Motoring Discussion > Volvo - Silent Car Miscellaneous
Thread Author: tyrednemotional Replies: 19
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 Thu 25 Jul 24 10:54 
 Volvo - Silent Car - tyrednemotional
My car was very quiet yesterday.

Returning from a day out "darn Sowf" to visit my BiL, I cancelled a radio traffic announcement with the steering wheel button only for the tuned radio station to return at very reduced volume.

It wasn't long before I realised that spoken navigation commands were absent, and then somewhat longer to notice the lack of warning tones and the indicator sounds (the latter being synthesised).

Car remained driveable throughout, just very "quiet".

Situation prevailed all the way home, and web research indicated it is not an entirely unknown issue.

There were various recommendations on rebooting the (Sensus) infotainment system, none of which worked (the current AAOS system definitely does have a reboot option, and seems to need it!).

Volvo's own tech support pages describe similar issues, and recommend letting the system quiesce, locked, for 30 minutes, which should cause a reset/reboot - it didn't. Their next recommendation was to try a factory reset, which also didn't work, but lost all my settings as it said it would.

Car has just over a month's warranty left, so the plan was to call in my servicing garage this morning to get it sorted. Lo and behold, once started all was back to normal (apart from the settings, which I've spent most of the morning re-entering).

It's high probability that it's a software bug, rather than hardware failure, as I can pinpoint the occurence to the rejection of the traffic announcement. The lack of indicator noise made me feel like I was back in the previous BMW ;-)
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 Thu 25 Jul 24 16:32 
 Volvo - Silent Car - Bill Payer
I had an issue with wife's Skoda yesterday where Waze app announcement weren't working on the infotainment, using carplay. Radio was fine.

I was pretty sure I knew what was wrong - the announcement volume had been turned down during an announcement. Snag was, there didn't seem (and I had a pretty good look) any way to fix this, and even soft resetting the unit didn't help. Even streaming audio over carplay didn't help - that just played as normal.

In the end, got both mine and wife's phones to show the same route on Waze and when her phone made an announcement, I turned the car audio volume up and hey presto, I could hear the announcements.
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 Thu 25 Jul 24 18:21 
 Volvo - Silent Car - Kevin
I had a similar glitch with the Jag. Radio worked ok but stuff like voice and nav was silent.
A bit of fault finding revealed that while the tuner in the head unit is connected to the amp in the boot via a screened cable all the digital stuff (CD/DVD, TV, NAV, Voice module etc) is connected via an optical fibre loop. I must have worked a connector loose when I wrestled the boot liner out to replace a reversing lamp bulb.
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 Thu 25 Jul 24 18:34 
 Volvo - Silent Car - tyrednemotional
The amp in mine is under the driver's seat. The nature of the fault arising made me bet it was software rather than hardware (or wetware). Perusal of the web reinforced that opinion, but it took longer "quiesced" to force a reboot/reset than expected.

Having no sound was b***** annoying - I had to talk to SWMBO for the remainder of the journey!
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 Thu 25 Jul 24 19:34 
 Volvo - Silent Car - Robin O'Reliant
>>
>>
>> Having no sound was b***** annoying - I had to talk to SWMBO for the
>> remainder of the journey!
>>

That isn't a problem. It's when they start talking back the trouble begins...
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 Fri 26 Jul 24 07:22 
 Volvo - Silent Car - Dog
>> It's when they start talking back the trouble begins...

Stepford...
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 Fri 26 Jul 24 12:09 
 Volvo - Silent Car - tyrednemotional
A wider search round the web indicates that the issue is far from uncommon.

The system was fitted in a large number of different Volvo models up to 2022, and it appears that owners of many of the different types have had the self-same issue (and a number pointing fingers at an interruption at lower-volume to the main source - Navigation, TA, etc.)

Numbers of people have had to wait overnight for a reboot.

It's both reassuring and disappointing in equal measure that I'm not the only one.

(Next time I think the battery negative will be briefly removed, but one is always wary of knock-ons from such a practice in modern cars)
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 Fri 26 Jul 24 12:27 
 Volvo - Silent Car - Runfer D'Hills
Or just buy a Merc.
;-)
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 Fri 26 Jul 24 13:00 
 Volvo - Silent Car - tyrednemotional
>> Or just buy a Merc.
>> ;-)
>>

...but then I'd have to take a Feep next time I go abroad.... ;-)
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 Fri 26 Jul 24 12:31 
 Volvo - Silent Car - Kevin
You should listen to Mrs K.

She's always telling me - "Don't interrupt - that's what bad boys do!"
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 Fri 26 Jul 24 13:36 
 Volvo - Silent Car - Zero

>> (Next time I think the battery negative will be briefly removed, but one is always
>> wary of knock-ons from such a practice in modern cars)

OK if you have a good diag tool to reset all the errors (and maybe re register the battery) that will inevitably occur.
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 Mon 29 Jul 24 14:18 
 Volvo - Silent Car - Slightlyfatdirector
I had a very similar issue in my 2022 V90 T6. It get's glitches like this on occasion.

