The last Volvo diesel car was the seven-seater XC90 SUV, which rolled off the assembly line at the factory in Sweden. Given the car’s status and importance, the XC90’s next stop will not be the customer’s garage, but the company’s museum in Gothenburg.
The plant, which until now produced Volvo cars with internal combustion engines, is gradually transforming into a center for electric models. By 2030, Volvo hopes to become a car manufacturer that will offer customers only electric models.
This decision can be called radical, because even a decade ago, almost half of the Volvo cars sold in Europe had a diesel engine.
The first diesel engine is German
When Volvo was a much smaller scale manufacturer than it is today, the Swedish company constantly collaborated with other manufacturers to avoid excessive costs for risky decisions.
The first Volvo car with a diesel engine appeared in 1979. Volvo then enlisted the help of Volkswagen, which agreed to supply the Swedes with a six-cylinder diesel engine.
The partnership with Volkswagen continued for quite a long time – until 2001, when Volvo finally introduced a 5-cylinder unit developed by its own engineers.
Volvo also at one time relied on small-volume diesel engines developed by the PSA concern (now Stellantis). At the time, Volvo said the 1.6-liter diesel engine was so fuel-efficient that certain models from the company could go as far as 1,300 kilometers on a single tank of fuel.
