Field Testing in Cold Climate - A Decade of Experience

The Volvo car is sometimes referred to as “born in the north”. Behind this statement lies of course the fact that the home market is one of the most important and that the product must be adapted to it. For Volvo, it has been easy to find suitable test sites in our own country due to climatic conditions. Thus we have been active in the north for more than ten years carrying out systematic field testing and gaining experience of weaknessess and strengths on existing and coming products.

This paper will describe the evolvemont of Volvo cold weather testing and give examples of some findings, and also an indication of how data are used.