The engine announcement comes after mixed sales results for Volvo Car Group in April with global retail sales of 33,702 cars for the month. For the first four months of 2013, retail sales were down 6.4%. China is Volvo’s biggest market.
Volvo Car Group is now manufacturing the first versions of a new, high-efficiency four-cylinder engine family after two years of preparation. The engine plant in Skövde, Sweden will make smaller engines that are claimed to deliver higher performance than today’s six-cylinder engines, while offering lower fuel consumption than the current generation of four-cylinder.
The Swedish company now owned by Chinese Geely developed a new architecture dubbed VEA (Volvo Engine Architecture) that consists of four-cylinder direct injection gasoline and diesel engines. Together with planned driveline electrification, VEA replaces the previous eight engine architectures on three different platforms.
“Increasing the rail pressure to an exceptionally high 2,500 Bar, while adding the i-ART technology, can be described as the second step in the diesel revolution. It is a breakthrough comparable to when we invented the groundbreaking lambda sensor for the catalytic converter in 1976. It’s another world-first for Volvo,” says Derek Crabb, Vice President Powertrain Engineering at Volvo Car Group.
By using pressure feedback from each fuel injector instead of using a traditional single pressure sensor in the common rail, the new Volvo injection system continuously monitors and adapts fuel injection per combustion cycle in each of the four cylinders.
The new engines will be introduced between 2013 and 2015. About 20,000 engines will be produced in 2013, and by the end of the year the production pace will be 2000 units a week. The first variants will be fitted to the Volvo S60, V60, XC60, V70, XC70 and S80 in autumn of 2013.
The engine announcement comes after mixed sales results for Volvo Car Group in April with global retail sales of 33,702 cars for the month. For the first four months of 2013 retail sales were down 6.4%. China was Volvo’s biggest market in April and both China and Sweden reported growth compared to last year.
In Sweden, Volvo continues to outperform the market and Volvo’s share of the market subsequently grew to almost 20%. China was Volvo Car Group’s biggest market in April with 4,710 sold cars, partly thanks to the XC60 model selling at record levels.
Retail sales in the United States in April amounted to 4,475 cars, and -8% decline. The S60 and XC60 models continue to lead individual car line sales in the United States. European markets continue to struggle with weak consumer demand following the weak economic situation. The decline in Europe is however showing some signs of a slowdown and all four Nordic markets grew in April.
