New Volvo S60 has a new safety system which fully stops the car under the speeds of 35 km/h. This system was demonstrated to press but it did not work.
Picture are taken from;
Volvo and Wired Websites
Tag: Volvo
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Secret of Diesel
Diesel engine became popular and eye catching like the contemporary designers in a department store. Nearly every car and many brands are offering diesel engine even in their cabrio models, actually Porsche has a diesel SUV! Life without diesel is nearly impossible and hopefully they don’t make black smoke and annoying noise anymore :)However diesel engines have a secret! Diesel engine has a different principle than the petrol engine. Diesel doesn’t need to have a sparkplug to make combustion. In petrol engines, sparkplug is exploding the petrol and rotates the cranks shaft. But in diesel, just a high compression is enough to make that explosion. Why I am telling all these thing? Because, diesel has a really unknown disadvantage!
Diesel engine can run without diesel fuel! Yes, that’s true. Even the engine oil is enough to run diesel engine. Actually, many people knew this. However the critical point is; any mistake made while filling the engine oil ends up cracking down the engine. If the engine oil is more than necessary, engine will start to run by itself and you cannot control the engine. Unless you put into gear and screw gearbox or until the engine oil finishes! Therefore, diesel engine should have a emergency button to release engine oil in these conditions. Don’t think that, this does not happen that often but it happens and when it happens you really don’t want to see that! Also, worn out diesel engines have that risk. As the engine oil is involved in combustion, after sometime engine can run by engine oil, you can watch it on video below.Recently Volvo announced that, some of their diesel engine is accelerating without throttle response. This means, engine oil is on the game! I think Volvo knew this also. Believe this is worse than Toyota’s throttle problem. Once the engine starts to run with oil, that’s game over!
Pictures are taken from;
Volvo Website
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Future of luxury cars!
Automotive industry started to downsize the engines to reduce emissions levels and offer more fuel economy. Ten year ago, a Mercedes S Class with 2,2lt diesel engine would sound funny and there would not be any demand to it. Also a BMW 3 Series with 1,3lt engine would also sound interesting! Or 1,4lt engine produces 170 horsepower would be impossible. Now all of these things are possible and in near future we will have chance to buy 3 Series with 1,3lt turbo engine, 2,2lt diesel S Class and smaller engines will be revealed.
A few days ago Volvo announced the revised 1,6lt diesel engine for S80 and V70. For those of you who don’t know what S80 and V70 are; S80 is the flagship of Volvo and trying to be a competitor for Mercedes E Class, BMW 5 Series and Audi A6. I know it is quite hard to play in that market but Volvo is positioned as cheap and reliable alternative! However, this new 1,6lt diesel engine might be an opportunity for Volvo. This new diesel engine produced 109 horsepower and 240 nm of torque. These figures are the same figures which can found in other Volvo models. I guess, Volvo revised the transmission ratios to use this engine. However, this weak engine would struggle to move Volvo S80 even the revised transmission won’t avoid being very slow.
Highway driving consumption will be 4,0lt of diesel as Volvo announced and this car will have a range of 1750km. Sounds interesting but without automatic transmission, there won’t be a huge rush to this car. However, in emerging markets with high import taxes this car will be loved!Future of E and F segment cars will be combination of; Small and Powerful Diesel Engine or Petrol Engine and Automatic Gearbox. E Segment is Mercedes E Class, BMW 5 Series and competitors. F Segment is Mercedes S Class, BMW7 Series and competitors. The one who offers the pocket size engine first will catch the most!
Don’t be shocked when you see a BMW 7 Series with 1,3lt turbo petrol engine :)
Pictures are from;
Volvo Website
BMW Website
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New Volvo S60 Coming Soon from China!
Volvo is bought by Chinese company Geely in recent weeks. And Volvo released the pictures of new S60 model. I could say, this is one of the best looking car on market now! I am really looking forward to see the real one. I never felt like this for a Volvo.
I don’t know what to say! Ford, why did you wait so long for this car? You could have introduced new S60 before everything turned into chaos.
We could see that, Volvo still has potential and Ford could have benefited from this. As they ignored to revise Volvo’s range for long time, Volvo could not have enough money to survive.
Chinese Volvo S60 will be very popular car and like Jaguar XF, there will be more demand than expected. I think Ford is very good at selling brands which have high potentials hidden. An advise to Geely, try to introduce new S80, as soon as possible! Like, Geneva Motor Show on march ;)
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Volvo 中国商品 (Made in China)
Todya Ford announced their plan to sell Volvo to Chineese car manufacturer Geely. This news was expecting to be announced for long time. For nearly three years, Ford was willing to sell Volvo but always denied this fact. As the financial pressure increased this strategy started to rise. As expected a Chineese manufacturer would buy the Volvo, this business deal between Ford and Geely is a milestone for Chinese automotive industry. By this way, Chinese jumped to luxury car maket with Volvo brand. Even though, Volvo is suffering serious problem in competition and could not keep up with Germans, Geely’s motivation to enter luxury market will play significant role in following years.
However; there is a very important fact, does Geely has enough know-how to compete with Germans? This is one of the main reason why Volvo lost its competition power as the Germans revealed much better cars with same safety features. Therefore, Geely should also find very intelligent engineers to increase the competition power Volvo brand.
As everyone is concerning, what will happen to platform sharing with Ford? Ford Focus and Volvo S40 are basically same cars and this means, Geely also bought the some of the Ford’s know-how!!!
Volvo promises future and right decisions would help to go back to good old days :)
