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From Swedespeed.com Volvo News Last week during a small press tour of Volvo lithium-ion battery supplier Enerdel’s Indianapolis factory, Volvo Special Vehicles Director Lennart Stegland got up to say a few words about the future of electric power at the brand. As it turns out, Volvo plans to get seriously plugged-in through the next decade—a plug-in hybrid and a test run of electric C30s is just the tip of the iceberg. Are you ready for a revolution? Volvo certainly hopes so.
Stegland started out by presenting a triangle-shaped chart, much like those food pyramids we were all shown in health and science classes at school. Atop the Volvo pyramid was where Volvo leads—Safety. It’s at the core of the brand and is what drives product development and the company’s image. In the center sections sat Volvo’s differentiators. These include modern Scandinavian design, which gives buyers a minimalist alternative to all the weird stuff the Germans are building these days, and Environmentalism. Volvo prides itself on its DRIVe program in Europe and the attitude the whole company has toward sustainability. At the bottom of the pyramid sat the Qualifiers, or the basics that Volvo needs to stay competitive in its segment. These included premium quality, a good customer experience, and driving dynamics. As you can probably guess, the new push for battery-electric power is meant to strengthen Volvo’s eco-friendly differentiator. Volvo’s targets are dramatic. By 2015, the company hopes to be producing a range of vehicles averaging 130 grams of C02 emissions per kilometer, the equivalent of about 45 miles per gallon. By 2020, the company hopes to drop that figure to 95 g/km, raising fuel economy to 65 mpg. For reference, Volvo’s current fuel economy leader is the C30 1.6D DRIVe, a small diesel model with start/stop functionality. It produces 104 g/km. So yes, those are some aggressive targets, but also ones being pushed along by world governments. Volvo, like most other carmakers and the governments pushing advancement, envisions a future where grams of C02 emissions no longer exist at all. You may have noticed that Volvo’s DRIVe model range motto has become “DRIVe Toward Zero.”
That drive begins with the efficient diesel models now on sale in Europe. Working to make designs more efficient is step one, while alternative fuels like diesel and biofuels are step two. Electrification, step three, is, according to Stegland, totally necessary for the company’s 2020 goals. But if that’s the case, why has Volvo not adopted hybrid technology already? Why isn’t there a C30 or an S40 hybrid already on the road? Quite simply, Stegland and his team don’t view basic, non-plug-in hybrids as forward-thinking enough to be worth the time and money. Since the most efficient Volvos are already on par with the Toyota Prius in terms of efficiency, we’re inclined to agree. How Soon, How Many? Volvo has individual goals for its plug-in hybrids and its electric cars, not just one goal to spread the two out across the range in unison. You’ve likely seen V70 plug-in hybrid study developed with propulsion partner Vattenfall. It was announced as a technology development project early in 2009 and Volvo has reconfirmed its goad to have its first plug-ins (or PHEVs) out on streets by 2012, or within two years. The model will launch first in Europe and will likely continue to wear V70 skin since crash testing with the batteries installed has already commenced with that model. It also sells well in the home market of Sweden, despite being a slow-mover here in the US. Once the technology is out to market and proven, the expansion will be swift. By 2020, there will be plug-in hybrid versions of every vehicle in the Volvo range. To accommodate this, Stegland stated that every single new Volvo platform going forward will be designed to accommodate the batteries and other hardware necessary for this target. It’s unclear whether that includes the S60, which debuts in just a few months. Full-on electric cars require a different strategy. With plug-ins, gains can be measured as a percentage, so it makes sense to start with Volvo’s larger cars, where the percentage gains are higher. We imagine that after a V70 goes on sale to the public, Volvo will work on an XC60 or XC90 hybrid aimed at the US market, adding the technology to its sedans and smaller cars from there. For electric cars, the big deal is range. That range is directly connected to weight, which is why the C30 has been chosen as the vehicle at the forefront of Volvo electric drive development. A facelifted version of the electric car we’ve seen a few times since the first ReCharge concept debuted was shown earlier this month in Detroit. Starting in 2011, Volvo will launch a test fleet of C30 electric cars in Europe, and series production will hopefully begin within a few years.
However, Volvo’s long-term goals are more modest than with hybrids—since electric cars, with a shorter range and longer charge times, will be viewed as commuter cars, Volvo hopes to simply expand its electric range across its small car line-up by 2020. We would guess this means C30, S40, and V50, or perhaps a future new variant like the V30. Stegland touched on a few of the added features the C30 will have to promote efficient driving, including a “cannibalization gauge” that indicates how much electricity is being drained by ancillary systems like the headlights, heater, or “the Springsteen being blasted through the radio.” The first 50 examples of the electric C30 will be put to work through different climates and regions in Sweden, and will be considered the core research group, as they can easily be monitored. Talks are ongoing with Volvo of North America, but the early allocations of the 1000-car test group will all go to Europe. Questions like where, who, and how much are all still under discussion. Stegland is confident that a North American test fleet will arrive before series production begins. The cars will use electric engines built in Switzerland by Brusa, transmissions provided by Getrag, and batteries by Enerdel, produced in Indiana. We’ll give you a more detailed look into that company and that technology in another article next week. Are Electric Cars Safe? Right up there with “range anxiety,” one of the major fears that come along with electric cars is the idea of driving along with huge, toxic batteries strapped to the car. People likely will just need to get used to this just as they have with driving with a tank filled with highly combustible gasoline, but Volvo being Volvo, safety is a top priority. The V70 PHEV has already undergone a series of crash tests, and the electric C30 testing has just begun. We viewed a video of the car undergoing a 40 mph offset frontal collision, which it passed easily. Five more crash tests of the C30 are scheduled through the next two months. Those battery packs, one of which occupies the gas tank’s space under the car and one of which fills the transmission tunnel, are completely sealed off from the passenger compartment, just as a fuel tank is. SIPS, Volvo’s side-impact protection technology, had to be revised, since it used the transmission tunnel as a last-defense energy absorption zone. The electric C30 therefore gets new body reinforcements around the batteries to retain the safety while transferring the energy elsewhere. The tunnel also gets a new set of reinforcement plates. One angle of the crash video showed the car from underneath, with the batteries and added protection painted different colors. The batteries didn’t move one inch out of place. Additionally, the battery management system is equipped with current leakage detection and also a system that senses a crash and shuts the battery off from the car.
Because the C30 electric car uses heavy regenerative braking, the Volvo team is also rethinking the stability control system, which must be completely reworked to factor in this new system. The cooling system, too, has presented some new challenges. To keep the batteries at a proper operating temperature, the C30 will use an intercooler, along with a special climate unit and an A/C system shared with the cabin. For cabin heating, Volvo is weighing a few options including a gas- or ethanol-fueled heater that wouldn’t tax the battery but would, in essence, make the C30 a fossil-fuel-burning electric car. For part of the year, at least. As you can see, lithium-ion batteries are about to become a very major part of Volvo’s future. As we noted, check back next week for more details about that technology, as well as a look into what the industry is doing about the concern over limited battery life and the fact that these expensive components will be eventually require replacement. There’s some pretty clever thinking going on out there. For those of you in the US hoping we’d mention something about diesels coming to our market in the near future, sorry—you’ll have to wait. Our sources tell us that product planning decisions over the last few years mean that diesels are still a few years out, probably 2013 at the earliest. Instead, a short-term American push for efficiency will come in the form of four-cylinder engines, which will start making their way here much sooner.
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