Volvo Cars, the premium car maker, will build its first fully electric car in China.

Volvo Cars, the premium car maker, will build its first fully electric car in China, the company announced today at Auto Shanghai in China. 

The all-new model will be based on Volvo’s Compact Modular Architecture (CMA) for smaller cars, and will be available for sale in 2019 and exported globally from China, Volvo said. 

The decision to make its first electric car in China highlights the central role China will play in Volvo’s electrified future and underlines China’s growing sophistication as a manufacturing centre for the automotive industry. 

“Volvo Cars fully supports the Chinese government’s call for cleaner air as outlined in the latest five-year plan. It is fully in-line with our own core values of environmental care, quality and safety,” said Håkan Samuelsson, chief executive of Volvo Cars. “We believe that electrification is the answer to sustainable mobility.” 

China is the world’s largest sales market for electrified cars, and has ambitious targets to expand sales of fully electric and hybrid cars in order to address congestion and air-quality issues in its cities. 

Volvo has a commitment to sell a total of 1m electrified scars – including fully electric cars and hybrids – by 2025. It is developing a fully electric car on its Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) as well. The Swedish company also plans to offer plug-in hybrid versions of every model. 

Volvo has three manufacturing facilities in China: in Daqing, which makes its 90 series cars; Chengdu, which makes its 60 series cars; and Luqiao, which will make its 40 series cars.

Volvo Cars starts the next phase of it's rebirth with the new 40-Series range of cars, a new family of small cars

Volvo Cars, the premium car maker, today unveiled two new concept cars that move the Swedish brand in an audacious new direction and mark the official launch of its global small-car strategy.

Today’s newly revealed 40 series concept models demonstrate for the first time how Volvo plans to expand into the large and lucrative global market for premium small cars with a range of vehicles that combine bold exterior and interior design with industry-leading connectivity, electrification and autonomous drive technologies.

The new concept cars will be the first built around Volvo’s new Compact Modular Architecture (CMA), which has been specially created for smaller cars and which has liberated the company’s designers and engineers to explore bold and daring new directions.

“Each member of our product family has its own distinct character, just like the members of a real family. CMA has helped us to capture something special, something youthful in our new concept cars. They have an energy, a disruptive and engaging urban character that makes them stand out among the crowd. This is the flavour of small Volvos to come,” said Thomas Ingenlath, Senior Vice President, Design, at Volvo Car Group.

Volvo’s small-car strategy is an essential element in its ongoing global operational and financial transformation. The Swedish company is currently implementing an ambitious revitalisation plan that will reposition the brand to compete with its global premium competitors within the next four years.

Volvo’s new global small-car range will include a pure-battery electric vehicle as well as Twin Engine plug-in hybrid powertrain variants, in line with the company’s commitment to the electrification of its entire portfolio. Volvo plans to have sold a total of up to one million electrified cars by 2025 globally.

“By taking a modular approach to both vehicle architecture and powertrain development, we have succeeded in leap-frogging many of the players in the premium segment,” said Dr Peter Mertens, Senior Vice President, Research & Development. “Our new battery electric powertrain variant opens yet another exciting chapter in the unfolding Volvo story.”

On top of their daring exterior design and electrified powertrain options, the new cars will also offer a full range of innovative connectivity services, plus the world’s most advanced standard package of safety features and ground-breaking Scandinavian interior design.

“The new 40 series cars have the potential to improve our market penetration in an important growing segment,” said Håkan Samuelsson, President and Chief Executive of Volvo Cars. “An electric powertrain program, including both a new compact Twin Engine plug-in hybrid as well as a pure electric car, are central to the CMA architecture.” He added that the first new 40 series car is expected to go into production in 2017.

The announcement of Volvo’s new global small-car strategy comes on the back of a strong start to the year in terms of sales and profitability.

The company announced revenues for the first three months of the year rose 24 per cent year-on-year to SEK41.7bn, generating an operating profit of SEK3.1bn and an operating profit margin of 7.5 per cent. Global sales for the first quarter of 2016 increased 11.9 per cent to 120,591 cars. Volvo has a medium-term ambition to sell 800,000 cars a year, up from 503,000 in 2015

Volvo cars new global compact car range to be built on innovative flexible architecture.

