We’ve reached an agreement with Geely to take full ownership of our Luqiao manufacturing plant in China – which means that in a few years, we’ll own all plants producing our cars.

Ever since the Luqiao, China plant was inaugurated in 2017, it's been owned by Geely, while we've been supporting on the operational side. We now have an agreement with our parent company and we'll take full ownership of the plant and its manufacturing capacity will be fully available to our Volvo Car Group.
A lot will stay the same after the agreement: the plant will continue to produce the XC40, the fully electric XC40 and the Polestar 2 models; and there'll be no changes in its operations. Changes that will happen include the transfer of all the plant's 2,600 employees, including manufacturing and supporting functions, from Geely Holding to Volvo Cars, as well as a name change.
To be in line with our naming convention for our other plants in China, the Luqiao plant will from now on be referred to as the Taizhou plant, reflecting the name of its home city instead of its home district. Apart from creating a clearer ownership structure within both our Group and Geely, this move boosts our position in China – which is our largest market.
&quot;The transfer of the Taizhou plant is a sound and logical move for both parties, as the plant is now fully dedicated to produce Volvo Car Group's cars,&quot; said Javier Varela, head of Engineering and Operations. &quot;It is symbolic that the plant that produced the first unit of our first fully electric car, the Polestar 2, will continue to help us grow in our aim to become a global leader in the premium electric car segment.&quot;
Together with Geely, we're always looking at how to improve collaboration and the operational structure within our wider group, and this agreement comes just after another similarly themed agreement during the past summer.

Oskar Falk, Plant Manager in Taizhou, said: &quot;After four successful years producing cars for Volvo, Polestar and Lynk &amp; Co, I'm looking forward to preparing the Taizhou plant for all our future programmes and challenges, now under Volvo Car Group's ownership. We are already well under way in the shift to 100 per cent electric cars, supporting Volvo Cars' long-term strategy.&quot;
In July, we agreed with Geely to acquire their stake in our joint ventures in China, which includes the manufacturing plants in Chengdu and Daqing. These transactions are expected to be formally completed in 2023.
With Taizhou now being added to our list of manufacturing plants – already consisting of Charleston, USA; Torslanda, Sweden; and Ghent, Belgium – it means that we'll own all plants producing our cars once the transfer of Chengdu and Daqing goes through.

We’re the new owners of the Luqiao plant

As we’re rapidly moving towards becoming a fully electric car company, we’re bringing both development and production of batteries closer to home. 

On our road towards full electrification, we focus on integrating every step throughout the entire battery supply chain into our own operations to make it as smart and efficient as possible. This involves the in-house design, development and production of batteries, e-motors and relevant software, and collaborating with strategic partners where it makes sense.
We have ambitious plans for our next generation of fully electric cars, and we want our future batteries to be tailored to the needs of our customers, having longer range and faster charging times.
To get going, we’ll improve the lithium-ion battery technology on our upcoming second generation of electric cars, starting with our first SUV built from the ground up as an electric-only car.
In June, we announced a planned collaboration with leading Swedish battery company Northvolt to develop and produce sustainable batteries. In the near future, we plan to work with Northvolt to increase the energy density (meaning the amount of energy a battery contains in comparison to its volume/mass) in our batteries by 50 per cent.
By the mid-2020s, we expect to introduce our third generation of electric cars, where we look to both increase range and integrate the battery pack into the floor of the car – the latter will not only save space but improve efficiency as well.
Around the same time, current charging times are expected to be cut almost in half, thanks to better battery technology and continuous improvements to software and fast-charging technology. And to round off our plans for the 2020s, we want to achieve 1,000 kilometres of real driving range later this decade.
“We want to constantly increase the customer benefits of driving a pure electric Volvo car,” said Henrik Green, chief technology officer. “By simplifying the design and integration of our battery cells, we can reduce weight and maximise space, allowing for considerable improvements in battery capacity, range and charging times.”

While we’ll increase the battery energy in our cars over the coming decade, we’ll also work to continuously reduce the carbon impact of our batteries. In our planned collaboration with Northvolt, we aim to produce battery cells using 100 per cent renewable energy, and we’re working with our other battery suppliers to do the same by 2025.
Reducing the carbon impact of batteries also includes making better use of the valuable material contained in them. Whenever we can, we want to remanufacture or reuse batteries, and we’re also investigating potential second-life applications, such as energy storage.
Where possible, batteries that have reached the end of their lifespan will be recycled at authorised recyclers that are able to offer closed loop recycling of critical materials for use in future batteries. We’ll also continue to zero in on the responsible sourcing of batteries by working more closely with our partners and suppliers, as well as through a wider use of blockchain technology.

Starting with the successor to the XC90, we’ll offer bi-directional charging, allowing customers to offload surplus electricity in their car battery to the power grid. This means electric Volvo drivers can provide energy to the grid when prices and CO2 emissions related to electricity production are at their daily peak, while charging their car when emissions fall.
“We want to offer our customers sustainable pure electric cars that make their lives easier and more enjoyable,” said Henrik Green, chief technology officer. “Through smart innovation and collaboration with key partners, we can give customers what they want – more range, faster charging and lower costs – and further boost widespread adoption of electric mobility.”
Please note: Described features might be optional and the exact customer offer may vary from one country to another, or not (yet) be available in all markets. Contact your local market representative for more detail.

Better range and charging for next-gen electric Volvos

We’re expanding our popular fully electric XC40 Recharge line-up with a new, single electric motor variant. 

