Volvo C30 Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) revealed

The Volvo C30 BEV

Revealed is probably a bit strong as Volvo hasn’t actually rolled out a car for the world to see. But it is a plan – and internal evaluation, apparantly – of an electric Volvo C30.

The Volvo C30 BEV is a logical step for Volvo to take for the small C30. They’ve got as far as they can on economy with the C30 with the reveal yaesterday of the C30 1.6D DRIVe, so the only way to go is hybrid or EV. And Volvo do plan on introducing a plug-in hybrid in 2010.

So Volvo has been playing at trying to make the C30 a viable EV. They’ve fitted an electric motor in place of the C30′s normal engine and shoved a 24kwh bank of litium-ion batteries in the propshaft tunnel (or where the fuel tank ususally goes – they’re not sure).

Volvo reckons that a C30 so equipped would have a range of 93 miles and take eight hours to recharge from a domestic socket. 0-60 mph is reckoned to be 11seconds and top speed is limited to 80mph.

To be honest, this is just a play thing for Volvo and there is no chance of the C30 BEV turning up any time soon. Volvo says that they are concentrating on developing hybrids rather than EVs, and this is just a ‘Let’s see what we can do’ scenario.

But they’re trying. And it gives them a bit of coverage.

By Cars UK