c-30

Volvo long staked its reputation on safety, so you would not expect a hot hatchback to come from the Swedish automaker. But fit the little C30 with Volvo's R-Design trim and give it the new Polestar engine software, and the car becomes a delight to shoot down a twisty road.

The car did not make any more noise than a standard C30, the only things announcing the extra power being a blue badge on its butt and ample response to the gas pedal. The side-grip shifter for the six-speed manual slipped through the gate with European precision, but the … Read more

The Volvo C30 Electric is already out on the roads in Europe, but this week the Swedish automaker released 10 video clips documenting the development of new technology for the C30.

According to Volvo, the C30 Electric had a short development time, and the process involved about 100 research and development specialists.

Click on the links below to view videos two through 10, to learn more about testing, safety, engineering and other aspects of the C30's development.

The films include "A Milestone in the Automotive Industry" (below), "Battery System," "Electrical Architecture and Electrical Safety,&… Read more

Volvo's electric vehicle technology is about to become cleaner. The car maker will begin testing wireless charging technology on its Volvo C30 Electric that will let drivers recharge the battery without touching a cable or dirtying their hands.

The current C30 Electric that will begin customer testing in Europe later this year uses a cable to plug into the car's grille via a specially designed charge connector. In a new partnership agreement, Belgium's state-owned Flanders' Drive will modify a Volvo C30 Electric so a 20kWh battery can be recharged wirelessly using induction charging.

With inductive charging, a … Read more

Electrified versions of conventional gasoline-powered vehicles may look the same, but large engines have been replaced with smaller motors, the batteries are enormous, and there's no gas tank to be found. Those differences are enough to impact or compromise the car's original safety features.

To demonstrate the safety of the C30 Electric, Volvo released video of a crash test that shows its electric versions are as safe as counterparts outfitted with conventional internal combustion engines (ICE).

The video was taken right before the 2011 North American International Auto Show, and shows an C30 Electric prototype with a 660-pound … Read more

Hewlett-Packard and Toshiba are the latest PC makers to endorse Advanced Micro Devices' new "Fusion" laptop processors that are expected to make inroads into small, Netbook-class designs.

AMD's new chips appear to be a certifiable hit. They are not only populating slick, featherweight 11.6-inch ultraportable laptops from Lenovo and HP but are also debuting in a larger 15-inch class laptop from Toshiba--the Satellite C655D starting at about $400.

The "Brazos" series of Fusion processors are targeted at small, power-efficient laptop designs and include the dual-core 1.6GHz E-350 and the more power-efficient dual-core 1GHz … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices appears ready to offer the stiffest challenge to Intel's Netbook processor yet. AMD's trump card: extra circuitry integrated into the main processor that brings a higher level of graphics horsepower to small, thin laptops.

Today, at the company's finanical analyst day, AMD announced an umbrella technology dubbed "Brazos" that comprises two new lines of processors for Netbooks ("Ontario") and small laptops ("Zacate").

Aimed at designs that typically range from 10-inch to 13-inch diagonal screen sizes, Ontario and Zacate graft AMD Radeon 6000 series graphics technology onto the main … Read more

Volvo is taking its C30 DRIVe Electric concept to the next level and adding a hydrogen fuel cell to extend the EV's 94-mile range, creating a hybrid hydrogen-electric plug-in. The fuel cell will add another 155 miles of range, but what's really interesting is the way Volvo plans on sourcing the hydrogen: from gasoline.

Rather than relying on the promised hydrogen highway to be built, Volvo is exploring the use of an on-board reformer to process gasoline into hydrogen gas. The fuel cell will use the hydrogen gas to power the electric motor when the C30's 24kwh … Read more

Rounding the a bend on a windy backroad, I was greeted by the familiar tail lamps of a 2010 Mazdaspeed3, fitting as the 2011 Volvo C30 R-Design that I was piloting shares its Ford C1 platform with the Mazda3. Weeks earlier, on a similar road, the Mazdaspeed had scared the crap out of me with its turbo lag and snap torque steer. My current ride was down about 50 horsepower from the Mazda, but felt about as surefooted with more predictable power delivery. In a classic case of "less is more," I was able to hang fairly close … Read more

Volvo Cars has announced that, in addition to developing a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle, it has an all-electric version of the C30 hatchback in the works. The electric variant will be called the C30 BEV (battery electric vehicle) and will be the automaker's first all-electric vehicle.

The C30 BEV will replace the internal-combustion engine with an electric motor of indeterminate output. Meanwhile, the gasoline tank will be dropped in favor of a lithium ion battery pack. Volvo states that it is still working on the best placement of the 24 kWh battery pack, but has stated that the center … Read more