Volvo Cars is to extend its range of compact cars into new segments on its highly-innovative Compact Modular Architecture (CMA), a smaller but equally advanced version of Volvo’s acclaimed Scalable Product Architecture (SPA). The company’s first car on CMA is expected to be launched in 2017.

CMA’s introduction in 2017 means that all future Volvo cars will be built on just two fully scalable and wholly modular vehicle architectures.

The simultaneous development of SPA and CMA has formed the cornerstone of Volvo’s product renewal and growth strategy, which involves the replacement of every single car in its line-up in the next four years and an annual sales volume of up 800,000 cars. This process started with the launch of the XC90 and will continue shortly with the launch of the new S90 premium sedan.

CMA allows Volvo Cars to offer customers of compact cars the same type of premium engineering benefits as owners of its larger cars built on SPA. Shared technology between SPA and CMA will include powertrains (both conventional and new plug-in hybrid variants) and the infotainment, climate and data network and safety systems taking the Swedish car maker ever closer to its vision of no deaths or injuries in its new cars by 2020.

“The flexibility of CMA liberates Volvo’s engineers and designers, allowing them to devise and introduce a wide range of new and alluring features whilst at the same time improving drivability, offering world-class safety features and connected car technologies,” said Dr Peter Mertens, Senior Vice President, Research & Development at Volvo Car Group.

CMA will also change the way Volvo Cars builds its products in the future by allowing a wide range of cars, powertrains, electrical systems and technologies of varying complexity to be fitted on the same architecture, generating significant economies of scale and a more streamlined manufacturing process.

Volvo Cars’ CMA has been designed from the outset to embrace electrification – offering a new Twin Engine plug-in hybrid variant designed especially for the new architecture.

“We are in a terrific position with CMA. We have developed this new architecture as a plug and play component. This means that on Volvo’s next generation of compact cars you will benefit from the advanced technologies available on our XC90 today,”

said Dr Mertens.

Volvo Cars expects to significantly increase its global volumes with the coming range of CMA-based cars, which will have a truly global footprint and take the Swedish brand into exciting new product segments.

“CMA is a key part of the continued growth strategy of the Volvo Cars brand,” said Björn Annwall, Senior Vice President, Sales Marketing and Customer Service at Volvo Car Group. “Apart from offering all the benefits and features of a larger premium car, such as the industry-leading safety, powertrain and infotainment technologies, CMA will deliver a true and distinctive Volvo driving and ownership experience setting it apart from others in this growing premium segment.”

Volvo to consider producing small cars at it's Ghent, Belgium facility, as well as in China !

Volvo will build a new family of compact cars based on a common platform at its Belgian factory, CEO Hakan Samuelsson said. The cars will be developed with parent Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, Samuelsson said, and will also likely be built in China, although no decision has been reached on which of its plants will get the work.

"We have decided we will be using Ghent for Europe," Samuelsson said, referring to Volvo's factory in Ghent, Belgium. "In China, we have to look into this." Volvo currently builds the Volvo S60, V40 and XC60 models in Ghent.

Samuelsson said it was a "good guess" that the first Volvo vehicle to be built using the new platform, called the compact modular architecture (CMA), would be a new generation of the Volvo V40 hatchback, since it is the only compact that Volvo markets around the world now.

Samuelsson said Volvo's sales of smaller cars had always been too small to be profitable and the automaker needed a partner that could share the costs of developing and manufacturing a competitive vehicle.

China output

The executive said the automaker has three production options in China with Geely: two existing plants in the southwestern city of Chengdu and the northeast city of Daqing, or a new automobile assembly plant being built in Luqiao, a district of the eastern China city of Taizhou.

Two sources close to Geely said Volvo and its Chinese parent were likely to make cars based on the CMA platform together at the Luqiao plant.

Geely is expected to start producing an SUV based on CMA underpinnings at the Luqiao plant toward the end of 2016.

Volvo is also interested in using a common platform and powertrain technologies with Geely to come up with a small SUV, Samuelsson said.

"SUVs are growing in the world, so that is a good guess that something in that segment will be worth taking a look at," the CEO said.

Zhejiang Geely, which also owns black cab maker London Taxi Company, bought Volvo from Ford Motor Co. in 2010.

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