Wayne.B wrote:
On 23 Mar 2006 09:07:26 -0800, wrote:

1) Start here for additional information about the IPS drives. You can
follow links to videos, etc from this starting point:

http://www.volvo.com/group/global/en...ses/penta_ips/

Interesting concept but I would not want to be the first one on my
block to buy one. In some ways it looks like all the disadvantages of
an I/O without the major advantage of being able to tilt up. The
claims of more power and efficiency are no doubt true but the jury is
still out on reliability and maintenance issues.

How long has it been around?

The first boat I was ever aboard with this particular system was a
Tiara, and that has been at least a year ago and maybe longer. I'm not
sure how many have actually been retailed, but I would be surprised if
it's more than several hundred units so far.

Volvo says that the development of the system took seven years of
research, design, and development and "thousands of hours" of testing.