Volvo’s new SPA platform
It would appear that Volvo is putting a lot of their hopes for the near future into three letters, SPA – which stand for Scalable Platform Architecture.
According to the Volvo V40 technical director Sven-Gunnar Johansson, the SPA will be used for the next-generation Volvo car and SUV.
They are totally focused on developing the SPA platform so that they can use it for both the small car segment as well for the large SUVs such as the XC90. The investment is global, so it is eating up a lot of resources in order to put into practice and to deliver the cars from the platform.
Considering that this is a global strategy, and how the SPA will be used in all future Volvo cars, the European manufacturer has surely taken on a massive task.
But it would appear that global introduction of the SPA isn’t enough, and they’ll also introduce a new family of engines made up of exclusively four-cylinder petrol and diesel engines that may also feature the KERS – Kinetic Energy Recovery System – on the flywheel.
Despite this tough project that they’ve undertaken it should be noted that the research and development senior vice president Peter Mertens is rather upbeat about the project, because he considers that this will give Volvo a fresh technological start.
The SPA is expected to launch sometime in the 2013-2014 interval and when it does launch, about ninety percent of its components will actually be newly designed ones, truly a major endeavor.
The new platform will utilize lightweight technologies amongst which high-strength steel and aluminium, which will make the SPA 100-150kg lighter than the current same sized model.
When we add in the flywheel KERS technology which will offer up to an eighty percent power boost, it means that the four-cylinder engines will perform more like sixes, but will consume actually even less fuel in the process.
