Winter Driving: Volvo test centreWithstanding up to -40 degree temperatures is all part of the testing process for the Volvo. Michael McAleer, Motoring editor, reports from Kiruna, Sweden
Above our heads the Northern lights shimmer against the blackened night sky. Listen closely and you can hear the crackle. That's when you're not throwing two-tonnes of Volvo XC70 across a frozen lake.
Welcome to the Arctic Circle, home to the Sami people, Santa Claus and multiple forms of snow. In a region where temperatures can plummet to -40 degrees and where darkness descends for 50 days of the year, having a deeper understanding of the different forms of frozen whiteness that layers the landscape is understandable.
Here the snow falls from the skies, or hits you in the face as if it were rising from the earth. In powder form it blows like sand in a dust storm, while at other times hardened icy snow rains down like iron files.
It's in conditions like this that many of the world's greatest drivers cut their teeth, learning the art of balance while traversing sheets of ice. Think of the long list of famous Finns and speedy Swedes who have dominated the various worlds of motorsport over the decades. They've spent their formative years, learning the finer points of shimming and sliding cars while out to get milk. These were the days before DSTC stability control.
Things have changed, but even with global warming and fewer days when temperatures fall below -20 degrees, there is still a good deal of driver effort involved in getting safely down the street. Or across the lake at Riksgränsen.
Beneath the studded tyres - a legal requirement in Sweden in the winter months - lies a light dusting of powdery snow covering 50cm of solid ice. Switch on the stability control and the car slides into corners just a step before a plethora of systems come together to take control.
You can push the accelerator to the floor but the Volvo's central computer has already decided you're an idiot and has taken control. It's only when you've been brought back under control that power returns to the driver. Even then it's all within reason.
Turn off the systems and you start to see the way it works. Suddenly the limits between driving and sliding become minute. On the road, that's where the danger lies: on a clear open frozen lake, that's where you find the sort of fun you haven't had since you first wore leather soles across a well-polished floor.
Yet these temperatures offer more challenges than simply the obvious driver-related ones. Take, for example, the issue of reliability. What are annoyances and inconveniences in the warmer climates of mainland Europe are life and death issues up here in the winter. Left alone in these extreme temperatures, where it can be 50km to the nearest occupied house, and you start to put a new importance on reliability.
First you need the doors to open and close so you can escape from the elements. Then, of course, you need the engine to start. After that it's the heating system, brakes and transmission. Quite some way down the list would be the likes of the stereo or interior lights.
It's all pretty logical, but you have to remember that these cars have to be sold to customers who have to cope with temperatures of 40 degree heat in Kuwait as well as those living in -30 degrees in Kiruna.
In one location it's hard to keep the rubber seals from melting while in the other they have a tendency to freeze solid. In one instance the oil becomes too viscous while in the other it may well freeze up.
Some of these issues can be identified in the labs and test centres, but history shows you never really know until you put them through their paces in real life. And that doesn't mean a few weeks in the freezing snow and sandy desert. To mimic customer conditions they must have long-term testing. Since the 1960s Volvo has operated two permanent test centres in Kiruna, one outside the town and one in a secret location in the region. It's at these centres that Volvo put their new cars through the extremities.
"A VOLVO CONSISTS OF ABOUT 40 main systems such as the engine, climate unit, seats and so on," explains Stefan Andersson, chief of Volvo's winter testing. "These are divided into 400 subsystems such as the starter motor, fan, seat heaters and others. These in turn consist of a total of about 3,000 components - everything from sensors to heating circuits."
"We test cars that are as near production as possible. Early testing may involve disguises and the like, but to get real-life results we need real-life cars, or as close as possible. That way we can spot any problems, right down to the way the wind and snow creates ice pockets on the car's bodywork and how this impacts on weight, aerodynamics and the like."
"It's the same with the warm weather testing we do at our centre in the Arizona desert."
Prototypes are delivered to Kiruna up to 14 months ahead of sale, although it depends on whether the cars are completely new or merely revised engines or features.
"The advantage of laboratories is that the tests are predictable and repeatable. However, there is a danger too. We generally say that the wind tunnel reveals the answers we are looking for. Out on the open road, however, we find answers to questions we never even asked," says Thomas Persson, head of technology and systems engineering for climate systems.
One example is the shark fin-shaped antenna on the new Volvo S80. Winter tests revealed that a string of snow and ice formed in its wake on the rear window. The reason was the constant air turbulence that the antenna created, which the rear window's heating elements were unable to combat.
"We did not pick up on this in our laboratory tests. Only real-life driving situations and weather conditions can reveal this type of detail," explains Persson. As a result of this discovery, the rear window heater is now switched on automatically in cold weather instead of being activated manually by the driver as before.
It's just one of the lessons learned from a winter in Kiruna. For those of us who spent a little less time up in the Arctic, another lesson is learned: we really don't know how to handle cars down south.
Where every young Swede must complete a skid-pan course on how to regain control when a car skids, we are lucky if our learners pass a test at all.