Volvo’s new Slovakia plant will use the automaker’s most superior platform when it begins generation in 2026.
“It will be a successor to SPA2,” Geert Bruyneel, Volvo’s head of worldwide production, informed Automotive News Europe.
SPA2 is an electrical-only architecture that will underpin the automaker’s forthcoming flagship SUV as properly as the Polestar 3. Both equally battery-propelled premium significant SUVs will go into generation later this calendar year at Volvo’s U.S. factory in the vicinity of Charleston, South Carolina.
Bruyneel and Volvo’s head of industrial technique, Erik Severinson, declined to say which automobile would be created at the new Kosice plant, but the automaker works by using the present era of SPA (shorter for scalable item architecture) on models these as XC90 SUV and its world-wide ideal-vendor, the XC60 premium midize SUV.
Volvo’s subsequent flagship crossover, which will get about a function now held by XC90, will be full-electric and could pay back homage to the Swedish automaker’s lineage.
Volvo has not uncovered the name of the 1st design that will use SPA2, but has claimed it will deviate from working with alphanumeric names these types of as XC90 and XC60 on upcoming automobiles.
Volvo submitted for trademark safety last October for the title Embla, according to Australian information web site Drive. In Norse mythology, Embla is the identify of the to start with lady.
The even further advanced model of SPA2 prepared for Kosice will be accomplished by Volvo, which will continue on to share it with sibling brand names owned by Zhejiang Geely Keeping.
“This is the following era in our know-how journey,” Severinson, told ANE.
Bruyneel claimed that journey consists of working with megacasting for large aluminum entire body components.
Volvo’s largest and oldest car or truck plant, situated in Torslanda, Sweden, will be prepared for megacasting by 2025, which coincides with the creation start for the initially complete-electrical motor vehicle at the factory.
Volvo government Mikael Fermer advised ANE before this 12 months that switching to the new technique for vehicle design “is the most important know-how change due to the fact we switched from wooden to steel [for car bodies].”
Bruyneel reported Volvo will glimpse to mirror Torslanda in the shift to megacasting, with an eye toward having the techique, which is currently applied by Tesla, to an even higher stage at the Slovakia plant.
“The new plant in Slovakia offers us a when-in-a-life time chance to set the most efficient point out-of-the-artwork factory in location,” Bruyneel reported.
When requested no matter if Volvo programs to add battery or electrical motor production at the manufacturing facility, Bruyneel stated that whilst all those selections continue to will need to be created: “The intention is to re-assume and develop an EV plant from scratch and test to built-in as a great deal of that style of manufacturing as achievable.” He additional that Volvo has room in Kosice to develop if essential.
