The Swedish companies, which are already collaborating in an electric vehicle charging consortium, revealed their deal on Monday. It appears Ericsson’s ‘Connected Vehicle Cloud’ platform will be powering in-car communication, apps and infotainment services, and that the comms company will also be acting as systems integrator and managed services provider over the coming seven years.

Volvo enterprise architecture director Jona Ronnkvist told me that this will be an upgrade, rather than replacement, for the manufacturer’s existing Sensus in-car platform. It will be rolled out in all of the company’s cars in the coming years.

Volvo is Ericsson’s first customer to take on the Connected Vehicle Cloud. Interestingly, while Ericsson systems integration chief Paolo Colella told me the platform can be pretty open if the customer so wishes, it seems Volvo’s implementation will be semi-closed. In a release, Volvo said it will partner with “internet radio providers, road authorities, cities’ governments, toll-road operators and others” for functionality.

There have been reports that Spotify (also a Swedish company, of course) will be one of the first services to roll out on the system. I’ve heard this independently too, but when I spoke to Volvo enterprise architecture director Jonas Ronnkvist he refused to confirm or deny the tie-in. He did, however, say the first applications to show up on the system would be infotainment-skewed, rather than for aftermarket sales and services.

And those aftermarket sales and services are going to be a big part of Volvo’s upgraded Sensus. One of the great things about modern cars is the way in which their built-in sensors can pick up on problems before they become serious failures – Volvo is very keen to push the ability to then make online service bookings straight from the car, based on those diagnostics.

One interesting aspect of the deal is Volvo’s choice of Ericsson for systems integration and managed services. In the U.S., carriers such as Sprint and Verizon have been pursuing this role, but it seems Ericsson can offer something extra in terms of time-to-market.

“Ericsson is a global provider to operators,” Ronnkvist told me. “They are a perfect fit to support our global launch of connectivity services. We’re not focusing on this country-by-country.”

However, to some extent Volvo will be approaching different markets in different ways. In some countries the services may rely on built-in in-car connectivity, while in others the driver’s smartphone will provide the necessary internet access.

Either way, the system can always fall back to the customer’s phone – and in any case, it looks as though the apps will be mostly hosted in the cloud anyway, making the technology built into the vehicle less relevant than it might otherwise be.

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The C30 electric has a range of about 80 miles, and takes around 8 hours to charge. Stegland stressed how the placement of the battery — underneath the seats and down the bottom tunnel of the car — will make the car one of the safer EVs out there.

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At the same time there’s also another, decidedly more dramatic, chapter unfolding in Volvo’s time line: in March Chinese auto maker Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, known for its low-cost compacts, announced it would buy the loss-making luxury brand for $1.8 billion from Ford Motor. During the Q&A portion of Jacoby’s talk at the LA Auto Show there were several questions about how Volvo would work to maintain its luxury brand after it was owned by a Chinese firm known for making low-cost cars.

But while Volvo works out its overall business strategy, it’s showing a budding interest in EVs, having shied away from the technology for years. The C30 is still in the prototype phase, and Volvo isn’t detailing much about the pricing or launch plans. At the end of the day, it could just end up as an interesting pilot program for the automaker.

However, the car is well designed, and is using batteries from EnerDel (subsidiary of Ener1, video with Ener1′s CEO here), which has a factory in Indiana. During a test drive with Volvo exec Lennart Stegland, the car handled well, was roomier feeling than the Nissan LEAF, and had nice stylistic perks in its interior like a toggle shifter and blue-themed lighting. We’ll bring you our video test drive of the car over the coming days via Green Overdrive.

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Toyota’s Electric RAV-4: Japanese giant Toyota plans to unveil its electric RAV-4 SUV, which will use Tesla’s powertrain technology, on Wednesday afternoon. Toyota has agreed to pay Tesla $60 million for the development effort and the plan is to get the car to the U.S. market by 2012. Tesla has been building up a powertrain OEM business, beyond its own production of electric vehicles, and the RAV-4 deal is some of the first much-needed revenue from third party automakers. Last week Tesla report earnings and continues to lose money on the road to launching its more affordable Model S electric sedan.

Honda EV Concept: Honda plans to unveil an electric concept car on Wednesday afternoon. Honda plans to live stream the unveiling (nice!), so if you want to see it for yourself, tune in here at 1:20 on Wednesday. I don’t know much else about what the concept will look like, but we’ll bring it to you from the front lines.

