Swedish-based but now Chinese owned car maker Volvo has promised a new battery electric vehicle (BEV) for the European market, at least initially, which the company says will target “a large, lower priced market segment”.
The plan was unveiled after a sizeable and bigger-than-expected operating loss, another 2,500 job cuts, and a doubling of its cash burn that was announced at the end of last week.
Volvo says its next global BEV car next year will target “a large, lower priced market segment in Europe” with the first customer deliveries starting after the northern summer.
The new EV will be built on Volvo’s SPA3 (Scalable Product Architecture 3), the carmaker’s first dedicated EV platform, and which now serves as the basis for everything from sedans to compact SUVs.
The new BEV will follow the EX60, the first car built on the SPA3 platform, which the company said has already been “a big success” with over 50,000 European orders which will make it one of Volvo Cars’ most profitable models.
However, despite its popularity, Volvo is still having troubles with the EX60, claiming that “new industrial technology such as cell-to-body” is causing planned ramp up of production to take longer than expected. Volvo said that it is “steadily improving built volumes.”
The unnamed new BEV is one of 13 new cars of all drivetrain types that Volvo said it plans to release between now and the end of the decade, including a tailored portfolio of new cars for Europe, the United States, and China, as well as more localised production.
Volvo promised to unveil three of these new cars next year – one for Europe and two for China – with the European car expected to be the newly promised BEV.
The two new China-tailored cars, the first two of six, will be unveiled in the middle of next year, followed soon after by production. Volvo said that both cars will be developed with a Chinese tech stack and the latest ADAS technologies, benefiting from closer cooperation with Chinese carmaking giant Geely.
“We continue to operate in a very tough environment with strong external challenges: de-globalisation, hypercompetition and climate change,” said Håkan Samuelsson, Volvo Cars president and CEO.
“We are convinced that we have the right long-term strategy addressing these challenges.
“However, in the short term, with severely challenged volumes, we need to reinforce our turnaround plan with additional decisive actions, lowering our break-even point, and improving cash flows to make us more resilient.”
