My thoughts on all things motoring, press releases, reviews & techie stuff, from around the world.
Please note that the pictures of vehicles within this blog are used as examples of the specific press releases, on occasions, due to the lack of available official pictures, examples are re-produced.
ANY AND ALL PROFANITIES WILL BE REMOVED AND THE PERSON/S RESPONSIBLE WILL BE BANNED, NO EXCEPTIONS.
Purpose
I will try my best to provide detailed info on various cars and what is like to live with them, I have already produced a few for Jaguar-car-forums, I will do my best to be unbiased, but it will be hard for some cars. I will re-produce press releases and copy from other motoring news.
V40/V40 Cross Country was Volvo UK's biggest seller, with 16,491 sold
Strong performance from XC60 and new XC90
Volvo Cars reveals global record-breaking sales figure of 534,332 in 2016
Volvo Car UK has secured its highest sales figures for a quarter of a century, with 46,696 cars sold in 2016. This is an increase of 7% on 2015's results, and demonstrates the quality and desirability of Volvo's range of premium cars.
The V40/V40 Cross Country was the highest-selling model in the UK, with 16,491 sold, followed by the ever-popular XC60 (16,038) and the new XC90 (5,801).
The figure for the XC90 is especially significant, since the XC90 is the first model built on Volvo's all-new SPA platform and powered exclusively by its ground-breaking Drive-E powertrains.
This strong UK performance helped Volvo Cars achieve a third consecutive year of record sales, selling 534,332 cars globally in 2016 (up 6.2% on 2015's figure).
Commenting on the sales performance, Jon Wakefield, Managing Director of Volvo Car UK, said: "2016 was a superb year for everyone at Volvo. We sold more than 46,600 cars in the UK for the first time in 25 years and increased our market share – and with another exciting year of new technologically advanced and stunning Volvos coming in 2017, we're confident this positive momentum will continue."
Volvo Cars’ safety expert Anders Axelson knows that brilliant ideas can pop up in the strangest of circumstances. A visit to Legoland with his twin daughters in 2007 inspired Anders to turn an amusement park ride into an efficient test method in Volvo Cars’ quest for better protection in run-off road crashes.
“Watching people being thrown in all directions during a ride in the ‘Robocoaster’, I suddenly realised that those rapid, random movements resembled the violent forces occupants in a run-off road crash are exposed to,” says Anders Axelson.
Run-off road crashes had been on Anders’ mind since 2006 when Volvo Cars intensified the development of technology to help protect car occupants in these common and complex scenarios.
Based on real-life accident data, Anders Axelson’s team initiated three complete vehicle crash test track methods, called ‘Ditch’, ‘Airborne’ and ‘Rough terrain’, for evaluating the consequences of various run-off road scenarios.
Analysing films from a large number of these tests confirmed that being thrown out of the ideal, firmly strapped-in seat position correlates well with potential injury-causing mechanisms seen in real-world crashes.
Searching for a test method
“The engineers developed promising solutions to actively retract the occupants in order to keep them in position. But since running complete cars into the terrain is a time-consuming and expensive test method, we needed a quicker and cheaper solution to evaluate the ideas,” Anders Axelson recalls.
The stroke of genius conveniently came on a family trip to Legoland in Denmark. At the time, Anders’s twin girls were too small for the ‘Robocoaster’, but after watching other kids being shaken by the robot arm, he realised that the ride had potential beyond making kids scream with joy.
Back at the office, Anders started searching for a similar robot that could be programmed to mimic the exact movement patterns that Volvo Cars had recorded during the complete vehicle run-off road crash tests.
Unique test rig
“The industrial robot manufacturer ABB had the technology and the knowledge to programme a machine designed for precision work to move a car seat around in a seemingly random pattern. It worked brilliantly,” says Anders Axelson.
A vehicle seat and restraint system is mounted on the multi-axial industrial robot. The robot, which is used together with a crash test dummy, can be programmed to simulate the occupant kinematics during crucial parts of run-off road scenarios.
During the development work of the all-new XC90 and upcoming cars based on the company’s new scalable architecture, Volvo Cars’ own ‘Robocoaster’ has been used to find the combination of safety belt geometry, rapid belt retraction and seat design that helps keep the occupant firmly in position in run-off road scenarios.
World-first run-off road safety solution
The result is a world-first run-off road protection package that includes rapid electrical safety belt retraction as well as unique ‘energy-absorbing’ functionality in the seat that cushions the vertical forces that occur in a ‘hard landing’ in the terrain.
“The most valuable result from the ‘Robocoaster’ tests is probably the insight into how well the safety belt retraction interacts with the enhanced side support in our new seat generation,” says Anders Axelson.
By the way, Anders Axelson never went on the ‘Robocoaster’ ride during that visit to Legoland. “No way. Violent rides like that make me sick,” he says with a smile.
Volvo’s Gothenburg factory accepts new orders for the first vehicle from the new SPA platform
Order system opens with an influx of pre-orders placed at dealers
New engine and options now available from preview customer feedback
Volvo Car Corporation has opened the order books for the all-new Volvo XC90, the first vehicle to be built on its brand new in-house designed and built chassis, using its own in-house designed and built engines.
Amongst the first orders to be placed are the lucky 1927 owners of the First Edition, 53 of them being from the UK. Customers who have already placed orders at dealers will have their order accepted by the factory and become the some of the first owners to have their vehicle delivered.
Having been able to preview the all-new XC90 to a number of customers and from feedback already received, a number of additions have been made available to order. Principle changes have been the introduction into the UK of the 320hp T6 petrol engine and the addition in the availability of the auxiliary heater on the D5. The auxiliary heater, standard on the T8 Twin Engine, allows the driver to pre-condition the vehicle cabin to a set temperature so that it is ready for when the car is required.
Design
The XC90 will be built on Volvo’s brand new SPA chassis. Designed under the leadership of Thomas Ingenlath, the new vehicle shows the new design direction of Volvo Cars, together with its new interior and centre-piece, the tablet style centre touchscreen.
Engines
The XC90 is the first car to be powered solely by Volvo’s new Drive-E engine range. Available to order from launch with either an all-wheel-drive (AWD) D5 225hp diesel, an AWD T6 320hp petrol or an AWD T8 Twin Engine petrol plug-in hybrid with 400hp.
First Edition
The all-new Volvo XC90 First Edition was sold exclusively on-line and was sold out within 47 hours, at peak time seven cars were sold every minute. Only 1927 cars were made available, a celebration of the year that Volvo was founded, all in one specification level and in the same exterior colour and interior upholstery.
