Volvo C30 1.6D

The world may be getting excited about electric or hydrogen fuel-cell cars, but it’s all a bit premature. If you need to drive any distance with a family and luggage on board, there is no realistic alternative to the internal combustion engine.

If you want to do your bit, you could try one of the many eco-ranges designed by car companies for superior frugality and reduced exhaust emissions. BMW, Ford, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen all offer green-tinged alternatives; and now along comes Volvo, with its DRIVe range of C30, S40 and V50 models.

The first good news about the DRIVe models is that they emit less carbon dioxide than the model they replace — the entry-level 1.6 litre turbodiesel (the three old models used the same basic engine).

All the DRIVes are sub-120g/km CO2 cars. This means that the V50, for example, is the lowest-CO2 upmarket estate you can buy, and costs just £35 in annual vehicle excise duty as it falls into band B. So big savings are on the cards for company-car drivers (and their employers). Better still, its new 1.6 litre turbodiesel engine (shared with Ford, Peugeot and Mini) is ultra-economical.

How? Take the special power-steering system. For every kilometre travelled, it saves a gram of CO2 over a conventional setup. Then there’s the special gearbox oil, which Volvo says trims 0.5g/km from the car’s CO2 emissions. Add into the mix of tricks low-resistance tyres, longer gear ratios for third, fourth and fifth, a gearchange indicator in the dash and engine-management reprogramming to heighten fuel economy, and you can see how Volvo’s engineers have managed to deliver substantial gains through subtle tweaks rather than a costly engineering revolution.

There’s more. The £15,084 C30 tested here has to go one step further. As it’s a shorter car than the S40 or V50, honing its aerodynamics was difficult. So Volvo has fitted a bespoke rear spoiler; a new bumper incorporating an air diffuser; and smooth, drag-reducing underbody panelling. With lowered suspension and distinctive alloy wheels, it looks strangely racy for a green car.

The company has been publishing an environmental performance report on its cars for a decade now, underlining the importance to the brand of fuel efficiency — 85% of a car’s lifetime CO2 emissions are from its on-road use.

DRIVe will become a core value of the Volvo brand — equal to safety, says the firm’s technical chief, Magnus Johansson — but will drivers welcome it? Even experts will be hard pressed to tell the C30 DRIVe apart from the previous diesel C30. It’s faster from standstill to 62mph and the high gears are longer, but first and second are shorter — sportier — to compensate. The ride is a bit firm in town, but lowering the suspension by 10mm accounts for a 10th of the air-resistance reduction, and it’s done the C30 a favour as it always needed a bit of spicing-up in the handling department.

Arguably, though, this is immaterial in the DRIVe model, which is about saving fuel, not encouraging profligate use. Accordingly, there’s a polish to the Volvo’s controls that encourages fuel-saving motoring. The clutch and accelerator work smoothly, the brakes progressively, and the diesel engine is crisp and silent.

Obey the gearchange indicator and you’ll be in fourth gear at 30mph with 1200rpm showing on the rev counter. That it responds smartly to the accelerator, and doesn’t falter at low engine speeds, further helps the DRIVe to achieve its objective.

And so to the bit you’ve been waiting for: fuel economy. The official figure is a heady 64.2mpg — exceptional, and almost the same as is claimed by Toyota for its hybrid Prius (65.7mpg).

I suspect the Volvo will stand a better chance of achieving it in the real world, given the Prius’s widely reported inability to better 50mpg. All it lacks is stop-start technology, with which the engine automatically cuts out when the car comes to a standstill, and restarts itself on pull-away. At present that’s one tech-step too far for cash-strapped Volvo.

For now, a car such as the C30 DRIVe is the smart way to be eco-conscious. And should it prove too compact for family motoring, the larger S40 saloon and V50 estate get ever so close to the C30 DRIVe’s leading fuel economy and emissions figures. Hybrid technology is improving, but an efficient turbodiesel still gives better returns — and that, in the end, is what counts.

Vital statistics

ENGINE 1560cc, four cylinders
POWER 107bhp @ 4000rpm
TORQUE177 lb ft @ 1750rpm
TRANSMISSION 5-speed manual
FUEL / CO2 64.2mpg / 115g/km
ACCELERATION 0-62mph: 10.7sec
TOP SPEED 118mph
PRICE £15,084
TAX BAND B (£35 a year)
VERDICT Why buy a hybrid?
RELEASE DATE Now