How Volvo built the EX60 without stopping the line

There is a question in carmaking that reveals a great deal about the sophistication of a manufacturing leader's thinking, and it is not one about technology. It is one about trade-offs. Akhil Krishnan, Senior Vice President and Product Line Owner for Volvo Cars' 60-series - responsible, in other words, for the EX60, the XC60, and the XC70 - is the person who oversaw every production decision on a programme that has just started rolling off the line at Torslanda, outside Gothenburg, to considerable fanfare.

When AMS visited the Volvo site last month to witness the EX60 rolling off the line for the first time, he was asked what the single hardest trade-off was in getting it there. His answer is not what the slide deck would have you expect.

"The biggest challenge," he says, "was building the new shops from a manufacturing perspective. We were very committed to delivering an EV without compromises. That means redefining how you build the car. If you want high range, fast charging, low weight, and pricing on par with PHEVs - as you've seen in Germany - you have to make significant investments and change production methods."

It is worth noting that in the German market, the EX60 actually opens below the XC60 PHEV - €62,990 ($74,200) against €67,990 ($80,100) - meaning the BEV case is even more financially straightforward than Krishnan's "on par" framing implies. The competitive pricing he is describing is a function of the manufacturing investment he goes on to explain.

Further, Krishnan's phrase "without compromises", is used so freely in automotive marketing that it has nearly lost all its meaning. But Krishnan is talking about the practical manufacturing logic that allowed for this feat to happen - and not the product copy.

If the EX60 was to achieve class-leading WLTP range (that is, official distance on a single charge), as well as competitive pricing and genuine production efficiency, then the manufacturing process itself had to be rebuilt. All this, inside a plant that was simultaneously already running full production of Europe's best-selling premium SUV.

The cost of doing it live

No doubt, there is very specific and underappreciated complexity in transforming a production facility that is already in full operation. A greenfield plant allows engineering teams to design processes from first principle, with no legacy systems to work around, no live production schedules to protect, and no existing workforce managing the disruption of radical change.

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Volvo Cars begins EX60 production at Torslanda

The first fully electric car to be designed, built and developed in Sweden rolls off the line at Torslanda, as surging European orders and a SEK 10bn ($1.1bn) factory overhaul signal a decisive shift in Volvo's industrial strategy.

Torslanda is not that. It has been producing Volvos since 1964, and the SEK 10 billion (approximately $1.1 billion) transformation that preceded the EX60's April 2026 production launch, had to be executed around a facility that never went fully dark. "It's much easier with a greenfield plant, where you start from scratch and can design everything to be lean and ambitious," Krishnan acknowledges. "The real challenge is doing it within an existing plant that's already in full production."

The difference, in practical terms, is measurable. "It would have been faster to bring this car to market in a greenfield setup, granted," he says. "We've had to work through holidays and shutdowns to get everything up and running. In total, it's taken about three and a half years - but that could have been closer to two and a half with a completely new facility."

A full year added to the development timeline is not a trivial competitive cost. In the mid-size premium EV segment - now filling rapidly, with the BMW iX3 and the electric Mercedes-Benz GLC already in market, and Chinese manufacturers from Nio and Zeekr pressing the range and charging numbers harder than anyone expected a year ago - programme speed matters in ways that go beyond internal planning.

Krishnan does not second-guess the decision. The Torslanda commitment had already been made. But his candour about the time penalty is the kind of institutional honesty that rarely survives the journey from factory floor to investor presentation.

The Volvo EX60

And what the investment produced is not merely a retooled assembly line, but a set of entirely new dedicated facilities feeding into a common final process. A purpose-built battery shop assembles the EX60's cell-to-body pack; an architecture in which the battery integrates structurally into the car's floor rather than sitting as a bolt-on module. According to Volvo, cell-to-body construction improves energy density by 20 per cent, reduces weight, and cuts the carbon footprint of the battery system by 37 per cent relative to conventional pack design.

A megacasting shop produces the large-format aluminium structural rear sections that replace what would previously have been assemblies of dozens of individually stamped and welded components. And the EX60's in-house-developed electric motors arrive from Automotive Components Floby in western Sweden, a facility that has been repositioned as part of Volvo's broader effort to bring more of its EV drivetrain inside its own supply chain.

What SPA3 actually delivers in production

Volvo's new Scalable Product Architecture - SPA3 - is described by the company as inherently flexible, designed to support different vehicle sizes, body types and powertrains without requiring the full capital investment cycle to restart for each new model. Krishnan is one of a very small number of people in a position to describe what that flexibility means operationally rather than architecturally, because he is the one managing production flow across the Torslanda site.

