Volvo Cars announced recently that they are working on an electric vehicle called the C30 BEV. BEV stands for Battery Electric Vehicle. The Volvo C30 BEV is powered with a Lithium-Ion battery that is charged via a regular power socket. The C30 BEV is limited to a top speed of about 130 kilometres an hour. Acceleration from 0 to 100 kilometres an hour will take less than 11 seconds. The car will have a range of up to 150 kilometres, about 93 miles.
"The Volvo C30 is the first model we will try out with electric power. This car's excellent properties in city traffic and its relatively low weight make it particularly suitable, since electric cars are primarily expected to be used in and around cities and for daily commuting," says Lennart Stegland, Director of Volvo Cars Special Vehicles.
Recharging an entirely depleted battery via the regular household power supply system (230V, 16A) will take about eight hours. The electric motor is housed under the bonnet, just like the engine in a conventional car. Volvo said one of its priorities within the BEV project is to find the optimal placing of the battery. Most likely the best places are the prop shaft tunnel and the place where the fuel tank normally is located. These locations are within the car's optimised crumple zone in the most common collision scenarios. Since the car runs solely on electricity, it requires a larger battery with higher capacity (24 kWh) than in the case of the plug-in hybrid (12 kWh).
Volvo will also introduce a plug-in hybrid in 2012. They have not set a date for the launch of the C30 BEV.
