Volvo adds the Powershift gearbox to the DRIVe versions

Until now, the most environmentally friendly variants of the Swedish brand’s models could only be ordered with the manual gearbox. But as they say, there’s no accounting for taste, so the six-speed Powershift automatic transmission has finally been added to the DRIVe range. And there is good news: this option does not affect the consumption and emissions figures that characterise them.

To find this gearbox in those “green” versions, you have to look at the four-cylinder 1.6-litre turbodiesel engine that produces 115 CV and up to 270 Nm of torque. This engine, although shared by many very different Volvo products, tends to record fuel consumption and CO2 emissions that are quite similar across all of them, including with the Powershift transmission.

For example, the S60 DRIVe achieves an average consumption of 4.3 litres per hundred kilometres and around 114 grams of CO2 per kilometre. In the case of the V60, S80 and V70, the figures rise slightly to 4.5 litres and 119 grams. And how have the engineers at Volvo managed to match these figures to those of the manual transmission?

First, by reducing the friction generated between the various components that make up the automatic gearbox. The software that controls both the gearbox and the engine has also been reprogrammed, the Start/Stop system switches the engine off at speeds below 5 km/h, and all the electrical systems have been modified to consume less energy.

Source | Volvo