July 1, 2016

blogger - Growing Dominion

It is interesting how Volvo has taken over the motor boat engine market in the medium large tier sizes in recent years.  Till around the fifty feet size in the motor boat market currently the share is huge for the Swedish engine manufacturer, and the growing dominion coming from IPS pod propulsion is just increasing this.
In all this it is important to note how Volvo grows its customer base with two important aspects; from smaller to larger engine sizes, and its find me everywhere service network giving a peace of mind to customers.  Big contracts with the most known boat builders also help a lot.  
IPS makes also an important part of this growing market share, and here it is interesting to see the pod drive race with Volvo starting ahead in 2005, and ZF Zeus following up a few months later.  The first years where not plain sailing for Volvo, from a point of view even more difficult to those ZF Zeus had, see forward looking propellers and need of a dedicated hull shape with a soft medium Vee aft.  But in the end Volvo ironed out the problems and the IPS pod range today is complete and in adjacent with nearly all the diesel engines coming from Sweden.  IPS unlike an engine can also increase size capability, and doing a larger pod drive is less technical then building a complete new engine in the larger horsepower capacity.  A clever shortcut from Volvo which powers a few builders in the twenty meter yacht size today with just 900hp, from the likes of Absolute, and Sunseeker, to mention a couple famous names supporting the large pod.   
The IPS race was similar how Volvo took over the small boat inboard market with stern drive in the seventies.  The World is different now, and Mercury reacted just couple months later with the ZF Zeus pod this time around, unlike what it did with the stern drive back in the sixties.  Back then the US Giant went into a subterfuge media battle how the stern drive would not work.  But the parallels are extremely similar how Volvo still succeeded with the World supposedly changing a lot since then.

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