Advantages- Reduced Downtime

Reduced Downtime

If you manage to run aground that uncharted reef or shallow water two feet below the surface at 30 knots the ips drive will break off from the hull and reduce damage . An ordinary inboard setup will cause extensive damage and may even rip the whole drive out of your hull and cause a lot of damage and you may even sink . The Ips drive is much easier to repair compared to the cost of replacing a conventional inclined propeller, shaft, struts and rudders, and likely having to do fiberglass repair work in way of the strut pads and rudders, you’ll most certainly be back up and running for less money and a lot faster with Volvo Penta IPS.

Advantages- Engine Noise levels

Engine Noise

Putting the engines in the rear of the boat also makes the boat much quieter overall where people are likely to be situated at cruise speeds. Volvo conducted an experament on a conventional 450 HP motor with the engines running directly underfoot at the helm at 30 knots, the noise levels recorded were 88 dBA. Volvo then used the same boat, which had not been acoustically engineered for Volvo Penta IPS using the IPS system and the dBA levels at the helm at 30 knots were still only 82 dBA.

In addition to low radiated machinery noise levels, exhaust noise and fumes were also minimized through the Volvo Penta IPS underwater exhaust system. Directing engine exhaust fumes into the propeller wash means the “station wagon effect” is a thing of the past. Cooling water intake is also integral to the Volvo Penta IPS which further reduces the number of holes in the hull and associated appendage drag.

Advantages- A space saving design

Space Saving Design:

The boat in the left picture has a traditional inboard setup and the picture on the right is the exact same boat but with the Volvo Penta IPS , The big difference is that the compact, Volvo Penta diesel engines were mounted snugly under the cockpit, with the Inboard Performance System directly aft of the engines. The bottom line is that, due to its compact dimensions and reduced weight, Volvo Penta IPS opens up design and layout possibilities for boat manufacturers that didn’t exist before.

Advantages- Handling

Great news for devotees of outdrive legs, the handling of the IPS will delight you. And excellent news for shaft drive junkies, the handling of the IPS will charm you too. Low speed manoeuvrability is excellent. In practice, IPS provides all the
"outdrive" advantages of vectored thrust so you can push or pull the stern around and turn extremely tightly using just one engine, or both if you need more haste. But unlike most outdrive setups, IPS also works okay when you leave the wheel centred and use ahead and astern commands as you do with shaft drives. The response is slower but still distinctly shaft-like.

The drive units also have plenty of keel area so they provide remarkably good directional stability. Pottering out of the marina on just one engine required only the slightest deflection of the wheel, and like shafts and rudders, side winds have less effect than on outdrive leg boats. The great thing is that you can pick and choose depending on what you are trying to achieve. Centre the IPS and turn in your own length. Or vector the IPS, tap the bowthruster, and see yourself pulling smartly sideways and backwards or fowards out of a tricky cross tide marina berth. Master the IPS fully and you will be giving those implausibly manoeuvrable twin jet-drive boats a run for their money.At high speed, the good directional stability remains. Rudders work well at medium to high speed but IPS permits a tighter turning radius and better speed through the turns because, like outdrive legs, there is nothing blocking the prop wash.

Advantages- Efficiency

Significantly increased propulsive efficiency is one of the key benefits of IPS, but that increase has been made possible only by a fundamental rethink of propulsion principles. About the only thing IPS has in common with conventional shaftdrive is that it uses fully submerged propellers rather than jets or surface-piercing propellers.
IPS uses two forward-facing contra-rotating propellers per unit. The superior efficiency of twin contra-rotating propellers over a single larger diameter one was appreciated many years ago, and Volvo's Duoprop outdrive is the established manifestation of that theory. Because they operate in clear water, propellers work better in tractor (pulling) form than in pusher mode but shaftdrive installation naturally ensured that the pusher principle has remained dominant in the marine world.

Introduction To The New IPS System

Volvo Penta rewritten the rules with regard motorboat propulsion systems. In a stroke they may have consigned stern-drives and shaft drives to history, and in the process revolutionised the way motorboats are designed and built. Inboard Performance System, or IPS, is an innocuous title for the most important development in propulsion since the invention of the outdrive, and something that may render the conventional shaftdrive obsolete.
IPS is a combined engine and propulsion system, sold as a package in the same way that an outdrive can be. You can't buy the propulsion unit on its own, and currently IPS is only approved for twin installation. There are two models, both employing the same propulsion/transmissi on unit. Combining this unit with the 310hp D6-310 gives the IPS-400, attach the 370hp D6-370 and you have the IPS-500. The engines are the same as used in sterndrive and conventional shaftdrive applications.

Volvo Penta History

Here is a Volvo Penta History Timeline on how they became to be.

1900-1909: It was in the first decade of the 20th century that the engine production started. In 1907 Sköfde Gjuteri received and order for a paraffin engine for test operations. This was the famous B1 which was designed by Edvard Hubendick. The engine was called Penta, the Greek word for five, becasue of the five men who attended the meeting at which the first drawings were presented.