Volvo c30 Electric: While Volvo’s C30 electric won’t be making its debut at the LA Auto Show (its been shown in the prototype stage for awhile), Volvo’s first EV will be available to drive this week at the event. We’ll be taking it for a spin and will let you know how it feels — it’s got a 90 mile range, and charges in 8 hours. Volvo has been working with energy company Göteborg Energi on the deployment of charging infrastructure.

Nissan Ellure Plug-In: Nissan’s already got the first mainstream all-electric car on the market, the LEAF, but according to Autoblog Green, Nissan plans to debut a new plug-in at the LA show, and it will likely be the Ellure concept car. Nissan’s event takes place on Wednesday afternoon.

Wheego: The Wheego all-electric LiFe will make its official debut at the LA Auto Show, where the company is offering test drives. The LiFe is a tiny little 2-seater, that has a range of 100 miles (same as the LEAF) and will set you back $34,000 before tax credits.

Mitsubishi iMiEV U.S. Production Version: We’ve already test driven Mitsubishi’s little bean of a car, the electric iMiEV, the Japanese company is debuting its North American production version of the car at the LA Auto Show. The North American version will be longer and wider (we’re pretty big) than the Japanese and European versions and will also have different bumpers.

Porsche Cayenne S Hybrid: Porsche will have its hybrid sports car, the Cayenne S, at the LA Auto Show and will be giving test drives to journalists. The car, which costs $67,700, drives on electric below speeds of 37 mph, and the engine kicks in when the car tops that speed. It’s not the greenest thing out there, and Porsche doesn’t even give an estimate of its mpg on its website.

Mercedes B-Class F CELL: While all the big auto makers seem to be placing their bets on electric cars, Mercedes is the rare one that will be showing off a fuel cell car at the LA Auto Show. Mercedes is offering up its B-Class F CELL fuel cell car for test drives, and we’ll be sure to check it out. The car will be available to be leased to Californians in LA and San Francisco, reportedly for between $600 to $800 per month.

Audi’s Q5 Hybrid Quattro SUV: Audi last week released details of its first production hybrid car, the Q5 Hybrid Quattro SUV. According to CNET, the car promises the power of a V6 and the fuel consumption of a four-cylinder, delivering 33.6 mpg. Not great, but not so bad.

MINI E: BMW will be offering its MINI E for test drives at the show, and also will be sharing results of the trials it’s done with the MINI E. BMW is taking a similar strategy to many other car companies, by basically deploying the car in a very limited, experimental fashion, and then collecting data on the pilots before deciding on whether or not it will launch the car on a wider scale.

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Images courtesy of n.vasse,

Volvo Electric C30

Zhejiang Geely Holding Group has just gone where no Chinese automaker has gone before: buying a major global car brand. Under an agreement announced on Sunday and slated to close in the third quarter of 2010, Geely — a company known for its low-cost compacts — will buy the loss-making luxury brand Volvo for $1.8 billion from Ford Motor.

In a statement about the deal, Geely noted that the board and management of Volvo, which will operate as a separate unit based in Sweden, “will have a mandate to develop Volvo Cars’ leadership in safety and clean environmental technologies.” In terms of technology for greener cars, Volvo’s electric vehicle initiatives have “hardly been at the vanguard of the industry,” as Lux Research senior analyst Jacob Grose put it to us today. So how does Geely’s acquisition of the tech and brand play into China’s larger role in the nascent electric vehicle market?

Opening Doors for EnerDel?

Despite its relatively conservative approach to electric vehicles so far, Volvo has laid out plans to launch a 50-car test fleet of its first all-electric model, the electric C30 (pictured), in early 2011. And it signed on EnerDel, the battery making subsidiary of Ener1, to supply lithium-ion batteries for the initial run (check out our video interview with Ener1 CEO Charles Gassenheimer.)

This week’s deal comes on the heels of another agreement in which an overseas automaker decided to buy one of the Big Three’s loss-making brands — Dutch specialty car maker Spyker agreed in January to buy struggling General Motors subsidiary Saab for $74 million.

Battery maker Boston-Power at the time had just joined with Saab and several partners in Sweden for the first demonstration of its vehicle batteries, and Saab’s shaky status cast uncertainty around the project. By February, however, Boston-Power CEO Christina Lampe-Onnerud told us the project was plowing “full steam ahead” and the startup was “thrilled with Spyker coming in.”

