VOLVO Complaints

The piston rings failed on the 5 cylinder engine. The car is not available for inspection as I got rid of it since it cost 16k to repair. My saftey and many others were put at risk as it would cause the engine to heat up excessively and possibly cause a friction weld of the pistons to the crank. This could imobilize the car during driving and cause a crash. I had the car inspected by a automotive tech and the piston rings were found to be at fault. I also had volvo themselves check snd they came to the same conclusion. They said this was normal on these cars. The warrenty company that I went through said they wouldn't cover piston rings. There was no warning about the piston ring problem other than after the fact when the engine drank all the oil and I got a low oil warning.

The "p" button on the car malfunctions. It does not always engage when pressed. After I pressed the "p" button, the car didn't go into park mode and started to roll forward. This put me in danger as well as pedestrians who may have been walking down the street in front of the car. I notified the dealer and they did nothing. There were NO warning signs. Because of the failure of the "p" button to function properly, my car rolled into a parking meter and caused in excess of $4,000 in damages.

SRS warning light and was told that is is due to a faulty misassembled wiring in the seat harness. Possibility of the airbags not deploying correctly in case of a crash. The dealer has confirmed that it is the seat harness that needs to be replaced. Due to the Month/Year of the vehicle it does not fall under the original recall which was only for vehicles that were manufactured between Jan/May 2015.

The 360 camera system stopped working on my 2025 Volvo XC60 PHEV today without warning. When I put the vehicle in reverse, the camera view window showed up on the screen with a top down of the vehicle, but the surroundings were black and each camera symbol showed up as orange with a cross out through it. Rebooting the system twice did not solve the issue. The software version is 3.7.0 which is the most up to date release.

The “Tire Pressure System” warning appeared and has not turned off. New TPMS sensors were installed but the dealership could not get the car to calibrate despite multiple attempts. It has come to my attention that other models of Volvo have this same trouble, and a software update is required.

My 2025 Volvo XC60 Plug-in hybrid Ultimate package was built with laminated rear passenger windows. The car is less than one-year old and both rear passenger windows are very cloudy (see attached), obstructing the vision of the driver in situations such as when changing lanes or parking. This could easily contribute to an accident on the highway or endanger children or pets in driveway conditions. The occurrence of this defect can be found in multiple social media posts and appears to be limited to the XC60 model with the Ultimate package. My Volvo dealer agreed that both windows have significant cloudiness during my August 2025 service visit. Even after submitting photos of the cloudiness, Volvo corporate, while acknowledging the condition, refuses to remedy the defect.

Backup camera not activating when in reverse sporadically. My recorded video of this happening: [XXX] Issue has been brought to the Volvo dealership service department. Remedy from the Volvo service has been to update software but it has not corrected the issue. Multiple of owners have encountered the same issue which is widely documented online. INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)

My Volvo was left in the garage for three weeks while on vacation, came back and the sunroof was cracked. The dealer inspected the car, but claim the sunroof was hit (which is not true). There is no evidence that the sunroof was hit.

The vehicle is subject to NHTSA Recall 25V-282 for a rearview camera failure that increases the risk of a crash. First Repair Attempt (August 15, 2025): A Volvo dealership performed the prescribed software update but failed to fix the safety defect. The vehicle was returned to me in the same unsafe condition. Second Repair Attempt (August 20, 2025): The dealership identified the root cause as a failed front parking sensor. They refused to cover the repair, classifying it as "physical damage" despite providing no evidence of an external impact. Manufacturer Refusal (August 22, 2025): Volvo Car USA formally denied my request to have the safety recall completed, improperly claiming the issue was due to "outside influence." They have refused to honor the recall and their new vehicle warranty. The manufacturer and its dealer have failed to remedy this acknowledged safety defect, leaving me with an unsafe vehicle. The dealership returned the vehicle to my home against my wishes while I was at work.

We’ve owned a couple of the XC60s from the new generation. We have had many conversations with Volvo and the dealership but they have yet to rectify the issue. What it all boils down to, is that Volvo put an underperforming center console in its new generation of cars (2016-2025). The console does not have enough memory to process everything it’s doing. As a result it locks up and either freezes or shuts off. The problem is the console operates everything in the car. When it fails everything goes dark including the dash. The safety features turn off and you are essentially driving blind. We have had this issue on so many of our cars: 2018 XC60 which was replaced with a 2019 XC90 to avoid lemon law. The 2019 xc90 had the issues. We have been leasing and are stuck in this cycle because Volvo refuses to address the hardware issue. Instead we are forced to either drive a car with a dead brain or trade in for another Volvo. Volvo keeps thinking it can solve the issue with software updates but that’s not true. They need to do a RAM upgrade for these cars. We know we are not the only ones with these issues and the advice of “just reboot” or “don’t use the apps” or “don’t use the crash mitigation features” does not work. We specifically picked Volvo for safety but enough is enough. Our car is undriveable and from our sample size alone 6 out of 6 new generation cars have had this issue. The console shutting down sometimes takes out the virtual cockpit too. Meaning no speed is displayed, the car may try to mitigate crashes erratically, the heating and cooling will also not function. To put it plainly, the car turns into a flying brick. I feel very fortunate that this has not caused a crash yet.