Our ambition is to sell only fully electric cars by 2030, so one of our focus areas is to help more people make the switch to battery power. We want a snowball effect: the more people feel comfortable driving (and can afford) a fully electric car, the faster the market share will grow. Then there’s a boost to charging infrastructure and electric car sales. You get the gist.
To support that ambition, we’re expanding our all-electric XC40 Recharge line-up. The all-wheel drive XC40 Recharge Twin has been a big success. Now we’re adding a variant that has only one electric motor, powering the front wheels.
So what do you get in the front-wheel drive XC40 Recharge? The powertrain is responsive and powerful, delivering 231hp from a 69kWh battery. The anticipated range is around 400km on a single charge under the WLTP drive cycle (preliminary figures). The battery can charge from 10 to 80 per cent of capacity in around 32 minutes on a fast-charging system.
“With the addition of a single-motor XC40 Recharge, we broaden the appeal of our fully electric line-up,” said Henrik Green, our chief technology officer. “Customers can now choose between two distinct variants of XC40 Recharge, as well as the recently launched Volvo C40 Recharge.”

We’re expecting a big response. Especially in the EMEA region, where Recharge cars account for almost half of our sales, the new single-motor XC40 Recharge can make some waves.
“We’re committed to being leaders in the premium electric car market,” said Arek Nowinski, our head of EMEA. “In EMEA we’ve set ourselves the ambition that by 2025, two-thirds of sales should come from pure electric cars. The all new single-motor XC40 Recharge will play a crucial role towards meeting that high ambition as it allows us to enter a new segment at a competitive price point.”
As we introduce the single-motor XC40 Recharge, we also make some changes and updates to the XC40 Recharge Twin. Both variants of the XC40 Recharge have undergone a variety of changes to the software and drivetrain since the initial introduction last year, improving efficiency and range. These changes will also be rolled out to existing XC40 Recharge customers via over-the-air updates.
The new, single-motor XC40 Recharge will go on sale in the coming weeks and, will first be introduced in Netherlands, Norway, UK, Sweden and Germany.

Both XC40 Recharge variants come with a Care offer and, in selected markets, Recharge tyres. The Care offer includes items such as service, warranty, roadside assistance, as well as insurance and home charging options where available. This makes it more attractive to get an electric car and provides convenience, regardless of whether you subscribe, lease, or pay cash. Customers can check with local retailers for availability.
Recharge tyres come as standard in Northern and Central European markets. A single set of tyres removes the bi-annual hassle of tyre changes and reduces CO2 emissions compared to winter tyres – and Recharge tyres are capable of safely handling a wider range of weather and road conditions than summer or winter tyres.

More battery power to the people

Our next generation of cars should be the safest cars we’ve ever made and will introduce our first fully autonomous feature. One key element to make that happen are standard LiDAR sensors and a powerful AD supercomputer.

One phrase you’ve heard a lot in recent times is that sustainability is as important as safety for Volvo. Obviously, that means we care a lot about our environment, but it also implies that we won’t forget about our safety credentials either when developing our next generation of cars. In fact, we aim to set a new benchmark for automotive safety.
How we do that, you wonder? Starting with the fully electric successor to our XC90 flagship, which will be revealed in 2022, our future cars will come with state-of-the-art sensors, including LiDAR technology and an autonomous driving (AD) computer, as standard.
These features are developed by two of our technology partners in California. Those LiDAR sensors come courtesy of our friends at Luminar, while the big brains at NVIDIA provides us with their NVIDIA DRIVE Orin system-on-a-chip technology to power that AD computer.
LiDAR is an ideal basis for safe decision-making in complex environments at high speeds, as it’s a type of laser-based technology that measures distances to targets hundreds of metres ahead. The super computing technology from NVIDIA can make A LOT of calculations per second, making sure that our cars can process the numerous, constant inputs from the LiDAR and other sensors.
Merge all that shiny hardware with software made by our in-house developers, our sister company Zenseact and Luminar, as well as the next generation of our collision avoidance technology, and you have a world-beating combination.
We anticipate that this new safety package will reduce fatalities and accidents as a whole. In fact, by applying over-the-air software updates we can roll out new technologies and further improve our safety package over time.
“Volvo Cars is and always has been a leader in safety. We’ll now define the next level of car safety,” says Håkan Samuelsson, our chief executive. “By having this hardware as standard, we can continuously improve safety features over the air and introduce advanced autonomous drive systems, reinforcing our leadership in safety.”

Once these technologies are on our cars, we expect them to get better over time. The car will become increasingly capable to support the driver in safety critical situations and even intervene when absolutely needed. All this takes us ever closer to our vision of a zero-collision future. 
&ldquo;In our ambition to deliver ever safer cars, our long-term aim is to achieve zero collisions and avoid crashes altogether,&rdquo; explains Henrik Green, our chief technology officer. &ldquo;As we improve our safety technology continuously through updates over the air, we expect collisions to become increasingly rare and hope to save more lives.&rdquo; 
Apart from those high-end sensors and AD computer, the pure electric successor to the XC90 will also come with back-up systems for key functions such as steering and braking. These make the car hardware-ready for safe, unsupervised autonomous driving once available. 
Our first (optional) autonomous driving feature is called Highway Pilot and has been developed in-house together with our AD software development company Zenseact. On roads and locations that are verified to be safe for driving in autonomous mode, you will be able to lean back and allow the car to take care of all the driving.
Our new safety technology package is a good illustration of our overall approach to technology development. Rather than trying to do everything ourselves, we team up with the best companies in their respective fields to try and build the best cars we can make. It also gives us a technology base that allows us to be one of the fastest-moving car makers in a rapidly transforming industry. 
See all the content from our recent <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.volvocars.com/intl/v/innovation/tech-moment" target="_blank">Tech Moment</a>, that explains how we&rsquo;ll achieve our all-electric future.

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We’re the new owners of the Luqiao plant

Better range and charging for next-gen electric Volvos

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A new safety standard comes to the next generation of Volvos