According to Pike Research analyst John Gartner, EnerDel might also have reasons to be, if not thrilled, at least a beneficiary of the sale of one of its EV partners — but it will take time to see how it shakes out. Gartner emphasized that EnerDel has a very limited supply agreement with Volvo, and that, “It’s often the case that auto manufacturers switch battery suppliers when going from pilot to production.” (Just ask A123Systems and Advanced Lithium Power.) Still, he said EnerDel, “is likely to receive greater consideration for any higher performance Volvo vehicles that it would produce for the Chinese market.”

China’s Electric Transition

That high-end segment, which is Volvo’s niche, could hold sizable opportunity in China in coming years. According to forecasts cited by the LA Times today, China’s luxury vehicle segment is on track to double in size within five years. And Frost & Sullivan anticipates China’s vehicle fleet will begin a minimum 10-year transition to plug-in hybrids and battery-electric vehicles as early as this year.

All of this comes amid, “unprecedented cooperation between Asia, Europe and American companies in the automotive industries in producing electric vehicles,” Gartner told us on Monday, attributing the trend partly to a recognition among car companies that it’s “necessary to produce the widest variety of electric models in price, size and performance as the market ramps up during the next five years.”

Pike Research expects China to become the largest market for electrified vehicles (including all-electric and plug-in hybrid or “PHEV” models), with sales reaching 310,000 vehicles in 2015. By comparison, Gartner said the firm anticipates U.S. sales will reach only 284,000 plug-in vehicles in 2015 and in Western Europe they’ll hit about 222,000 that year. While China’s government and 10 largest automakers (by sales) have launched major efforts to develop and build electric vehicles and components, Pike predicts that batteries as well as high performance cars and luxury vehicles “are likely to be imported into China from Europe, Japan and the U.S.”

Hurdles for Geely to Sell Volvo EVs at Home

Not everyone holds a rosy outlook on the future of EVs in China. Lux’s Grose pointed out that China-based (and Warren Buffett-backed) BYD has seen “disappointing” initial sales of its plug-in hybrid model. “Our forecast for the Chinese PHEV and EV markets is pessimistic due to the ultra-low costs of competing internal combustion vehicles in that country combined with the national policy of subsidizing gasoline,” he explained.

As a result, Geely could face an uphill climb finding much of a market for plug-in models under the Volvo brand, no matter what battery maker gets in on the deal. Grose said, “I don’t think another potential PHEV entrant, especially one that would be competing on quality, would unlock this difficult market.”

But now, it looks like these competitors are coming together. Volvo Car Corp. announced Friday that it plans to bring a diesel plug-in hybrid to the market by 2012. The news comes after Peugeot earlier this month unveiled a diesel PHEV minicar that it plans to bring to the market next year, and BMW also showed off a sporty diesel PHEV concept car at the Frankfurt auto show. While companies have been tinkering with the concept for some time, it looks like diesel PHEVs are finally starting to gain some traction.

It’s an exciting idea. First of all, diesel fuel packs 10-20 percent more energy per gallon than gasoline, according to Fusel, a site that advocates running diesel engines on vegetable oil. That higher energy content, combined with some engine advantages, means modern diesel cars can get about 40 percent more miles per gallon than their gasoline counterparts, according to the site.

With that kind of diesel fuel economy, it means the new crop of clean diesels, such as the Volkswagen Jetta TDI, achieves similar fuel economy to hybrids like the Toyota Prius without a complex drivetrain, according to AutoblogGreen. On top of that, advocates say diesels are more fun to drive, because they deliver more torque. Perhaps the most important factor to consumers: diesels often cost less than hybrids. According to an Edmunds comparison earlier this year, the 2009 Jetta TDI cost $22,890, compared with $28,933 for the Prius. And plug-in hybrids are expected to cost even more.

But diesels also emit more particulates than gasoline, and while new technologies have enabled companies to meet strict U.S. standards for particulates, those technologies cost money. Diesels also have an image problem. In the United States, many people still think of diesel as the “loud, smoke-belching beast” they remember from the 1970s, as this Edmunds.com article puts it, even though they have changed dramatically.

A marriage of diesel and plug-in hybrid technology could produce a wonder child that brings out the best of both technologies, boosting fuel economies to their highest levels yet while avoiding the range issues of pure electric vehicles. An electric motor could help diesels easily meet even the strictest potential particulate standards being considered today, while a diesel engine could boost the fuel economy of a PHEV.

But some think that the match could also produce a monster. Adding the technologies together could result in an even more complex drivetrain that ends up being far more expensive than its worth. And it could still have trouble winning diesel converts in the United States. We’ll be waiting with our fingers crossed to see what automakers produce. What do you think?

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