“To go from a Toyota to a Volvo is crazy work.”
A video from creator @lady__lane explains the misadventures she and her husband have had since purchasing a Volvo XC90 as a replacement for her beloved Toyota RAV4 that was stolen from in front of their house.
“I get a check engine light, and I also get a little tiny turtle light on it, and the car’s driving really weird,” she says of the XC90’s first issues in late 2025. “They tell us that this part will not be ready until the end of March or the beginning of April. … April comes and goes; May comes and goes; June comes and goes; there is no part for this car.”
The initial diagnosis was considerably more serious than an ordinary check engine light. According to the owner, the dealership determined that a component tied to the XC90’s hybrid battery system had failed and was still covered by the vehicle’s electric warranty.
More alarming was what she says technicians told them could happen if the failure worsened.
“They tell us that this car is not safe to drive and that that part, if it is failing in this way, can cause a ‘runaway thermal event,’” she says, interpreting that warning to mean the vehicle could potentially catch fire.
The dealership kept the Volvo and provided a loaner, she says, but the replacement part remained perpetually backordered. After roughly seven months waiting in vain, she says she contacted Volvo corporate and requested that the company consider buying the vehicle back.
“Ten days later, the part is in and the car can be fixed,” she says. “Is the timing suspicious? Sure [expletive] is.”
The family finally got the XC90 back on July 29, but the relief lasted a mere three days before the check engine light returned, the driver says. Before the dealership could look at it again, a warning of a “catastrophic engine oil pressure failure” appeared as she was driving home from work, instructing her to shut the vehicle off immediately, she says.
“I just turned the corner and parked the car,” she says, noting she was thankfully already near her home.
She says that when they contacted Volvo, the couple was told the vehicle should not be driven. Since they were outside the dealership’s towing radius, that meant the family had to arrange a tow through AAA.
According to the driver, the Volvo went back to the dealership, where technicians determined that something had been installed incorrectly. They corrected the problem, and returned the vehicle the following day.
That fix barely lasted through the weekend. The driver says that the following Monday, while she was driving her son home from camp, the check engine light returned yet again.
After the latest warning light appeared, the couple’s patience with another round of troubleshooting was effectively gone. She says her husband called the dealership and was promised a return call that never came, prompting her to send a message demanding that the dealership buy the XC90 back.
Motor1 contacted story subjects. We will update this story if they respond.
The saga set off a debate in the comments section over what protections an owner has when a used vehicle spends month after month awaiting warranty repairs. The owner said she was preparing to consult an attorney about whether her state’s lemon law could apply.
Buyer protections for used vehicles vary by state, while federal rules distinguish between cars sold “as is” and used vehicles that still carry written or unexpired manufacturer warranties.
In this case, warranty coverage itself wasn’t necessarily the problem. Volvo says Certified by Volvo plug-in hybrids receive high-voltage battery coverage for eight years or 100,000 miles. That appears to explain why the original battery-related repair and loaner were covered, even though the family bought the XC90 used.
The harder problem was getting a covered vehicle back on the road.
Volvo’s own guidance underscores why the dealership apparently took the initial failure so seriously. The automaker warns that damage to high-voltage components can cause overheating or fire and says servicing the traction battery should be left to authorized technicians.
For this family, though, months of waiting followed by repeated warning lights appear to have turned a repair problem into an unfixable confidence problem. Even if the XC90 can eventually be fixed again, she’s made it clear that she would prefer not to find out what warning appears next.
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– The Motor1.com Team