Carsales Staff•14 May 2013
NEWS
Production start for Volvo's VEA powerplants
The end of the beginning is in sight for Swedish company's frugal engine strategyHigh-efficiency four-cylinder engines are now in series production at Volvo's Skövde engine plant in Sweden – following two years of preparation at the factory.
The new engines, collectively coded VEA (Volvo Engine Architecture), are compatible with hybrid-drive systems and are the cornerstone of Volvo's future drivetrain development strategy, and its gradual migration away from current supplier – and former owner – Ford.
"This marks a milestone in Volvo Cars' history," says Derek Crabb, Vice President Powertrain Engineering – quoted in a press release. "With our new engine family we are focusing on two additional vital properties – driving pleasure and fuel efficiency."
One of the interesting elements of this story is Volvo's decision to build all the engines on the one production line, something that Mazda has already put in place for the production of its SKYACTIV engines. The Mazda plant at Hiroshima was already operational and producing different engines on the same line during the early throes of Volvo's preparatory work on the factory at Skövde.
"One of the biggest challenges was the remodelling of the line for cylinder block processing. 30 machining cells were replaced or converted at a cost of about half a billion kronor," says Oskar Falk, Vice President Global Engine Production.
But it's primarily the engine architecture that is key to the future success of Volvo's drivetrain strategy. Developed in-house, the VEA family will provide fuel economy better than the current generation of four-cylinder engines, allied with performance beyond that of current sixes, Volvo claims.
"During the development of VEA the starting point was our customers and what we wanted to offer them in regard to good fuel economy, low environmental impact and immense driving pleasure at an attractive price. At the same time, however, it's also about the fact that Volvo Cars gets a sound basis for developing future-generation technologies featuring fuel economy of absolute world class," says Crabb (pictured).
Volvo expects the new plant to have produced 20,000 engines during what remains of 2013, with production to increase to 2000 units a week by then. With different iterations progressively introduced over time, the VE engines will power S60, V60, XC60, V70, XC70 and S80 in global markets by around the third quarter of this year – with the rest of the Volvo range to follow in due course.
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Written byCarsales Staff
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