Volvo’s new four-cylinder engine family debuts in Europe
Volvo Cars will debut a new family of advanced four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines this coming autumn. Developed in-house, the engines are built at the Volvo Car Group’s high-tech engine plant in Skövde, Sweden.
Incorporating forced induction and direct injection technologies, the new 2.0-litre engines can be tuned to push out anywhere from 140 to over 300hp in petrol guise, whilst diesel variants will produce anywhere between 120 and 230hp.
Besides gradually replacing the Ford-sourced four-cylinder mills in its line-up, Volvo plans to use the new engines to go as far as replacing its 5-cylinder, 6-cylinder, and V8 engines eventually. The engines are also electrification-ready, so a hybrid version is definitely on the cars.
Known as the Volvo Engine Architecture during its developmental stage, the new engine family is now officially christened with the name Drive-E. Both the petrol and diesel versions feature bore and stroke measurements of 82.0mm and 93.2mm respectively, working out to a displacement of 1,969cc.
The new engine family launches with three variants – one diesel and two petrol. The sole diesel mill, denoted by the D4 badge, makes 181hp @ 4,250rpm and 400Nm @ 1,750 – 2,500rpm. It features i-Art technology, which uses pressure feedback from each individual fuel injector to continuously monitor and calculate the ideal amount of fuel injected for each combustion cycle. This setup harmonizes combustion pressure from cycle to cycle, contributing to improved fuel economy.
“Increasing the rail pressure to an exceptionally high 2,500 bar, while adding the i-Art technology, can be described as the second step in the diesel revolution. It is a breakthrough comparable to our invention of the lambda sensor for the catalytic converter in 1976. It’s another world first in passenger cars for Volvo,” says Derek Crabb, Vice President Powertrain Engineering at Volvo Car Group.
The petrol engines are just as noteworthy, featuring the use of twincharging to boost outputs, ironically just as Volkswagen decides that it has had enough of the associated complexities of this arrangement. On paper results are certainly impressive, however, with the engine developing 245hp/350Nm in its T5 guise and 306hp/400Nm in its T6 guise – figures eerily similar to outputs of BMW’s 2.0-litre N20 and 3.0-litre N55 engines.
“The power you get from an engine has nothing to do with its size; it is about the amount of air that you can get to flow through it. You can also make an engine more efficient if you make it smaller. So, if you can get more air through a smaller engine, you can still get the same power but at better efficiency,” said Crabb.
All three variants of the new engine will be introduced in an upcoming model update of the S60, V60, and XC60 models. The T5 and D4 engines will be available in the V70, XC70 and S80. The engine is available to be paired with either a 6-speed manual or an Aisin Warner-sourced transversely-mounted 8-speed automatic transmission.
KON
Pictures: Official Volvo release.
