Swedish car manufacturer Volvo, in line with its DRIVe Towards Zero campaign will be launching a hybrid vehicle by 2012. The announcement also puts spotlight to the partnership formed between Volvo and energy firm Vattenfall.
Vattenfall will be helping Volvo in the production of their first plug in vehicle and their line of electric vehicles in the future.
The agreement between the two companies to develop the needed technology have been forged since 2007.
Saab has also joined forces with Volvo and Vattenfall to help in the endeavor. Saab has developed a concept 9-X BioHybrid.
Volvo has on the drawing boards the concept car based on the hatchback C30 for their plug-in hybrid car technology. By mid-2009. Volvo will run a test of their V70 plug in cars cruising on the roads of Europe.
The demo vehicles is aimed at giving Volvo and its partners the feedback that they need from the first hand experience of the people behind the wheels. They want to hear about the comments of consumers with regard to the new car technology so they can adapt to possible driving habits and apply the necessary innovations.
Vattenfall will explore the different means of charging the vehicle at home or through network of public charging stations.
The test cars may be a bit different from the series cars due for release in 2012 but they will paved the way for the development of hybrid plug-ins that is demanded by the market.
Another important thing to put the spotlight on is the effort of Volvo to combine the power of diesel and electricity in their hybrid cars instead of using petrol. The use of diesel may give the cars better efficiency than rivals coming from Toyota or Chevrolet.
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[...] vehicles will reflect a combo of technologies being explored by different companies to develop Diesel-Electric hybrid vehicles and [...]