- Volvo wants to build a high-volume hybrid model in the United States.
- The automaker's Ridgeville plant in South Carolina builds just two cars now: the Volvo EX90 and Polestar 3.
- The XC60 and XC90 hybrids are the best candidates.
Volvo is in cost-cutting mode after a disappointing first quarter. But slashing almost $2 billion in spending alone isn't going to put it on the right track, so the Swedish automaker is scrambling to reorganize the way it builds and ships cars around the world.
This way, it can make the best of what it has. And it has plenty, including a car factory in South Carolina where it currently builds just one Volvo-specific car—the all-electric EX90 SUV. The Polestar 3 is also assembled there.
That's all well and good, but Volvo sold just 1,000 EX90s in the U.S. in the first quarter, so it's safe to say that the factory is severely underutilized. But not for long, because the automaker's new CEO wants to bring a high-volume hybrid to South Carolina.
“It has to be a car with mild-hybrid and plug-in versions to really bring up the volumes,” Hakan Samuelsson told Automotive News yesterday after the company published its first-quarter results. It’s not clear what model will be added to the Ridgeville plant’s portfolio, but it will likely be either the XC60 or the XC90. Both are offered as gas-powered mild hybrids and plug-in hybrids.
The reason for this is that both are based on the Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) platform, while the smaller XC40 is underpinned by the Compact Modular Architecture (CMA). This is important because Volvo’s Ridgeville factory used to assemble the S60 sedan, which shares a lot of its underpinnings with the XC60 and XC90.
Despite being retooled to function as an EV factory, the Ridgeville facility still has the tooling to make SPA-based cars, so that’s why the two crossovers are the main candidates for U.S. assembly. “A wagon or a sedan is not very likely,” said Samuelsson. "I think if you look at what the bestsellers are in the U.S., they are often some kind of SUV.”
In the first three months, Volvo sold 9,369 XC90s and 12,706 XC60s in the United States. Mind you, that includes all powertrain types, as the company doesn’t separate plug-in hybrids from the other versions.
That said, the XC60 and XC90 sold more units than all the other models combined, so bringing one of them stateside would likely save Volvo some headaches—and cash. Currently, 90% of the automaker’s sales in the U.S. are represented by European-built models. “We cannot bring in cars from Europe and just believe they will sell them,” Samuelsson said.