In one I had messages saying that all the active safety systems (lane departure, BLIS, active High Beam etc) were all unavailable. By the time it went to the dealer for a service soon after, all these things had been fixed by themselves.

One regular glitch was the centre-screen not coming alive (so no radio, sat-nav, etc) and getting out of the car, locking it and coming back to it later failed to restart it. Was just about to do a 600 mile round-trip where a sat-nav would have been helpful....

A re-boot (pressing the centre-button under the screen and keeping it pressed - long after the 'clean-screen' mode kicks in) did solve it last time, and the most recent software update downloaded over the air said it was solving 'intermittent infotainment issues"...

The joy of modern tech....

Other than that, the car is great. It's a company car and goes back to the lease company at the very start of Jan after a 3 year tenure, and I would happily keep it for longer if I could buy it off them, but they have said it's not possible. The agreement is with Volvo, so you would have thought I could save them a lot of hassle in us buying the car instead of it having to go back through the network, but apparently it's impossible to do so.

Am thinking about what's next, but it will probably be a purchase rather than lease as the lease costs are still completely crazy nowadays.

Would not be a Merc as I just could not get on with the seats in the last one, so will see what other big estates offer good value for money later this year.
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 Mon 29 Jul 24 17:32 
 Volvo - Silent Car - tyrednemotional
>> A re-boot (pressing the centre-button under the screen and keeping it pressed - long after
>> the 'clean-screen' mode kicks in) did solve it last time, and the most recent software
>> update downloaded over the air said it was solving 'intermittent infotainment issues"...
>>
I suspect from that that it was one of the first cars equipped with AAOS, rather than Volvo's own Sensus system.

That method of rebooting is certainly that prescribed for AAOS, and there doesn't seem to be a workable equivalent for the earlier version.

The various reports on the XC40 forums seem to indicate that the newer AAOS models need the reboot function rather more than the Sensus ones. ;-)
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 Wed 31 Jul 24 17:18 
 Volvo - Silent Car - Slightlyfatdirector
I think you're right.

It's fab for things like the sat-nav (proper Goggle set-up with satellite photo images of where you are and going that is so impressive, plus the most intelligent detailed directional instructions I have experienced) but the payoff is the occasional glitch...
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 Wed 31 Jul 24 18:25 
 Volvo - Silent Car - R.P.
My XC40 (Sensus) used to do this. As mentioned a known problem which also killed the reverse sensors. Volvo seem to have a multitude of bugs
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 Wed 31 Jul 24 20:14 
 Volvo - Silent Car - Bobby
Stick an AirTag in the car when you hand it back and see if you can trace where in the dealership network it goes and then try and buy it back!
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 Thu 1 Aug 24 13:22 
 Volvo - Silent Car - Slightlyfatdirector
Aha! Ingenious! What a thought. I will need a car before I can trace this one sadly, but that would have been fun.

Interestingly the Merc I had before appears to have disappeared.

Well, I was still getting notifications via email all the time about it running out of battery, etc, with seemingly no way to tell then I no longer owned the car. Then that all stopped.

A while ago in a bored few minutes I checked to see if the car was still taxed and MOT'd to find that according the gov.uk website the "Vehicle details could not be found". 2018 E class estate on a 68 plate.

How weird!

If I plug in my first car's number plate to the same gov.uk page (an old 1970's S-plate Fiat 127) that died back in about 1988 and was scrapped, it tells me it was a Fiat and tells me the colour. My old Jag XJS that went through a few private plates in it's time also comes up under it's original reg.

So how has my Merc disappeared?
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 Thu 1 Aug 24 13:50 
 Volvo - Silent Car - tyrednemotional
exported or personal number plate?
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 Thu 1 Aug 24 20:35 
 Volvo - Silent Car - R.P.
My old 335 was chopped in for the Volvo. I tracked it on the app I had and the very next day was heading for the port area of Harwich. Either it a staff member was taking a very, very capable car on a continental holiday or it was being permanently exported ! I deleted the app so I never found out. My v60 was on the forecourt at the Volvo dealer for ages and just checked its status today and the VEL ran out mid July. The XC40 went to a dealer in Shropshire and stayed there for ages. I checked the website earlier and it was being advertised as a "directors car" oddly I am a director of a charity ! :-)
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 Thu 1 Aug 24 21:34 
 Volvo - Silent Car - zippy
>>Director's car...

I know the perception of a director is probably a genial middle to older aged gentleperson who drives carefully.

I have known some excellent directors who encourage and coach their staff.

I have also known some reckless gob-s***es, who, if they treated their cars like they treated their staff, it wouldn't be worth even thinking about buying.
Last edited by: zippy on Thu 1 Aug 24 at 21:34
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