First look at Volvo Forward Drive

                                                     

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First look at New Volvo Forward Drive

It's certainly an interesting new idea. For years the industry has known that pulling through the water is more efficient than pushing. The idea of this configuration should assist the amount of water that the boat needs to use as a ballast for creating a wake for wake boarding and should be way more effective in the ability to trim a hull. As the drive trim (up and down) should have more effect on the boat as the props are more forward under the transom. FWD Drive should also eliminate the cavitation problems with the conventional drives we are using now. Due to the fact that the props are uninhibited of the gear case.

I also know how many drives you see that have damaged props. You will have to treat this configuration more as an inboard than an inboard/out board, there will be no sneaking up to the beach.
There are a couple of more concerns that stand out immediately:
1- Volvo shows the drive operating in a really trimmed up position to create a nice wake boarding wave, this creates one hell of an angle on the universal joints a part of the drive shaft. Volvo must have really built these parts up, I wonder what the expected life of these components are if you use the drive in this trim position most of the time.
2- Volvo does not show a picture of a boat on a trailer with this drive, this is a lot of expensive gear pointed straight at the ground while on a trailer. You would want to be sure of how deep the boat ramp your using is, and you certainly would not to drop off the end of a short ramp.
3- The steering must be way more reactive and the turning radius much sharper, this may catch you by surprise at full speed the first few times.
4- I am wondering if they slowed down the trim speed (trim speed is the speed that the drive moves up and down) similar to a race boat were the trim speed is very slow to make the trim more controllable
5- Can you back down hard with the drive in the high trim position, because if you can you will pull the back of the boat right down and with some boats could wash over the platform and through the door. This may also be alarming.

It would seem to be another advancement that will require some new boat performance parameter and some driver education. I have been saying in all my posts Power Boats are going through the fastest most technical advancements ever. Forward Drive maybe a fantastic configuration time will tell. What really concerns us is how all of these new advances will affect the costs of boat ownership because of course these new components do not come cheap. Not at the time of purchase, were talking repair or maintenance. You will require specialty tools and equipment to work on this new technology, this will affect your choice of service providers in 10 years or so.

UPDATE 2016

 

I HAVE SINCE SEEN THIS DRIVE CONFIGURATION ON SEVERAL BOATS AT THE BOAT SHOW THIS YEAR

 

Something is not right about the current system on the existing boats I seen!

 

I have not yet driven a boat with this drive but I can tell you that there are issues with the set up. The boats I seen which included a new Cobalt all had a ridiculous trim tab configuration on the back, Why?

There is no way that this is normal by any means. they are either trying to prevent bow dive or the drive is just to much of an advancement for the existing hull designs, either way there is no way I would buy a boat with a tab package that is required to make this system either safe or controllable. In any case this would not be the year to get into this drive configuration! When see that they have not rushed this set up to market and a boat doesn't gave three thousand dollars in tab modifications I will reassess my position.

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