New rear-wheel drive options, better range, faster charging – all coming to Volvo Cars in 2023.
Volvo Cars are on a path to increased electrification. The company has already completely divested its stake in internal combustion engine development and is now putting most of its propulsion engineering efforts into battery and electric motor technology. As such, we can expect to see lots of improvements coming to their electric and electrified models. Here’s a brief overview of what the company has announced so far.
XC40 and C40 Rear-Wheel Drive Update
RWD Recharge Pure Electric models for the Volvo XC40 and C40.
In some markets, the compact electric XC40 and C40 crossovers from Volvo are available as front-wheel driven models as well as twin motor all-wheel drive models. Now, Volvo Car are planning to introduce rear-wheel driven models for the first time in 25 years. What are the benefits of these RWD electric Volvos?
The first benefit is a 3% increase in power. The front-wheel driven models come with a 170kW motor while these new rear-wheel driven models will come with a 175kW motor. This is a 2nd generation permanent magnet electric motor and it’s the first to be developed in-house by Volvo Cars.
The second benefit is that the same 69kWh battery capacity is now able to deliver 8.2% more range on the XC40 (500km) and 8.6% more range on the C40 (507km). This is thanks to enhancements in cooling efficiency.
Bigger New Battery + Better Motor Option For These RWD Models
The third benefit is that these RWD models can also be upgraded to a new 185kW permanent magnet motor with an 82kWh battery pack. This gives the XC40 Recharge a range of 515km and the C40 Recharge a range of 553km. The larger battery pack can take 200kW DC Fast Charging (up from 150kW), so a 10-80% charge takes just 28 minutes.
XC40 and C40 All-Wheel Drive Update
Since new in-house motors have been introduced on the all-new rear-wheel drive models, Volvo Cars will also update the all-wheel drive variants. These are pertinent to Malaysian customers, since we only get all-wheel drive electric Volvos here.
These twin 150kW electric motors in the C40 Recharge Pure Electric and XC40 Recharge Pure Electric will be replaced by a 183 permanent magnet electric motor on the rear axle and a 117kW asynchronous electric motor at the front.
Paired to an 82kWh battery pack, these new motors, cooling efficiency gains and more aerodynamically efficient 19″ alloy wheels give the XC40 Recharge Twin Motor AWD 500km of range on a single charge. The C40 Recharge Twin Motor AWD’s range is now 507km.
Faster Charging For S60, V60, S90, V90, XC90 PHEVs
The plug-in hybrids built of the 60 and 90 series are all also getting an upgrade for 2023. This upgrade comes in the form of a new 2-phase on-board charger. This almost doubles the AC charging capabilities of these T8 Twin Engine models for 2023 to 6.4kW.
