C30 Electric starts limited production this Fall
We still have a ways to go before this comes to our shores but an end must start somewhere.
Volvo C30 Electric ready for delivery
Volvo Cars and energy company Göteborg Energi yesterday signed a letter of intent regarding cooperation in the area of electrical vehicles and recharge infrastructure. Within the terms of the agreement Volvo provides 10 Volvo C30 Electric cars with delivery start during the autumn.
“This is a landmark first step,” says Lennart Stegland, director of the Volvo Car Corporation’s Special Vehicles division.
The Volvo C30 Electric project has attracted immense international attention. Volvo Cars has received visits from many potential overseas customers, but the first confirmed user is Swedish.
“Ten cars will be delivered starting this autumn. The Volvo C30 Electric is a natural part of our focus on DRIVe products, with the aim of promoting a sustainable society. We are happy with the cooperation with Göteborg Energi. What is more, it’s happening in Volvo’s home town of Göteborg,” says Lennart Stegland.
The cars in the demo fleet are equipped with advanced measuring instruments. It is important for Volvo Cars to build up additional know-how about how parameters such as driving habits and charging patterns affect the battery and lifetime of the electric car.
The Volvo C30 Electric has the same safety, comfort and interior space as the standard Volvo C30. The difference is that the C30 Electric is powered solely by electricity – so it has absolutely no exhaust emissions on the road.
90 miles on one charge
If the car is recharged using electricity from renewable sources, travel is virtually free from carbon dioxide emissions. The range is up to 150 km on a single battery charge.
“That’s way further than 90 percent of commuters in Europe cover on a daily basis. The car could be used for the average family’s everyday commuting needs,” says Lennart Stegland.
The Volvo C30 Electric is powered by a lithium-ion battery that is charged from a regular mains power socket. A completely depleted battery takes about eight hours to recharge.
The car has a top speed of about 130 kilometres per hour and accelerates from zero to one hundred in 10.5 seconds. Volvo Cars’ electric car project currently encompasses about 250 vehicles.
“However, with more customers we would of course be able to expand our production series,” says Lennart Stegland.
Electric cars are the future
He is convinced that electric cars will gain a major foothold in the market.
“By 2020 about 5-10 percent of cars in Sweden are expected to be electric. By 2020-2025 we believe that electric cars will account for 3-10 percent of the market share in the EU countries. Different markets have different preconditions,” adds Lennart Stegland.
Göteborg Energi comments the letter of intent signing and the cooperation with Volvo Cars to build its first 10 electric cars as follows:
“We believe in the future of the electric car and are extremely proud that we will be the first recipients of electric vehicles from Volvo Cars. We work to promote a sustainable society in Göteborg so to participate in the development of new infrastructure for safe electric cars and cooperate with Volvo Cars at such an early stage feels absolutely right,” explains Anders Hedenstedt, President of Göteborg Energi.
dan
Posted in C30, Environment, Quality of Life | 13 Comments »One really fast C30
The Champagne corks are popping at HEICO SPORTIV. In a historic triumph, it became the first ever team to capture a class victory with a bioethanol-powered vehicle at the legendary Nürburgring Nordschleife 24 Hour Race.
After precisely 24:06:45.623 hours, the HEICO SPORTIV Volvo C30 blazed past the finishing line as victor of the “SPT4” class at the ADAC’s 38th 24 Hour Race at the Nürburgring and in 53rd place in the overall class segment of 197 starting teams.
“We’re extremely proud and overjoyed to have scooped this first-ever victory for a bioethanol-powered vehicle,” says HEICO SPORTIV General Manager Holger Hedtke, adding “A reliable Volvo, terrific tires from Pirelli and CropEnergies’ high performance E85 fuel CropPower85 enabled us to consistently demolish the 128 laps at lightning pace.”
The ca. 25 km (15.6 mile) combination of the Nürburgring’s Grand Prix track and Nordschleife translates to a total driving distance of exactly 3,248.4 km – the distance from Volvo in Göteborg (Sweden) to Pirelli in Milan (Italy) and back again!
Reliance triumphs!
The race of the Volvo C30 with number 122 was remarkably unremarkable. Starting from the pole position, the well rehearsed driver trio comprising HEICO SPORTIV employees Patrick Brenndörfer, Frank Eickholt and Martin Müller made a convincing show with constant lap times and an overall ranking of around 40th place well into the early hours of the morning. A tremendous midway per-formance in a field brimming with GT3 sports cars and professional racing drivers. “We didn’t have any technical problems whatsoever – the car ran like clockwork,” says Technical Director Felice Sgura. “We topped up every other hour and substituted our drivers and tires according to schedule.”
Even a minor drive shaft fault as the day was dawning was unable to unnerve the well-rehearsed team. The defect was repaired in a mega-fast pit-stop, with the HEICO Volvo back on the track in an instant.
Patrick Brenndörfer finally took the final lap of the circuit, flying past 220,000 frenzied spectators and scooping the HEICO SPORTIV team its second class victory since 2006 and fifth ever for the Volvo brand.
“Thanks to the innovative products of our partners Castrol, CropEnergies and Pirelli, we’re proud once again to have put Green Racing in the limelight and are already looking forward to trading barbs with prominent manufacturers, teams and drivers in the 2011 24 Hour Race,” finishes off Holger Hedtke.
Posted in Awards, C30, news | 2 Comments »Racer on Sunday, FTS every other day
On a breezy spring Sunday morning just outside of Fort Worth, Texas, I found myself standing among a group of car geeks. Or maybe fans is a nicer way to say it.
Okay, fans it is.
