Motor Mouth: Plug-in hybrids are the key to an electric future

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That Volvo has one of the most ambitious electrification plans of any mainstream automaker is hopefully not news to you. Nor that the company claims it will cease production of all gas engines by 2030 — five years sooner than the plans just released by our federal government — and, in just four short years from now, that it hopes to sell 1.2 million vehicles globally, at least half of which will be fully electric. Considering the company sold just under 662,000 cars worldwide last year, those are, as I said, ambitious plans.

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And to make that happen will require a remake of its entire business model, which will include completely new electric-only platforms, dramatically upgraded batteries, and, surely most eye-catchingly of all, a top-of-the-line model with a whopping 1,000 kilometres of range. Yes, 1,000 klicks on one charge!

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Nonetheless, what makes this quick march towards electrification most intriguing — at least to a geek like yours truly — is that it was all financed by—

An internal-combustion engine.

Actually, it’d be more accurate to label it an entire family of powertrains based on one single solitary internal-combustion engine. Syntax aside, Volvo’s use of a single engine design throughout its entire product line is one of the most novel — and unheralded — automotive engineering feats of the last decade.

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On the brink of collapse after it had been ravaged by a decade of Ford ownership — all the supposed platform- and engine-sharing that mergers are supposed to offer turned out to be decidedly one-sided in Ford’s favour — the research and development cupboards were pretty slim when Chinese automaker Geely took over in 2010. With a complete revision to both platform and powertrains necessary, Geely came up with the then-novel plan of making both platform and powertrain scalable. And while there was little revolutionary about the Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) that has spawned Volvos up to its full-sized XC 90 SUV, the modular powertrains the company engineered to serve a range of vehicles from small sedan to gargantuan sport-brute was nothing short of visionary.

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Essentially, every car Volvo — at least every ICE car — has built since 2014 (here in Canada; 2013 globally) has been powered by some form of its 2.0-litre inline-four. From, again, small sedan to full-sized sport-utility vehicle, the core of every Volvo powertrain is but that one singular engine. Engines with power ratings as picayune as 148-horsepower (the lowly T3 variant never sold in Canada) all the way up to hybridized versions with over 400 hp all share the same 82-millimetre (bore) by 93.2-mm (stroke) dimensions and four-valve-per-cylinder head. Throughout its exhaustive lineup — from S60 sedan to gargantuan XC90s, Volvo starts with the same 1,969-cc displacement and then simply adds a turbocharger and/or supercharger (not to mention hybrid electric motors) to match the performance requirements.

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So, the aforementioned T3 sported but one low-pressure turbocharger. Move all the way up to the all-singing, all-dancing 316-hp version that served as the top-of-the-line non-Polestar powertrain and the little 2.0-litre — badged “T6” in this case — boasted both a supercharger and an even larger turbocharger. Wick the same engine up even tighter — as in the previous-generation V60 Polestar that Driving tested — and the little bugger was good for 367 hp and pulled to 7,000 rpm like a Mercedes AMG.

Then, because all roads lead to electrification, Volvo began adding electric motors to the equation. And at the top end of the lineup is the supremely torque-y T8 plug-in hybrid that marries a super- and turbocharged version of the 2.0L powering the front wheels with an electric motor motivating the rear tires. In the case of the XC90 T8 , for instance, it was a 313-hp version of the super-/turbocharged four driving the front axle through an eight-speed transmission, wedded to an 87-hp electric motor in the rear. Being a plug-in, it sported a 9.1-kilowatt-hour battery as well, with an EPA-rated electric only range of just under 30 klicks.

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That very same engine has served as the basis for every car that Volvo built for the last five years

It’s also worth noting that Volvo also built diesel engines on the same 2.0-litre carcass and eventually lopped one cylinder off the four’s block — a la BMW — to create a 1.5-litre three-cylinder gas engine, all still built on that one cost-saving modular platform. Whatever the semantics, the very same engine has served as the basis for every car that Volvo built for the last five years.

Contrast that with, say Toyota, a company which also has a stellar — and much-deserved — reputation for electrification. Counting the two engines — a 2.0L four and a 3.0L I6, both turbocharged — that the company “borrows” from BMW for its Supra, Toyota sells no less than eight different piston-powered powertrains in Canada. And that doesn’t even include the Atkinson-cycled 2.5L variants of its vaunted hybrids, nor the additional ICEs — a 2.0L Turbo and the RC F’s high-revving V8 — that Lexus uses which bumps the total up to a dozen unique gas-fueled engines. Now, admittedly Volvo’s lineup is not nearly as diverse as Toyota’s, but the various iterations of Volvo’s solitary 2.0L could easily replace every Toyota powertrain, save the 1.8L in the little Corolla; and the 5.7L V8 that powers the company’s trucks and largest SUVs.

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And electrifying the little four-banger allows Volvo to stay on message, minimizing the importance of pistons in its current portfolio while stressing all the work it is doing with plug-ins. Contrast this, as Jeremy Cato of catocarguy.com  did recently, with Ford’s decision to release its entirely gas-powered Bronco just as it tries to convince consumers — and, more importantly, regulators — that its future is all-electric. Instead, it’s Jeep, with its extremely popular Wrangler 4xe plug-in hybrid, that is stealing all the environmentally-friendly off-road headlines while the Ford, as Cato points out, is a real gas-guzzler .

No such confusion mars Volvo’s motives. Way back in 2013 when it announced the new program, Derek Crabb, then VP of powertrain engineering, said “ the four-cylinder, transversely mounted engine is a way of building for an electrified future .” In other words, not only would the little four provide a stepping stone to first hybrid and then PHEV electrification, but, in reducing Volvo’s manufacturing and R&D costs, it would also let the Swedish-Chinese automaker focus its resources on developing its battery-powered future.

From small displacements do grand visions emanate.