The Volvo C 30 electric car
Sunday, February 13, 2011 at 1:57PM
The thing I noticed about proper motoring journalists is how incredibly hard and fast they work. On a recent trip to Gothenburg in Sweden I was in the company of many of them from all over Europe. Within minutes of them driving the Volvo C 30 electric car they were busy on their lap tops filing the story. By the time we got on the plane to come back to the UK, all their stories were already on line.
As you can tell (I got back on Wednesday night) I am a bit slower, but here, in a nutshell, is what I experienced.
Unlike Nissan, but like just about every other major car manufacturer, Volvo have gone for the electric conversion of an existing, tried and trusted model. The C 30 is normally a drill and burn powered model, but they’ve taken out the diesel engine, gearbox, drive train and fuel tank and fitted 280 kg of batteries containing 24 kilowatt hours of juice, an electric motor and battery management system in its place.
The batteries are made outside Volvo for this car, but they say that for future electric vehicles they would manufacture them in house. They have done a lot of work on battery management, including a very important system to keep the batteries at the right temperature while charging. Basically, if the outside temperature is too cold, the batteries will be heated and vice versa. I know from experience this is really important. The Tesla Roadster uses a similar system, the Mitsubishi iMiev currently does not. This is chiefly what reduces range in cold weather, not the passenger heater, it’s far more to do with the battery chemistry not taking as much charge when the batteries are very cold.
Volvo say they are also looking at using an ethanol powered heater for the occupants, this would reduce the call on the battery in very cold weather, something those tough Swedes are used to.
Another innovation I liked was the use of LED running lights resulting in much reduced demand on the battery giving an extra 4 kilometers range.
In the rigorous testing they have done on this car, apart from smashing it to bits in the crash tests, they have discovered it has a range of about 150 kilometers, (around 93 miles) on a charge, it can do zero to 100 kph in 10.5 seconds and it has a rather intriguing drive set up.
When you engage drive with the selector paddle, there’s no point referring it to a gear stick, there are no gears, it uses regenerative braking when you take your foot off the accelerator. The brake lights automatically come on when you do this as the car does start to slow down. However they also have a highway mode, basically the car freewheels and covers more ground without using, or capturing any energy. Until I drove it I wasn’t sure how useful this would be, but while descending a gentle slope on a very well built Swedish highway, the C 30 maintained its speed for far longer than I expected.
As for driving it, well, it was very pleasant, uneventful, easy, smooth, quiet and fast enough. All the things, or so I’ve been told, you can expect from a Volvo as I’ve never actually driven one before. All those motoring journalist observations like handling, build quality, comfort, visibility I would say were exceptionally good.
As for a major car manufacturer changing their production methods and technology, I learned that Volvo went from making 97% petrol cars to 98% diesel in 10 years. That is pretty impressive and they are clearly looking into the future and seeing hybrid and battery electrics as the route.
Finally the safety stuff is outstanding, they really are obsessed with this and good on them for doing so. Due to the lack of a great big lump of metal (the diesel engine) in the front of the car, they have built a very solid electric engine mount that acts as a buffer for the passengers in the event of a collision. The batteries are mounted down the centre of the car and are thus very well protected, they also have a battery cut off system which acts like the air bags, severing the 400 volt connection in 10 milliseconds.
So, the salty question, how much and when? As I said in my video piece about it, the electric Volvo C 30 is not for sale. They are making about 300 of them in order to carry out extensive market testing. Once they are happy with the results, they then plan to produce a commercially available model. And more bad news for us in the UK, they aren’t testing them here.
You can see the brief video here;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-FRSdthUxQ
We also saw another car that Volvo are launching soon, again, very impressive but I’ve got to keep quiet about it for another few days.
Reader Comments (8)
Ohoo! Sounds very sleek. Looks pretty funky too.
Liking the selector paddle.
The LED idea is great and I'm glad to hear of all the rigorous safety-testing.
I'd be very interested to see what it's like to drive.
Exciting, postitive stuff! Would be pretty awesome to be able to drive about without mega environment/resource guilt!! (Not that I currently drive for that and other reasons, I just mean in general would be an awesome thing!)
Very curious about the other, secret Volvo!
Interesting to see another big manufacturer taking great strides into the electric revolution. This revolution seems much greater than the last one, seen in the film "Who killed the electric car". Many more companies are getting involved. I don't understand what the regenerative braking is. Is it there some sort of gear shifting that means the wheels do work and recharge the battery as it slows? So it generates electricity in braking? As for the speed, seems like it will reach the maximum speed that one can drive on the road anyway, so no need to concentrate too much on pushing that part of the technology. Also, it doesn't look like an abnormal car, like the previous electric cars from the 90's. Take off the stickers and looking at it, no one is any the wiser that its a electric car.
BTW, I had an idea that you could have solar panel roads like proposed in the USA and then as you either drive along you could pick up some of the electricity (safely of course) as you wait at traffic lights etc. The white lines of the road could store electricity, and as you pause at the lights an automatic arm would come out of the side of the car and connect to the white lines, a simple magnetic power plug like the power supplies on mac books.
Looks great, but I'm really puzzled why so few manufacturers have taken the path of the Chevy Volt. Having a small engine that can run at its optimum efficiency at all times, with the batteries providing the buffer to supply the power required from moment to moment, seems a far more sensible (and potentially cheaper) option. Any thoughts?
Oh, and forgive me a moment's pedantry...
"Basically, if the outside temperature is too cold, the batteries will be heated and vice versa."
"Vice versa, meaning: The reverse of the previous statement, with the main items transposed"
So, if the batteries are too cold, the outside will be heated?
Dear Robert, may I ask you to use the correct abbreviation for 'kilometres per hour', which happens to be km/h and not "kph" (kays per hour? wtf?) Thanks.
And thanks for the article and the video, I enjoyed both.
Very nice.
Really wish it was available for purchase now!
Cheers for these articles, I didnt even know this car was being developed! I just wanted to say keep it up.
Thank you for the motivating videos ! Don't worry for the quality of the footage or not knowing some technical specifications. I thnik for the normal people it's not that important. The feeling is important and you are presenting it pretty well . Just to make sure you know that, you are a good man
It is a fantastic car, let us hope that more and more of these cars can be produced at a small price.
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