Volvo's Development Of Petrol Engines Is As Good As Over
Last weekend, we tried our best to take you through Mazda’s extremely complicated new SkyActiv-X engine without making brains explode. However, what’s most startling about it is the fact the Japanese firm decided to create this revolutionary new petrol engine in the first place, because elsewhere in the industry, a different path is being forged.
Just take Volvo, for example. The brand had already nailed its colours to the mast last year by announcing that all of its cars will be electrified to some extent by 2019, and more recently when speaking to Car and Driver, CEO Håkan Samuelsson said that Volvo will not be developing its current range of engines any further.
Well, with one exception: Volvo may potentially add a third compressor (which will be electric) to one iteration of its 2.0-litre inline-four, but that’s it. The recently revealed inline-three engine in the Drive-E family (below) is effectively the last big piece of Volvo engine news ever.
It’s worth remembering that the Drive-E range first launched in 2013, so there is plenty of life left in the engines. Volvo’s planned shift to all-electric cars is still a long way off, but in the meantime, according to Road and Track, the electric motors in hybrid Volvos will become much more powerful. Since Volvo mounts its motors on the rear axles of its cars, this should mean they’ll eventually have a healthy rear bias.
Bring it on…
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
Honestly ICE engine was never a great thing. I know I’ll get downvoted, but hear me out. ICE needs 1,5k - 2k RPM just to do your daily driving. That’s literally like you lighting up more than a 1000 firecrackers every minute just to move you around.
On the other hand EE is sofisticated, quiet and doesn’t explode constantly. Only reason why today we drive ICE powered cars is because of the battery tech when cars first showed up. Now battery tech is starting to catch up, there just isn’t any reason why would you want an ICE engine in your daily.
My take, you can hate all you want
Side note, ICE means a lot to car guys, BUT all emotions asaide and looking on it from the engineering perspective, it’s complex and less efficient than the EE.
You make a very good point, but it’s also probably a big preference thing, sort of like people still playing acoustic instruments such as piano and violin which require hard maintenance and proper care when they could just get an electric one which would be cheaper in the long run and they require no tuning, care or anything like that, but I still prefer my acoustic violin (aside from the obvious reason, ‘it sounds better’) because it just feels.. better? I don’t know how relevant that is, and I agree, Internal combustion engines might be inefficient when compared to electric engines, and I know that preference and ‘what you like’ may not be that important or whatever, but I guess that’s one big reason people still like ICEs. I personally don’t mind, but “soul” is important, I guess.
Lighting up more than a 1000 firecrackers every minute just to move around sounds something a supervillain would do. Sounds badass. Also I like burning dead dinosaur in the engine.
Although I would prefer an electric car for city driving…
Agreed man, if I were to design an ideal car for my parents to pootle around town in, it’d be a ln EE, however, ICEs mean sooo much to me that idk if I’d ever own an EE
Batteries are still heavy and expensive, the battery tech hasn’t really changed much yet.
An electric tank…the “silent killer”
Except Volvos don’t kill people. If anything they bring them back to life lmao
If anything they save lifes lol… And I don’t really care I mean they had some awesome 4,5 and 8cyl engines but those are long gone so… The current ones are not bad either tho…
Good. I don’t like new Volvo’s anyway, after they replaced inline six with 4 cylinder hybrid junk. The more manufacturers will switch to purely electric cars the better, because at least they won’t ruin ICE with their hybrid junk.
It doesn’t quite work like that
Funny thing is, Volvo was never famous for i6 engines, but rather i5. So I assume you didn’t care about Volvo anyway :)
4 cylinder yunk? and you got a evo in your picture xD
This makes me very happy. Hello, dear future!
This still makes me a little sad. I will miss Volvo’s unstoppable engines.
Only a little sad. Wait does this mean other electric car companies can say they are as reliable as Volvos now?🤔
Well when the day comes, we’ll all mourn the loss of a great and noble maker of the petrol engine. Till then, we love you Volvo!
Great news from Volvo. The early adopters of an inevitable technological/political evolution always reap by far the most benefits. Hopefully they’ll make enough extra revenue in the next decade or so that they’ll be able to go racing again in BTCC!
big fail
I’ll miss those crazy T5s of old 😔
I’m quite excited about Volvo’s shift to electric. It makes so much more sense for the sort of cars that they’re making. Now when it comes to performance cars, that’s where I’d hope to see combustion engines sticking around. But for regular point A to point B type of car, I’d like to see them being electric and even autonomous tbh.