Volvo’s XC90 and S90 heralded the rebirth of Volvo, but those big-ticket cars won’t save the company. What Volvo needs is a big volume, mass-market seller to bring its Swedish revolution to the Youths and the masses. If you’re a Youth or a Mass, these are the guts of underneath your next Swedish runabout.
With the Volvo 40 concepts came a few glimpses into how the köttbullar is powered. Take a look a the tidy powertrain packaging of the Volvo Concept 40.1 and 40.2 and get used to them, as they preview what’s underpinning Volvo’s new Compact Modular Architecture that’s going under all of its new small cars.
Volvo’s Concept 40.1 and 40.2 were meant as previews for what’s coming to the XC40 crossover and V40 hatchback in the near future. With the concepts came these lovely illustrations that show how electric, hybrid and petrol-powered powertrains can all fit within Volvo’s latest small-car designs.
Volvo wants to sell a million electrified cars by 2025, and in order to do that, they’ll need to figure out how to package everything inside. While Volvo only released two concept cars based on its CMA today, the packaging underneath them looks production-ready.
One important option for Volvo’s compact 40 cars is this battery-packed all-electric powertrain, which features a tunnel-like hump in the middle for packaging.
As for the Twin Engine hybrids, Volvo’s Drive-E three-cylinder internal combustion engine is an extremely compact machine in its own right, making it a suitable for use in a hybrid system. Volvo’s icy-hot Polestars are likely to be hybrids in the future, so what you’re looking at may be genesis for the littlest Swedish hot hatch sometime around 2020.
The hybrid power pack that’s mated to a seven-speed dual-clutch transmission doesn’t add too much space, keeping it as compact as the name “Compact Modular Architecture” suggests.
Like most modern hybrids, regenerative braking will help harvest some power for the T5 Twin Engine powering Volvo’s new compacts.
Overall, the T5 Twin Engine is a neat, tidy fit into Volvo’s Compact Modular Architecture.
One illustration of this hybrid powertrain shows just how much more compact Volvo’s new CMA is in comparison to its larger Scalable Product Architecture (SPA). These packaging diagrams also shed a few clues as to why Volvo would be using a more compact, front-wheel-biased all-wheel-drive system for the CMA cars.
Of course, a traditional, non-electric, non-hybrid powertrain still fits within Volvo’s CMA. If you’re not ready to jump into electrics just yet, Volvo still has you covered.
Photo credits: Volvo.