Volvo's Test Ground - a Torture for Cars, short version

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The test facility at Hällered in Sweden is a veritable torture chamber for cars. Here, Volvo cars are made to suffer around the clock in extraordinarily tough conditions. (In just a few months cars are aged as much as during the entire anticipated lifetime of the vehicles in normal traffic.)

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Autos & Vehicles

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Volvo skins back plan for rival to S class

The new owner of Volvo Cars has had second thoughts about developing a large, high-priced sedan to compete with BMW's and Mercedes-Benz's most expensive sedans.

Last August, within hours of purchasing the company from Ford Motor Co., Li Shufu, founder and CEO of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group of China, said Volvo would develop a sedan to compete with the two flagship German models.

But no such sedan is planned.

“Mr. Shufu expressed a vision of where he would like Volvo to be in the future, and that vision includes a 7-Series and S-Class rival,” Volvo Cars CEO Stefan Jacoby said in an e-mail to Automotive News. “However, short- or mid-term, Volvo Cars does not have such a model in the product plan.”

In an interview after Geely's $1.5 billion purchase from Ford in August, Shufu said he wanted Volvo Cars to develop “more high-level cars that compete with the S class of Mercedes-Benz and the 7 series of BMW. … We need products to compete in that segment.”

Read more: http://www.autonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101102/OEM/101109952/1257#ixzz150t8u6SR

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Volvo EV converts Gasoline into Hydrogen to Power Battery

It's not news that Volvo has an electric vehicle. The battery-assisted C30 DRIVe Electric has been available to international customers since late September and Volvo has expanded its research to fuel cells.

However, rather than rely on a currently limited hydrogen fueling infrastructure, Volvo is forgoing the usual compressed hydrogen fuel tanks and utilizing a range extender that runs on conventional gasoline. A special fuel converter takes the gasoline and extracts hydrogen gas. The hydrogen is then turned into electricity within the fuel cell and used to drive the C30's 110-horsepower electric motor. The final yields from the chemical process is the electric energy, water, and a small amount of carbon dioxide.

"We have just taken the first steps and it is naturally too early to talk about market introduction of electric cars with Range Extenders," said Stefan Jacoby, Volvo CEO. "The industrial decision will come after we have learned more about fuel cells and the opportunities they offer."

The fuel cell range extender, after burning through an unspecified amount of gas, is expected to supply an extra 155 miles of driving range. The current C30 DRIVe Electric uses a 24-kilowatt-hour battery (22.7 kW-h employed for actual tractive efforts) and is rated for 93 miles through the New European Driving Cycle. With the range extender, these early developmental C30s will have a combined range of 248 miles, which is right in the neighborhood of the significantly more high-profile Tesla Roadster. The company responsible for the hydrogen generator and fuel cell stack is Powercell Sweden AB.

Read More: http://blogs.automotive.com/6723684/concept-cars/volvo-ev-converts-gasoline-into-hydrogen-to-power-battery/index.html

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Future Volvo Vehicles May Wear Batteries as Body Panels

Well, this is interesting.

According to Volvo, it has teamed up with the Imperial College London, Advanced Composites Group, Bundesanstalt Fur Material forschung undprufung, Chalmers,  ETC Battery, Fuel Cells Sweden, INASCO Hella, Nanocyl, and Swerea SICOMP, in developing a special composite material consisting of carbon fiber and polymer resin. This material is capable of storing and discharging great amounts of electrical energy and is supposed to recharge faster than the conventional vehicle batteries used today. When used to create body panels, the new carbon-fiber composite structures essentially serve as a hybrid or EV's battery stack, which also redistributes the vehicle's weight. Initial testing found the new, electrifying material could reduce a vehicle's weight by as much as 15 percent versus the use of steel body panels.

"Our role is to contribute expertise on how this technology can be integrated in the future and to input ideas about the advantages and disadvantages in terms of cost and user-friendliness," says Per-Ivar Sellergren, Volvo Cars Materials Center development engineer.

The first test phases concentrated on molding hoods, roofs, and door panels. During the driving process, the composite material is recharged like the hybrids and EVs of today through regenerative braking and tapping the electrical utilities grid. A composite hood, roof, and a full set of door panels on a normal sedan are expected to hold enough charge for 81 miles of electric driving. The range isn't phenomenal for the time being, but the project is on a three-year time frame and we can expect further developments as the engineers hunker down. The composite material is being adapted to the spare-wheel holder and, while there were few notes on the issue of safety, you can bet crash-worthy panels are a good concern as the carbon-fiber blend is still a ways away from a commercial release.

Read More: http://blogs.automotive.com/6691210/miscellaneous/future-volvo-vehicles-may-wear-batteries-as-body-panels/index.html

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ALL-NEW V60 JET STREAM

ALL-NEW V60 JET STREAM

Check out the All-New Naughty Volvo V60 having some fun in the wet. For more action visit www.naughty.volvocars.com

Volvo Illinois

THE MOST DYNAMIC VOLVO JUST GOT MORE DYNAMIC

THE MOST DYNAMIC VOLVO JUST GOT MORE DYNAMIC The R-Design versions of the Volvo S60 and V60 comes with an even more improved chassie: A strut brace gives the car more direct steering feel, it has monotube damping at the rear, shorter and stiffer springs, even firmer bushings and the new Corner Traction Control system provides even smoother progress in curves. This video is shot in northern Italy and Switzerland with a Red camera. Illinois Volvo

From: VolvoCarsNews Views: 25190 81 ratings

Time: 01:47

10Best Surprise: The S60 is a Red-Meat Volvo

We spent last week driving 60-plus new cars in order to decide our 2011 10Best list. When that many cars are gathered in one place, many of which we haven’t driven before, there are bound to be some unexpected discoveries. Be sure to check out more 10Best surprises, and look for our annual 10Best issue to hit newsstands on December 7.

The name Volvo brings a lot of things to mind: safety, Scandinavian design, and perhaps flat-pack furniture. But words like “excitement” or “performance” are probably filed somewhere behind “Hey, why does the logo look like Austin Powers’s necklace?”

Hot-rod Volvos of the recent past received power and suspension upgrades that looked good on paper, but the resulting cars were slower than the competition and delivered a stiffer ride that did little to enhance real-world sportiness. The new S60, however, is a different kind of Volvo. On a pre-10Best outing to our test track, the S60 T6 AWD (the only version coming to the U.S.) went from 0 to 60 mph in 5.5 seconds and cracked the quarter-mile in 14.1 seconds at 102 mph. That’s almost a second quicker to 60 mph than the last-generation S60R. And those numbers are right in line with other luxury cars in the $40,000 realm (the S60’s base price is $38,550).

The S60 is still a Volvo; you can’t completely turn off stability control, and the nanny-esque safety functions like lane-departure warning make themselves known with annoyingly shrill chimes. But the fact that the newest Volvo has some cojones is not only a surprise, but another reason why 10Best time is the best week of the year at Car and Driver.

Read More: http://blog.caranddriver.com/10best-surprise-the-s60-is-a-red-meat-volvo/

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