1910-1919: The engine range was extended with 2, 3 and 4-cylinder variants. All of the 3,268 engines that were sold before 1920 to boat owners, fire fighting services, the army, house-owners and other customers had a standard engine speed of 800 rpm. In 1919 the company was renamed AB Pentaverken. Engine manufacturing dominated this period, but profitability was poor during the depression that followed the First World War.

1920-1929:

This is the period of the first breakthrough for Penta as a product name. At the start of the 1920s the general depression forced the company to keep business at a very low level. The Two events that would change this are In 1922 the U2 outboard engine was introduced and 343 units were sold in the very first year. During the whole of the 1920s, no less than 7,874 U-2s were sold - more than the rest of the product range put together. In 1925 Penta received its first order from AB Volvo, a newly established car manufacturer in Goteborg. Two years later, the first Volvo cars were running, powered by Penta. Read more under 1925 in the navigation

1930-1939: At the start of the 1930s Fritz Egnell lost control of Pentaverken and Göteborgs Bank acquired a majority holding. Every year the company produced more Volvo engines than Penta engines, and Volvo's financial interest in Pentaverken increased. The production of marine, industrial and car engines under one roof, was no longer as smooth an operation as it had been in the beginning. Although time and motion studies and assembly-line production were introduced at an early stage - in 1930 - there were constant problems in the spring and summer which was the high season for Volvo and for other customers. Volvo was a demanding customer whose favors were being sought by many other Swedish companies and it was often necessary to work round the clock to complete its orders. In 1935, Volvo took over completely and the company was renamed Volvo Pentaverken. In the same year Volvo moved a design and sales department to Göteborg and set up AB Pentaverken in Göteborg, the company from which AB Volvo Penta developed.

1940-1949: AB Pentaverken had a hard time during the war and the years that followed, as all efforts in Volvo went to car, truck and bus production. Read more about the forties in the highlights section.In 1946 a very important product was introduced: the first in-line six cylinder diesel. Quiet and smooth running with pre-combustion, it immediately attracted a great deal of attention

1950-1959: The 50s was a decade of rapid development in products and business for Penta and the company developed into a truly international operation with an extensive network of dealers all around the globe. Read more about the fifties in the highlights section. The worlds first series produced turbo diesel was introduced in 1954 and followed two years later by the first charge air-cooled marine diesel. The engine range was extended and one of the new products was the MD1 - the world's smallest direct injected diesel with a revolutionary reverse gear.
1959 marked a major breakthrough for the company - and for the leisure boat business as a whole. The Aquamatic was introduced at the New York Boat Show in January 1959.

1960-1969: In 1965 the company changed its name again, this time to AB Volvo Penta. Exports continued to grow and subsidiaries were opened in England, Germany and Italy. Sales of the heavy duty, six-cylinder diesel engines for industrial and marine applications boomed.

1970-1979: Export successes continued in the early seventies and export share rose as high as 84% in 1973. Large volumes of industrial engines were sold to makers of irrigation units.
Volvo Penta acquired outboard production from Monark-Crescent, adding new products to the program. In 1973 the S-drive for sailboats was introduced and the year after Volvo Penta of North America was formed. 1976 - a plant is built in Chesapeake for modifying gasoline V8s to marine applications. 1977 - the 40 Engine is introduced. "The first diesel with petrol engine performance" said the press about this six-cylinder, direct injected marine diesel.

1980-1989: In 1982 Volvo Penta became an independent subsidiary of the Volvo Group. The success for the industrial engines continued and accounted for one third of the turnover.The pace of product launches was stepped up and the eighties saw a number of new marine and industrial engines. The most important new product without doubt was the Duoprop - the world's most advanced sterndrive.

1990-1999: During the 1990s, product development and new engine launches moved forward at an astonishing pace. The industrial engines and commercial boat engines grew in importance – helping to offset the huge swings in the leisure boat market. In 1991, Volvo Penta launched the KAD-concept, a new generation engines with lower weight that gave reduced emissions and reduced fuel consumption. The next year, in Lexington, Tennessee, Volvo Penta began manufacturing gasoline engines and Aquamatic sterndrives for the increasingly important American market. An important step was when Volvo Penta introduced the EFI technology, Electronic Fuel Injection, in the gasoline engines. In 1995 Volvo Penta was first to introduce Electronic Diesel Control, a system for electronic control and monitoring of the diesel engine. Needless to say, the boating press was ecstatic. In one bold sweep, the new technology had replaced the century old tradition of mechanical control. EDC marked the start of a technological revolution at sea. Volvo Penta was able to take advantage of the joint development of electronic systems in engines and vehicles within the Volvo Group – and apply the new technology to the marine environment. The results of these efforts would arrive after the new millenium.

2000-2009: Volvo Penta began the new millennium with the most comprehensive product renewal efforts in the boating industry. Virtually the entire engine range has been replaced. Electronics has taken the big leap into the marine world. And a completely new propulsion system has been introduced, resulting in engines that are cleaner, simpler, quicker and quieter.The grand march of electronics into the marine industry continued with Volvo Penta's new electronics platform, EVC (Electronic Vessel Control). With EVC as a base, Volvo Penta was ready in 2005 to write the next chapter in boating history – the launch of Volvo Penta IPS, Inboard Performance System.