At next week’s Beijing Motor Show, Volvo is set to introduce a new member of its plug-in hybrid family. The company has had success with the world’s first diesel PHEV, the V60 plug-in hybrid, but the new S60L is dubbed a PPHEV. The extra P stands for petrol. Unsurprisingly given the debut location, the S60L PPHEV is a vehicle that is destined for the Chinese market. Volvo says the car should arrive in “early 2015” after production starts at the company’s Chengdu plant.
For its first production plug-in hybrid, Volvo chose a diesel station wagon. The V60 plug-in hybrid remains an unusual vehicle in one of the automotive industry’s newest niches. The Volvo S60L Petrol Plug-In Hybrid set to debut at the 2014 Beijing Motor Show follows a more conventional route. Like the name says, this plug-in has a gasoline engine under the hood. Based on the recently-updated S60 sedan, the S60L PPHEV features a 2.0-liter turbocharged four-cylinder engine from Volvo’s Drive-E family, which produces 238 horsepower on its own. The engine is teamed with an eight-speed automatic transmission, an electric motor good for additional 68 hp, and an 11.2-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack.