Volvo’s new Slovakia plant to use its most advanced platform

Volvo’s new Slovakia plant will use the automaker’s most state-of-the-art platform when it commences creation in 2026.

“It will be a successor to SPA2,” Geert Bruyneel, Volvo’s head of worldwide production, instructed Automotive News Europe.

SPA2 is an electric powered-only architecture that will underpin the automaker’s forthcoming flagship SUV as very well as the Polestar 3. Equally battery-propelled high quality large SUVs will go into production later this 12 months at Volvo’s U.S. manufacturing facility close to Charleston, South Carolina.

Bruyneel and Volvo’s head of industrial strategy, Erik Severinson, declined to say which motor vehicle would be designed at the new Kosice plant, but the automaker makes use of the present-day era of SPA (small for scalable product or service architecture) on versions these kinds of as XC90 SUV and its global most effective-seller, the XC60 top quality midize SUV.

Volvo’s future flagship crossover, which will just take more than a part at the moment held by XC90, will be total-electrical and could spend homage to the Swedish automaker’s lineage.

Volvo has not disclosed the title of the initially product that will use SPA2, but has mentioned it will deviate from making use of alphanumeric names these kinds of as XC90 and XC60 on future cars.

Volvo submitted for trademark security very last October for the identify Embla, in accordance to Australian news web page Drive. In Norse mythology, Embla is the name of the initially female.

The even further developed model of SPA2 planned for Kosice will be finished by Volvo, which will continue on to share it with sibling brands owned by Zhejiang Geely Keeping.

“This is the subsequent era in our engineering journey,” Severinson, told ANE.

Bruyneel said that journey includes making use of megacasting for huge aluminum body parts.

Volvo’s most significant and oldest automobile plant, located in Torslanda, Sweden, will be completely ready for megacasting by 2025, which coincides with the generation start for the very first full-electric powered motor vehicle at the manufacturing facility.

Volvo govt Mikael Fermer explained to ANE previously this year that switching to the new strategy for auto design “is the most significant technological know-how shift due to the fact we switched from wood to steel [for car bodies].”

Bruyneel explained Volvo will seem to mirror Torslanda in the move to megacasting, with an eye towards getting the techique, which is by now employed by Tesla, to an even increased stage at the Slovakia plant.

“The new plant in Slovakia gives us a the moment-in-a-lifetime prospect to place the most successful state-of-the-artwork manufacturing facility in put,” Bruyneel stated.

When requested whether or not Volvo plans to increase battery or electric powered motor production at the manufacturing facility, Bruyneel reported that though these selections nonetheless have to have to be created: “The aim is to re-consider and create an EV plant from scratch and try to integrated as much of that kind of production as attainable.” He included that Volvo has place in Kosice to extend if essential.