It is worth being precise about what that flexibility entails, and what it does not. The EX60 is built on SPA3; the XC60 rides on an earlier generation of the architecture. They use different battery systems and different cell chemistries. The two cars are not interchangeable at a platform level, and the production flexibility Krishnan describes operates within SPA3's framework rather than across generations. What SPA3 delivers is the ability to evolve future models without reinventing the manufacturing foundation each time.

"SPA3 gives us the ability to build different body types and segments without repeating the same investments. We now have scalable battery technology - we can do 600km, 800km, LFP, NMC, etc. From a business perspective, that gives us real flexibility. Whether we decide to build a smaller car, a larger car, a higher or a lower car, we don't need to reinvest in new capabilities each time."

The claim is substantive and warrants unpacking. Under earlier architectures, battery systems were less adaptable across different chemistries and form factors. The shift to large-format prismatic cells on SPA3 - standardised around a common cell geometry - means that the pack can, in principle, accommodate lithium-iron phosphate chemistry, nickel-manganese-cobalt chemistry, or whatever next-generation formulations become commercially viable, without requiring a full redesign of the structural integration.

The EX60 currently launches with NMC chemistry across its three battery sizes, with cells supplied by Chinese suppliers Sunwoda (for the 80 kWh and 91 kWh packs) and CATL (for the 112 kWh P12 variant). LFP variants remain on the strategic roadmap.

But the operational reality of SPA3 is already visible in Torslanda's production layout. "So at the same time," says Krishnan, "it proves we can build everything in the same facility. Batteries come from a dedicated battery shop, megacastings from a megacasting shop, and our e-machines are built at Automotive Components Floby in Sweden. All of these feed into the same line where we build the XC60."

This is where the strategic hedge embedded in SPA3 becomes visible. Krishnan is not coy about it. "If electrification progresses as quickly as we expect, I'd be happy to completely convert Torslanda to SPA3 and go fully electric. But if it doesn't, we still have the flexibility to continue producing the XC60 - which, despite being eight years old, remains our top seller. That flexibility is critical. And as a business owner, I'm frankly comfortable making that trade-off."

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At the Torslanda main plant, Volvo is opening a new chapter: while production is being modernised during ongoing operations, the EX60 is emerging as the key model of the electric future. Megacasting, lean and team spirit shape the transformation in Sweden.

The XC60's continued commercial relevance is one of the more remarkable facts in the modern premium automotive market. With more than 2.7 million units sold globally since its 2008 launch, it remains Volvo's highest-volume model, generating the revenue that funds the transition Krishnan is managing.

The ability to continue producing it on the same site as the EX60 is not an engineering afterthought, but a deliberate structural hedge that reduces the risk of a forced commitment to an electrification timeline that market demand may not honour on schedule.

Torslanda's sustainable production: a lower carbon footprint from a larger car

The EX60's carbon credentials are among the most instructive and least expected aspects of the programme. Despite being substantially larger and heavier than the EX30 - Volvo's compact EV and until now its lowest-carbon model - the EX60 carries a lower lifecycle carbon footprint. The explanation stretches beyond lightweighting or powertrain efficiency - which matter - into a materials strategy now being accelerated by generative AI.

"This car has the lowest carbon footprint of any Volvo we've produced - even though it's not the smallest. We said that about the EX30, which is much lighter, but now we're achieving even better results with a larger, heavier vehicle."

The mechanism is more operationally interesting than the headline figure suggests. It is achieved because Torslanda is able to incorporate high levels of recycled content and low-CO2 materials into production. "Previously," says Krishnan, "making material changes meant redesigning, retesting, and revalidating components, with associated liabilities. Now, with generative AI, we can simulate and run thousands of calculations before making decisions."

The practical consequence is a shift in the speed and granularity with which sustainability decisions can be made at a programme level. "For example, if we source low-CO2 recycled aluminium for our megacasting furnace, we can make faster decisions - on a monthly or even weekly basis - to integrate it into production. That's possible because we've built the manufacturing capability to support that flexibility. That's where the real sustainability advantage comes from."

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Krishnan has written about the ambition to generate daily cost and CO2-equivalent updates for every active part number in a vehicle programme - a level of real-time material visibility that would represent a qualitative shift in how sustainability is managed across the production lifecycle. The convergence of megacasting's dramatically reduced part counts with AI-enabled simulation is what closes the loop: fewer components means fewer variables to model, and faster modelling means faster validated decisions on recycled and low-carbon material inputs.

It is a different kind of sustainability story from the familiar one about energy sources or logistics optimisation. It is about the decision cycle itself becoming faster and more confident.

