Did you know there exists some “cheat codes” to getting faster acceleration while in Hybrid drive mode for PHEV models? Obviously you can change to Power/Polestar mode if you really want to drive faster, but you can use some “cheat codes” to make driving in Hybrid a bit faster.
The cheat code will depend on which drive mode you are in, and is performed on the gear knob:
| D Mode | B Mode |
| ⬇ ⬅ ⬇ (Down, Left, Down) | ⬅ ⬇ ⬇ (Left, Down, Down) |
| D Mode Launch | B Mode Launch |
| ⬇ ⬅ Pause ⬇ (Down, Left, Pause, Down) | ⬅ Pause ⬇ ⬇ (Left, Pause, Down, Down) |
So what are these codes for?
Short version:
These will kickstart the engine to force it through the warmup stage, which after completing, will give you 100% of the power when you want it, and you’ll end in the drive mode you were in. You only need to do these to warm up the engine, which should leave the engine warmed up for at least 20-30 minutes, and stay warmed up assuming you’ve “gone fast” every now and then. The launch codes should be done at a stop (like a red light) and will kick the engine on in gear 1, which you will pause in, then after you start moving you can finish the code to get you back into the drive mode you were in. They will be faster if your engine is already warmed up, but will still help if your engine is not.
Very Long Version:
Ever thought it was a bad idea to start a gas engine from a cold stop and immediately go “full bore” on it? Turns out that’s true, and Volvo has taken that into account with the system in the PHEV models. Basically the first time the engine kicks on, it will go through a “warmup” phase. During this phase, the engine will remain on (warming the engine, circulating oil, etc.) and you won’t be able to switch to Pure mode. After the warmup phase, the Pure mode option will re-enable and the engine will shut off and start to run on the batteries in Hybrid mode, assuming you have some level of charge.
Why is this important? Basically Volvo seems to have limited output power and high revs while the engine is in this warmup state. This is a good thing and protects the engine; we want this. However, how much they have limited it is up for debate, but if I had to guess I’d say you only get around 50-60% of the power from the engine, and for every 10 seconds after the warmup starts it gets an additional 10% of the power. These are all guesses based on feel and some 0-60 and 30-60 times, in normal sunny weather, and could be completely off.
So this means that if you were driving along in Hybrid mode (or Pure), and the engine hasn’t been warmed up yet, under a full accelerator pedal push you’re going to go fast, but not as fast as you could. If you’re only getting 60% of the engine’s HP/Torque (187HP, 177 lb-ft), that means the car should feel like it has 330HP and 405 lb-ft of torque. If you kept accelerating fast, stopping, then going again, you should feel the car getting faster after each acceleration if you’re doing it in a short enough interval. Eventually once the engine has fully warmed up, you should get very close to the actual full specs the car can offer (455HP, 523 lb-ft of torque). I do think there might even be some engine output left on the table after the warmup is complete, maybe 5% or so, that eventually unlocks after 5-10 minutes, but that I’m not 100% sure.
So now that we know of the warmup phase and that is saps power, we’re on to what the “cheat codes” do and why they make the car feel faster while in Hybrid. All they are doing is triggering the manual gear mode which forces the engine on to start the warmup phase. You can achieve the same thing with a quick accelerator pedal push past the “gas marker” to trigger the engine to go on. However, as you can imagine, that’s not always ideal. Even if you do it fast enough there are times where yourself or passengers might feel you blipping the pedal, but the other problem is that you can’t really do that while at a stop. You can also achieve the same thing by going into the settings menu and switching to Power/Polestar mode and then back to Hybrid, but of course that takes a lot longer and requires interfacing with the touch screen.
So let’s go over the cheat codes exactly so we can know what they are doing, and how we can abuse them a bit for better launches. I’ll talk about B mode since that’s what I always drive in and am more familiar with it. When you press left on the gear knob, it will put the car into Manual Gear selection. If you’re stopped, that would be 1st gear, but if you’re moving that could be any gear. Now you’re more than able to start driving and manually selecting your gears if you want, but without paddle shifters on the steering wheel I doubt anyone really wants to drive like this. The important thing to note is that the engine should now be on, because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to select gears. But now we want to get back into B mode. So by pressing Down twice on the gear selector, that gets us back into B mode. The process is similar for the D mode code. Pressing down puts us in B, which allows us to press left to put us into manual gear selection mode, which kicks on the engine warmup phase. Pressing down one last time will shift us back into D mode.
So how can we take advantage of this for launches? Well when launching from a stop while in Hybrid mode normally, you’ll notice that you do start moving, but all under EV power initially. After around a quarter or half a second, the ICE engine will kick in and throw you back and you’ll really get moving. While this bit of old-school turbo lag feel might be kind of interesting, you’d be faster if you can get all of the power right away and not have that delay. To do that, simply go into manual gear selection and wait there until you start launching, then after the initial launch shift back into your preferred drive mode. I listed the launch codes above, which should do exactly what we want, pause in manual gear selection mode with the engine on, then after you start accelerating use the rest of the code to go back into your regular drive mode. You can do this the moment you start moving, no need to wait a few seconds or anything, as once you’re start moving we don’t need manual gear selection mode to keep the engine on, it’ll stay on because you’re pressing the pedal past the gas marker.
Summary
I’ve long since felt this drivetrain and PHEV setup is rather complicated when you want to extract all the power out of it. Yes you can just drive it like normal and get quite a bit out of it, but there’s so much left on the table in terms of making the car fast. And while driving in Power/Polestar mode fixes lots of these issues, you’d be giving up all the gas savings of the PHEV by doing that.
Some of the problem is Volvo’s decision to do odd things, like removing paddle shifters or the drive mode selector, but some of it is just the nature of the setup. It’s a car that is just begging you to learn it’s ins and outs and really delivers to those who take the time to explore the whole car. It’ll never be a car that gets reviewed properly because honestly it’s weird quirks or tricks like this that really don’t exist in regular ICE or pure EV cars, and even in other PHEV, so unless you’ve owned one of these cards for a significant time you won’t really understand just how awesome the car can be.