Volvo has already announced that it intends to electrify its lineup entirely in the near future. The company also enlisted the release of the hybrid version of the XC40 SUV.
The Volvo XC40 SUV has become the company’s second best-selling vehicle all over the world. Now it will unveil the all-electric version of the XC40 SUV in October 2019. The images of the new SUV have already been released and they have caught our attention with their magnificent exterior and promising configurations.
This car will most likely be the first model in Volvo’s lineup to achieve complete electrification.
Regardless of what drives a car forward, be it an electric machine or combustion engine, a Volvo must be safe. The fully electric XC40 will be one of the safest cars we have ever built – Malin Ekholm, the head of safety at Volvo Cars
According to the company, Volvo Cars safety engineers had to come up with a completely new design as the internal combustion engine was absent in the new model structure. Therefore, to meet Volvo Cars’ high safety requirements, they had to reinforce the frontal structure to deal to nake the all-electric one of the safest cars on the road. Regarding this issue, Malin Ekholm states:
The fundamentals around safety are the same for this car as for any other Volvo. People are inside, and the car needs to be designed to be safe for them.
The battery of electric XC40 is placed on the floor of the car. Because of this, the center of gravity of the car is lowered and it gives it better protection against rollovers. Moreover, the battery is protected by a safety cage which consists of a frame of extruded aluminum. This frame has been embedded in the middle of the car’s body structure, creating a built-in crumple zone around the battery.
Both the front and the rear of the car has been reinforced and the electric power train has been integrated into the body structure to release a better distribution of collision forces away from the cabin and reduce the strain on people inside the car.
The company has revealed that the XC40 is the first Volvo model that will come up with a new Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) sensor platform with software developed by Zenuity, the joint venture company owned by Volvo Cars and Veoneer.
A statement released by Volvo says:
The new ADAS platform is a modern, scalable active safety system that consists of an array of radars, cameras and ultrasonic sensors. Because of its scalable nature it can easily be developed further and lays the foundation for the future introduction of autonomous drive technology.
We hope to get more details on the fully electric XC40 in the coming weeks. Though we still have to wait till it’s first public display on October 16.
