automotive

Volvo Cars Supports Fight Against Ocean Plastics

Volvo Cars is offering a special version of its V90 Cross Country to help support the oceans.

Buyers of the car will contribute to helping understand the health of oceans. To support the Volvo Ocean Race’s Science Program around ocean plastics, the company will donate EUR 100 (approximately $116) for each of the first 3,000 V90 Cross Country Volvo Ocean Race cars it plans to build. The resulting total donation will total about $348,000.

The Volvo Ocean Race Science Program equips boats in this year’s race with a variety of sensors that will capture data from some of the remotest parts of the world’s oceans. This includes temperatures, barometric pressure, currents and wind speed, which will help contribute to more accurate weather forecasts and climate models used by scientists globally.

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The boats will measure levels of salinity, dissolved CO2 and algae in the sea water around them. Combined with other data on microplastics, these measurements will help create a more complete picture of the scale of plastic pollution and its impact on ocean life. The program’s science partners include NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 

“As a company, we work to minimize our impact on the world around us, so this project’s innovative approach to tackling a major environmental problem was a great fit for us — not least as we head towards an electric future,” said Stuart Templar, director of sustainability at Volvo Cars, in a release.

The car itself will help tackle the problem of marine pollution, as the carpets inlays are made from Econyl, a fabric made from 100% recycled nylon, including abandoned fishing nets reclaimed from the seabed. 

The V90 Cross Country Volvo Ocean Race was developed by Volvo designers and a group of engineers within the company’s Special Vehicles department, a purpose-built facility at Volvo Cars’ base in Torslanda, Sweden. The engineers at Special Vehicles specialize in developing bespoke models and are also responsible for Volvo Cars’ ultra-luxurious Excellence models as well as the police version of the V90 and V90 Cross Country.

The initial production volume of 3,000 cars will be sold in 30 markets around the globe, including most countries in the EMEA region as well as the United States, Japan and China.

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