REVIEWS: 2010 Volvo XC60 T6 R-Design

Yowza! I was pleasantly surprised by this Volvo. Powerful and fun like a sports car with the storage of an SUV. Loved the interior trim and seats -- masculine and sporty. Seat heaters worked like a dream. Plenty of room for passengers and luggage, yet tight turning radius and compact size got me into some tight spaces.

From an art guru perspective: I love the taillights, which make for quite the abstract look at night. I'd park this in my stable before a Lincoln MKX or a Cadillac SRX. It'd be a tough call between an XC60 and an Audi Q5, but I think the Volvo might beat that as well.

- Kelly Murphy, Creative Director

The Volvo XC60 drives well, rides very comfortably, handles well, and has a well-balanced, nicely calibrated powertrain. It's also very stylish inside and out. The numerous R-Design touches (grille, seats, wheels, tailpipes, etc) are nice, but red certainly wouldn't be my choice for this car. Otherwise, I would gladly park an XC60 in my garage.

- Rusty Blackwell, Copy Editor

The in-car technology on the Volvo XC60 was pretty much outdated when the vehicle launched in 2009. One year later and it looks utterly archaic, compared not only to the luxury competition, but also cars costing tens of thousands of dollars less. Our long-term Hyundai Sonata costs less than $26,000 and has a much more attractive and functional navigation system. The Volvo's large screen is comically underutilized, only capable of displaying the navigation map. Audio, climate, and phone information are displayed on a smaller, pathetic single-color display.

Read More: http://www.automobilemag.com/reviews/editors_notebook/1012_2010_volvo_xc60_t6_r_design/index.html

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Volvo Future Engines to be Smaller, More Fuel-Efficient

Volvo recently announced it will be increasing the fuel-efficiency of its future vehicles by downsizing engine capacity.

Engine downsizing is a common way by which to decrease fuel consumption. Most manufacturers are also equipping their smaller engines with forced induction in order to maintain power outputs, a technique Volvo has been using for years. Volvo's engines with the new technology were just introduced on the new 2011 S60 and V60, only one of which we currently get here in the U.S. Volvo introduced a new 3.0-liter, turbocharged, direct-injected I-6 in the U.S.-spec S60 that puts out the same horsepower as the old 4.4-liter, Yamaha V-8.

Europeans also have more engines to choose from, including a 2.0-liter, turbocharged, direct-injected "volume" I-4 that could come to the U.S. tt's unclear whether or not Volvo's future diesel engines will make it across the Atlantic. "We are taking a deep look at whether we will introduce the diesels to the U.S.," Volvo CEO Stefan Jacoby told Autocar. "We haven't decided yet."

Read More: http://blogs.automotive.com/6734205/miscellaneous/volvo-future-engines-to-be-smaller-more-fuel-efficient/index.html

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2010 LA Auto Show: Volvo C30 DRIVe Electric First Drive Report

One of the great things about auto shows is the chance for journalists to drive prototype cars, especially at the Los Angeles Auto Show, known for its green-car test drives.

We got a chance to spend 20 minutes behind the wheel of the Volvo C30 DRIVe Electric car, with Volvo's Lennart Stegland in the passenger seat. He's the president and director of Volvo's special vehicles group.

Silent start and idle creep

The car we drove was fully fitted out, unlike one driven more than a year ago by Popular Mechanics editor Andrew English, which had only one of the two pieces of its battery pack installed--and a bad wheel bearing beside.

Starting the car, or booting it up, occurs in dead silence. There's no chime or tone to indicate that the vehicle is "awake" and ready to roll. Like the 2011 Nissan Leaf and 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the C30 DRIVe is fitted with simulated idle-creep, so lifting off the brake causes it to move forward.

That's a distinctly North American preference, Stegland agrees, and European drivers may prefer the car to behave as a manual-transmission car would, staying put until the accelerator is depressed.
Moving away from standstill, a whine from the electric motor increases in volume. It's barely audible at low speeds, but by 40 mph it's noticeable, though not intrusive. It signifies little more than that the car is a prototype. Chevy Volt engineers, for instance, eliminated audible motor whine entirely between pre-production prototype and salable car.

Read More: http://www.greencarreports.com/blog/1051992_2010-la-auto-show-volvo-c30-drive-electric-first-drive-report

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

VolvoCarsNews

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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