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Bruce Newton9 Aug 2014
NEWS

Volvo confirms triple roll-out

Three-cylinder Volvo engines will be crucial for hitting tough CO2 targets

Volvo has confirmed its new triple-cylinder engines will enter production later this decade after all four-cylinder versions of the Drive-E family have been rolled out by 2016.

And the 1.5-litre three-cylinder turbocharged engines will make their way as far up the Volvo range as the mid-size S60/V60 passenger car family and mid-level XC SUVs.

Volvo’s global powetrain boss Derek Crabb confirmed the roll-out and purpose of the triple-cylinder Drive-E engines to motoring.com.au this week, with a petrol variant expected first.

He declined to say just how many variants would be built, but was clear the line-up wouldn’t be as comprehensive as the 2.0-litre four-cylinder engines, of which there will be four variants of each, plus high-performance Polestar variations. So far two variants of each have been revealed.

The new fours will replace the previous family of four-, five- and six-cylinder Volvo drivetrains. New eight-speed automatic and six-speed manual transmissions are also part of the package.

Volvo Car Australia has taken some Drive-E engines in the 60 range (S, V, XC) and will add them to the V40 before the end of the year.

But it has yet to confirm how many four-cylinder variants it will take, let alone triples.

“I see it [the triple] being possible in S60, but not higher than that,” Crabb told motoring.com.au.

“It’s not planned for the higher XC cars at the moment. It’s not the power, it’s more to do with the torque.”

Crabb revealed the engines will also play a key role in the electrification of the Volvo powertrain line-up as it pushes to hit a 75g/km CO2 corporate average by the mid-2020s.

“Our average now is 120 [grams of CO2 per km] in Europe. By 2020 we have to get down to 95, out here [2025] we have to get down to 75,” he explained. “If you really get your engineering right you can get through 95 without electrification.

“Therefore electrification, with its difficult business case, you can choose to match the business as opposed to being driven to it by fuel economy, which will be a major problem.

“So here [2020] you can manage on gasoline alone, but hopefully by here [2025], electrification will be more commercially sensible and then you will have higher power electrics, but you’ll need three-cylinder engines… So it’s creating building blocks through to 2025.”

The three- and four-cylinder Drive-E engines are based on what Volvo has dubbed VEA, or Volvo Engine Architecture, which means the aluminium block and cylinder-head are fundamentally common, making machining, logistics and calibration of different variants much more affordable.

“That’s the real core of what we are doing,” explained Crabb.

“Having got that base, if we can then pick that one core design and plant, then you can throw a three-cylinder program off that and you can take the same logistics there. You could do [multiple derivatives] because you are controlling all your big spend in the middle.

“We are not going to do all these derivatives … the one we are pushing at the moment is the gasoline and a couple of derivatives.”

The four four-cylinder engines in both the petrol and diesel line-ups are split into entry, low, medium and high power outputs. The diesels are single- or twin-turbo depending on their outputs. The petrols are all single-turbo except for the high-power T6, which adds supercharging for improved bottom-end response.

Crabb confirmed power upgrades were planned for each engine in the family every two years.

Volvo has also pre-designed hybrid ability into the drivetrain, with the capacity to fit a motor generator onto the front axle or an e-motor on the rear axle as per the ‘T8’ petrol-electric drivetrain that will be used by the XC90 SUV and already employed by the V60 plug-in hybrid in diesel-electric form.

The confirmation that Volvo’s triples will feature in much of its range follows on from BMW’s recent admission that we could see its new three-cylinder in the 3 Series as soon as this October’s Paris motor show.

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