Building battery supply resilience in a fractured world

No aspect of EV programme management is more strategically sensitive in the current geopolitical environment than battery cell supply. The fragilities exposed by both past and more recent supply chain disruptions - Covid, Houthi rebels, Iran and Hormuz, and others - the tariff pressures on Chinese-sourced components, and the ongoing difficulty of establishing competitive cell manufacturing on European soil have all compressed the strategic degrees of freedom available to Western OEMs. Krishnan addresses this with a candour that reflects how central it now is to every planning conversation.

"Supply resilience is critical in today's geopolitical environment. We're working with multiple cell suppliers across different locations. We're building up supply in Europe, and currently we also have providers in China."

The European dimension of that supply build is centred on NOVO Energy, the battery venture established as a joint venture between Volvo Cars and Northvolt - the Swedish battery pioneer that entered bankruptcy proceedings in 2024. Following the necessary regulatory approvals and the signing of a share purchase agreement with the Northvolt trustee, Volvo Cars has now taken full ownership of NOVO Energy AB.

The situation, however, remains in flux. NOVO Energy is continuing limited operations while finalising the first phase of construction and exploring potential future scenarios that could permit a resumption of activities at scale. The company's primary long-term objective remains the production of batteries in the Gothenburg area - with the proximity to Torslanda always having been central to the supply logic, since cells, in the intended steady-state configuration, would travel no further than a few metres between production and integration.

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But for that objective to be realised, NOVO Energy requires a new technology partner. The process of identifying one is ongoing, led by Volvo Cars. Until a partner is secured, the project cannot proceed on its original timeline, and NOVO Energy is no longer able to sustain its costs in the way previously planned.

The battery system's designed adaptability is what provides the interim flexibility. "Importantly, the battery system is designed to handle different cell types. That flexibility was essential for us, especially as we look to support different chemistries in the future. So investing in flexibility is already paying off."

The decision to standardise the EX60's pack around large-format prismatic cells rather than the cylindrical format increasingly favoured by some competitors was made precisely because prismatic geometry is agnostic to chemistry. It can house NMC cells, LFP cells, or future formulations without structural redesign.

In a market where the competitive battery chemistry landscape is shifting faster than any procurement cycle can track, that design decision is worth considerably more than it cost.

And in a supply environment where the NOVO Energy situation illustrates just how quickly a European cell sourcing strategy can be disrupted, the ability to qualify alternative suppliers and chemistries without redesigning the pack is not a theoretical advantage - it is an active one.

Flexibility and the upfront investment thesis

The themes of this conversation converge with unusual consistency on a single strategic principle. Whether Krishnan is discussing the platform, the battery architecture, the AI-enabled sustainability decision loop or the cell supply chain, he returns to the same argument: that the willingness to invest heavily and early in adaptable manufacturing capability is what makes the economics of electric vehicle production viable at scale - and what separates the manufacturers who will earn a return on electrification from those who will not.

"Building electric vehicles requires massive investment. To get the cost right, you have to invest heavily upfront. So when you're making those investments, if you prioritise flexibility - as we've done - it gives you long-term advantages."

There is nothing surprising about this argument in the abstract. But it is a harder case to make from inside a programme that has just spent three and a half years retrofitting a live production facility, is managing cell supply from Chinese partners while a Gothenburg battery venture searches for a new technology partner, and is launching into a segment now crowded with well-capitalised competitors.

European manufacturers are navigating an EV transition in which demand trajectories remain genuinely uncertain, policy environments have shifted materially, and cost pressure from Chinese OEMs has intensified beyond what most planning scenarios from three years ago anticipated.

In that context, Krishnan's assertion that the ability to switch battery chemistries without redesigning the pack, to update material sourcing decisions weekly rather than annually, and to maintain ICE and EV production on the same site simultaneously - that all of this constitutes a strategic asset rather than a hedge - is a more sophisticated position than the standard transition narrative allows for.

The early demand data for the EX60 is encouraging: order books in Sweden and Germany ran substantially ahead of internal forecasts before the first customer car had left the line, and Volvo moved to increase 2026 production volumes in response. The XC60 comparison is favourable on both range and charging speed. And in Germany at least, the EX60's starting price of €62,990 undercuts the XC60 PHEV by a meaningful margin, making the financial case for the loyalty buyer unusually uncomplicated.

Whether Torslanda can deliver on all of that, at pace and at the quality level a premium brand's reputation requires, will be the test that determines rather more than the commercial fate of one model. It will determine whether the investment thesis that Krishnan has articulated - flexibility as the foundation of profitable electrification, not a workaround for it - holds under the pressure of real production.