I’m here because the day before I had been a guest of the Texas Chapter of the Volvo Club of America. The idea was simple: Show the club folks that we actually make cars that are no longer called 242D or 760GLE. So I brought along a bunch of new hardware from corporate and a couple of the regional field guys brought their cars. The club loved it and spent the entire day reacquainting themselves with the newest cars.
It was here that I met Ben Castillo.
Ben Castillo and his 2008 C30 T5
Ben’s been with Volvo since 1971 and got his start working for the Guatemalan importer back when mutton shops were in vogue. Life happens and Ben found himself in the U.S. Today he’s what is known in Volvospeak as an FTS, or Field Technical Specialist. Primarily he visits our retailers in the Southern Region to diagnose particularly tricky service issues. Needless to say, Ben knows how to use a wrench and he knows a hell of a lot about Volvos.
But Ben’s passion for Volvo runs deeper than a 9-to-5 job. “I’ve had about 1oo Volvos since I joined the Guatemala distributor back in 1971,” he says between bites of an enormous Reuben sandwich. He smiles and his eyes squint and he’s the kind of guy you’d like to have a beer with. Or a Reuben sandwich.
He’s also an SCCA certified race driver. His ride is a lowered 2008 C30 T5 with a six-speed manual. He races in the Stock class which allows for some modifications, but not much. He’s swapped the shocks for some Konis and he’s running a low-restriction exhaust which adds a very nice burble at idle and a nicer bark when he’s on the track. He went to the Volvo parts catalog for some lowering springs and he’s running on a pair of racing slicks up front and some performance tires at the rear. “I’m trying to get the car to rotate more with throttle input,” he says. “I’m losing traction in the corners because the inside drive wheel isn’t sticking to the ground.”
You’d never know Ben was struggling with the C30′s setup. While I was visiting he asked if I’d like to join him in the car for the next heat. I explained that adding 200-pounds of ballast wasn’t going to improve his time. At that point he was running third in the standings. He smiled that smile and strapped on his helmet. It was a good thing I didn’t go. On that run he ran his fastest time of the day and took second place in his class. Not bad, he thought, but there is still room for improvement.
So he’s going to keep tinkering. He’s going to swap out the rears for a stickier compound than the high-performance tires he used this time, and he’d love to get his hands on a much thicker front sway bar. “I need one that’s about an inch.” Ah, it’s the ol’ extra inch problem. Who couldn’t use one?
Ben figures he attends about 15 SCCA events annually, including the national meet in Lincoln, Nebraska. He drops about $5,000 a year on tires alone. After each event, he jacks the C30 up, takes off the racing tires and replaces them with the standard 17-inch wheels and tires. The slicks go in the cargo hatch, along with the jack and his helmet, and he drives home.
Tomorrow he’ll be back out visiting his retailers and solving their pesky service issues.
-James Hope
Posted in C30, General, Quality of Life, Volvo Club of America (VCOA) | 1 Comment »Informative article about EnerDel
EnerDel is the battery supplier for our Electric C30 test fleet. Good piece by Stuart Fowle, via Swedespeed and Kilometer.
http://kilometermagazine.com/artman2/publish/tech/Tech_Volvos_Electric_C30_Batteries.html
dan
Posted in C30 | Comments OffVolvo Electric C30 Battery Production
A few weeks ago in Indianapolis, Ind., we helped EnerDel put on a press event for its new factory. Attending were about 20 automotive media and 30 financial analysts. The first half of the day was about battery chemistry and structure, while our afternoon covered cell pack assembly.
Indiana Governor, Mitch Daniels, was on hand to hear EnerDel announce that they would be building a new, $273 million battery manufacturing plant in Indiana. Capacity will be around 600,000 hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) battery packs or 60,000 electric vehicle (EV) packs. EnerDel will be the largest U.S. battery pack manufacturer when it’s up and running.
The C30′s twin battery pack weighs about 300 pounds and considering we took out about 400, it makes for a really quick car. An interesting point about present EV battery production, if one percent of all cars were to use lithium-ion batteries, all global production for cell phones, etc. would have to stop; cars would suck up all global capacity. Amazing. Ener1′s Chairman and CEO, Charles Gassenheimer, made an interesting comment about why they are building batteries here, in America: “Why lessen the importing of oil to increase importing of batteries [from Asia]” – good point.
During Lennart Stegland’s (President Special Vehicles – Volvo Car Corporation, Sweden) presentation, he made a couple of interesting points about global carbon dioxide production, this chart shows who’s adding carbon to our air:
I know, some people object to the idea that carbon output contributes to global warming and, well that’s their opinion. Frankly, we live in an enclosed space capsule, a little rock in the middle of nowhere, whatever we do impacts our lives, maybe not now but at some point we’ll be in trouble.
This slide is interesting. It’s showing different solutions to energy storage:
The red cluster of five dots is what Toyota and Honda are using (good power density and good energy storage), but where we need to go is Lithium-ion technology, probably more along a combined type lithium-ion that takes advantage of EV, HEV and plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) demands into one pack, but that’s for another development cycle. On one of the videos, you heard reference to a 18650 lithium-ion battery. Here’s what it looks like:
In the Prius, there are about 6,000 of these batteries, welded together. What EnerDel is working towards is different cell chemistry for different applications.
Here are three PowerPoint presentations from the other week. Of course you’re missing what’s behind each slide, sorry. If you want, please feel free to ask questions and we’ll get back to you.
• Volvo Cars Electrification Strategy
• How We Build a Battery: Cell Chemistry and Pack Construction
• Pack to Vehicle
Good week to you,
dan
