 23.4 and EPA rating is 23. Overall it's not an impressive figure. I drove a lot of short distance trips in below-freezing weather this week, so we'll see if the numbers improve.

I filled up the car with 87 octane. The manual recommends 87 at a minimum, but states that higher octane fuel may improve performance. Pretty vague, if you ask me.

I'll run the next 5 tanks on 87, do a single tank "washout period" using 93, and then run 5 tanks on 93 to see if there's a difference. Of course, my driving conditions might vary so this isn't the perfect experiment. When I start my new job in July I'll have much better controlled conditions for a fuel economy test, because I'll be doing 106 miles per day in nearly pure highway driving.