What's Going On With Volvo Delays: Will We Ever Get the EX30 and a Future EX60?

Volvo is turning pages. The Scandinavian brand with Chinese parents is saying goodbye to legacy cars, launching new electric vehicles, developing new products on new platforms, and embracing new technologies like gigacasting to make it all possible. Out with the old: Volvo wrapped up production of the S60 compact sedan at its plant near Charleston, South Carolina, this month. The plant is pivoting to production of the 2025 Volvo EX90, an electric three-row SUV, as well as the 2025 Polestar 3. (Volvo and Polestar share Geely as a parent and many of the old Volvo team moved over to the startup automaker). The S60 will continue to be built in China but will not be imported to North America.

The EX90 becomes Volvo’s new flagship and we expect future variants to include a more affordable rear-wheel-drive version and perhaps a two-row version. The EX90 launch was delayed as Volvo worked to resolve software issues with the new SPA2 architecture that underpins the new SUV. It also delayed the Polestar 3 which is on the same platform and had to be pushed back nine months. Deliveries finally began this week.

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Software and Tariff Hurdles

At the other end of the spectrum is the entry-level 2025 Volvo EX30 subcompact electric crossover based on Geely’s SEA platform. It has also faced delays. Initially the issue was software. But unlike the EX90 and Polestar 3 which will be made in the U.S., the EX30 is currently built in China and therefore subject to tariffs that hit the SUV right in the pricetag. Promises of a sub-$40,000 EV was one of its greatest selling points. Instead of exporting the EX30 from China, the international launch is being pushed back to 2025 so Volvo can fast track plans to add production at its plant in Ghent, Belgium.

Despite the hiccups, Volvo is committed to building an electric vehicle portfolio, with a hard stop of being all-EV by 2030. In the leadup to that date, there will still be hybrids and plug-in hybrids available to cater to regional differences, and the automaker says the plan is to keep current vehicles updated and attractive in the interim.

Hybrids Still Around for Now

With all resources now devoted to EVs, Volvo stopped doing its own engineering for vehicles with combustion engines, relying on Aurobay for hybrid powertrains as a bridge to pure EVs. Aurobay is a joint venture that encompasses the former ICE departments of Volvo and parent Geely. Volvo sees this is a way to offer customers a choice of powertrains until 2030. 

Volvo had promised one new EV a year until mid-decade. We have the EX90 and EX30. Next up is the EX60 compact SUV due next year. And there is chatter about a midsize luxury sedan, potentially called the ES90. For future vehicles, Volvo has a third-generation platform known as GPA (Global Product Architecture) that is an evolution of SPA2 and would use an 800-volt system for faster charging. It is also designed to bring down cost with economies of scale and the use of gigacasting.

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Embracing Gigacasting

Gigacasting equipment has been installed at Volvo’s 60-year-old Torslanda plant in Sweden. The current plant is near the original birthplace of Volvo production in 1927. Torslanda has built more than 9 million vehicles and been home to iconic Volvos over the years. It now employs about 6,500 people and accounts for 40 percent of Volvo’s total global production.

Tesla drew attention to the advantages of gigacasting when it used a large die-casting machine to create giant molds of the front and rear of the 2020 Model Y, eliminating hundreds of parts and welds. Each model year has brought more megacasted parts. The cost-saving process is being embraced by other competitors. Toyota has started stamping larger pieces while testing giga presses and trying to develop them inhouse. Hyundai, Ford, and Nissan are also turning to gigacasting to reduce cost, complexity, time, and weight.

Volvo started exploring megacasting in 2020, got approval to proceed in 2021, and has installed massive presses. Volvo cast the piece in February, a rear floor for the EX60 coming next year. The press can make 300,000 floors a year. It replaces 100 traditional parts and thousands of joints with a single part, reducing the environmental impact and the complexity of design and manufacturing. The automaker could probably do the whole underbody, says Erik Severinson, chief product and strategy officer at Volvo Cars. He says it does not make as much sense for the upper body.

How Does the Giant Press Work?

With a gigapress, Volvo can go from raw material to final part in one system. Solid aluminum ingots ride an elevator to the furnace to be melted, cleaned, fed into a chute and sent to a complex die machine with an 8,400-pound force press. The part is trimmed, cooled, collected by a robot and sent for a quality check. Any material not used goes back into the furnace so virtually 100 percent is reused. The process reduces the weight of the part by 15-20 percent without losing any structural strength or integrity.

Big casting machines were not available until recently and are a massive investment that requires a good business case. The ability to easily make a new die allows for constant evolution so an architecture has no end life and there are no platform restrictions hurting design, says Severinson. Volvo is spending more than $1 billion over several years to rebuild the body and paint shops at Torslanda, add the megacasting area, and a battery shop to come online in 2026 to assemble packs from cells that will be produced nearby. It cements Gothenburg as Volvo’s production hub and no-turning back commitment to the automaker’s electric future.