Volvo engine plant is the first to officially go ‘green’

January 25, 2018 by Alastair Sloane

Volvo has put its money where its mouth is – its engine factory (above) in Sweden is now officially carbon-neutral.

The carmaker switched to renewable heating on January 1, 10 years after it turned to renewable sources for the plant’s electricity.

All heating supplied to the facility is now generated from waste incineration, biomass and recycled bio-fuels.

The facility, at Skodve (below), between Stockholm and Gothenburg, is the first of Volvo Cars’ global plants to go carbon-neutral and is one of only a handful of such automotive factories in Europe.

“Improving energy efficiency is our first priority and then, for the energy we need to use, we aim for supplies generated from renewable sources,” said Javier Varela, a Volvo senior vice-president.

“The Skövde plant achievement is an important addition to our broader efforts in minimising our environmental footprint.”

“We are pleased to be a leader within the automotive industry in the move towards climate-neutral manufacturing.”

Volvo Cars – owned by Chinese company Geely Holding Group since 2010 – has said it will electrify all its new models from 2019 as part of a commitment to cut its overall carbon footprint.

This includes having carbon-neutral plants worldwide by 2025, two years before its 100^th birthday. Volvo began building cars in Sweden in 1927.

If you are in a position to shell out upwards of NZ$600,000 for the 60^thanniversary Porsche 911 S/T or optional Porsche 911 S/T Heritage, you’ll no doubt want the signature titanium watch that goes with it. That’s how Porsche figures it anyway. Or, if you want the watch you’ll need to get the car. Both the car and the watch are limited to 1963 units, the year the original 911 model broke cover. The watch – Chronograph 1 911 S/T and Chronograph 1 911 S/T Heritage – and the car carry matching edition numbers. The watch is priced at $US13,500, or around $NZ22,200. The car, says Porsche NZ, starts at $NZ608,000. A “strictly limited number” will go into production for NZ early next year.

Eight European Union countries are pushing to weaken new EU emissions limits for cars, saying they are overly ambitious and unrealistic for carmakers to hit. The eight countries – France, Italy, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia – said in a joint paper that parts of the proposed Euro 7 regulation, including curbs on exhaust pipe emissions, should be scrapped entirely. They said the limits would force carmakers to invest in improving exhaust emissions performance, money which would be better spent on developing zero-emission vehicles. Taken together, the countries would have enough votes to block the proposal.

A go-anywhere EV concept for the US military uses an onboard 12kW diesel generator to top up the batteries on the move. The all-wheel-drive has 800-volt technology and a 200kWh battery pack to power three electric motors, two in the rear and one up front. Claimed output is 745kW/15,590Nm, or 1000hp and 11,500 ft-lb of torque. The four-seater was developed by the defence division of General Motors and is based on the platform of the Hummer SUV. It rides on Fox performance shock absorbers and 37-inch tyres and comes with “exceptional” approach and departure angles for off-road mobility. Maximum range using the generator to keep things ticking over is said to be around 500km.

The outside temperature in Midland, Texas, was 40.5C when staff at the local office of the US National Weather Service set out to show the cabin of a closed car can literally get baking hot in summer. They mixed up a batch of chocolate chip cookies and laid them on the car’s dashboard – the surface of which showed a temperature of 87.7C. A little over four hours later the cookies were ready to eat. “Even though ours weren’t golden brown, we can confirm that they are done and delicious,” the staff wrote on Facebook.