EV Production Launch
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.
Production of the Volvo EX60 began at Torslanda, outside Gothenburg, with customer deliveries scheduled for early summer. The fully electric mid-size SUV, revealed to wide acclaim in January, arrives carrying considerable symbolic and commercial weight. It is the first car to be entirely designed, developed and manufactured in Sweden, and it enters production at a moment when the country's automotive industry faces the urgent task of demonstrating that premium electric vehicle production can remain economically viable on European soil.
For Volvo Cars, the stakes are high enough to justify the investment, and the timing deliberate enough to suggest a leadership team that has made a clear strategic choice rather than a reluctant one. What the Torslanda plant now produces is more than a new model, as it represents - to whatever extent a single vehicle programme can do - a statement about where the company intends to stand in an industry undergoing one of its deepest structural transformations.
We are now focused on a steady ramp-up of high-quality EX60 production, making sure this game-changing car will be a profitable growth driver in the coming years
A factory rebuilt for the electric age
The Torslanda plant that now assembles the EX60 is substantially different from the one that existed only a few years ago. Volvo Cars has committed around SEK 10 billion ($1.1 billion) to transforming the facility, with the scope of work touching nearly every major process in the manufacturing sequence. The investment encompasses new megacasting capabilities, a purpose-built battery assembly plant, and a fully refurbished paint shop and final assembly line.
Megacasting, a technique that consolidates multiple body components - traditionally stamped and welded from dozens of individual parts - into single large aluminium structures, has rapidly become a reference technology in next-generation EV manufacturing. By reducing part counts and weld joints, it cuts weight, complexity and assembly time in ways that compound across the production lifecycle. Its adoption at Torslanda signals that Volvo intends to compete on manufacturing efficiency, not merely on product quality.
The battery assembly plant is equally significant. In-house battery integration capability reduces dependence on external assembly partners, tightens quality control at a component level where performance and safety margins are especially tight, and positions the plant to accommodate successive generations of battery chemistry as the technology continues to evolve. Taken together, the investment does not merely prepare Torslanda for the EX60. It positions the plant as a platform for the next several generations of Volvo's electric vehicle programme.
The specification that removes the excuses
The EX60's technical credentials are not incidental to its commercial prospects. They are central to them, and the company has clearly structured the product around neutralising the objections that have historically slowed premium EV adoption among buyers who might otherwise be predisposed to switch.
The car delivers a class-leading range of up to 810km on the WLTP testing cycle, charges from ten to 80 per cent in 16 minutes at 400kW charging facilities, and is priced in line with the XC60 plug-in hybrid - Volvo's best-selling model globally. Each of those three data points addresses a distinct category of buyer hesitation, and the combination is difficult to dismiss.
Range anxiety, though diminishing as infrastructure matures, has continued to influence purchase decisions in the premium segment, where buyers have high expectations for autonomy and low tolerance for inconvenience. An 810km figure - even one that carries the standard WLTP caveat that actual range will vary depending on charge level, car specification, outdoor temperature, battery condition, weather, topography, driving style and speed - is a meaningful psychological threshold. It removes the range objection from most purchasing conversations.
The charging speed is, if anything, more commercially significant. A 16-minute charge from ten to 80 per cent, at sites equipped with 400kW infrastructure, reduces the decision-making friction around long journeys to a level that most buyers find tolerable. The caveat applies here too: charging times vary and depend on outdoor temperature, battery condition and car condition. But the headline figure places the EX60 among a very short list of production vehicles that can credibly claim near-comparable convenience to combustion refuelling on longer trips.
The pricing decision is the sharpest of the three strategic moves. By positioning the EX60 at parity with the XC60 plug-in hybrid rather than at a premium to it, Volvo removes the cost-of-transition argument from the equation. For loyalty buyers already comfortable with the XC60's price point, the financial calculus of switching to a fully electric alternative is simplified to the point of near-neutrality.
When demand outruns the forecast
The order book has run substantially ahead of internal expectations. Demand in Sweden and Germany has been particularly robust, and retail orders across nearly all major European markets have come in considerably higher than internal forecasts. The strength of the early intake prompted Volvo Cars to announce, before production had formally begun, that it would be increasing EX60 production volumes for 2026.
With order books for the United States and Asian markets set to open later this spring, the direction of travel is clear. Volvo Cars is aiming to keep the Torslanda plant running through what would normally be a scheduled summer closure, for one additional week. If achieved, it would be the first time in the plant's history that production has continued through that period. The significance is not purely logistical. In an industry where European OEMs have been quietly revising their electrification timelines downward and renegotiating production commitments in the face of softer-than-projected demand, Volvo's decision to run longer and build more represents a counter-reading of market conditions that is both notable and commercially consequential.
"Today is an important milestone for our company and for Sweden as a whole, as we start to build the first EX60 customer cars," said Håkan Samuelsson, Volvo Cars CEO. "We are now focused on a steady ramp-up of high-quality EX60 production, making sure this game-changing car will be a profitable growth driver in the coming years."
The phrase "profitable growth driver" deserves more than passing notice. Profitability in the electric vehicle segment has remained stubbornly elusive for many manufacturers. The industry has watched with varying degrees of anxiety as legacy OEMs absorb heavy per-unit losses on early EV platforms - losses absorbed in pursuit of market share, regulatory compliance, or both. Samuelsson's language positions the EX60 not as a regulatory obligation that must be produced, but as a product the company intends to build a margin around. That distinction has proven far more difficult to achieve in practice than most boardroom presentations have suggested. Whether Volvo can do so will be a defining question of the next several years.
As the first fully electric car designed, developed and built in Sweden, [the EX60] has been cast by Volvo's leadership as both a proof of national industrial capability and a potential anchor for economic growth across the Western Sweden region
Sweden's new industrial flagship
Beyond the factory gates, the EX60 carries a weight of industrial and economic expectation that extends well beyond the vehicle itself. As the first fully electric car designed, developed and built in Sweden, it has been cast by Volvo's leadership as both a proof of national industrial capability and a potential anchor for economic growth across the Western Sweden region.
Volvo Cars' volume ambitions for the EX60 are large enough, the company suggests, for it to rank among Sweden's largest export products measured by value. The claim is plausible. Sweden's export economy has historically been led by industrial goods - vehicles, machinery, pharmaceuticals - and a high-margin premium electric vehicle produced at scale in Gothenburg would represent a meaningful line in that ledger. It also reinforces the Western Sweden region's position as an automotive development and manufacturing hub at a moment when such status is neither guaranteed nor easily maintained.
The continent is navigating a combination of policy uncertainty, competitive pressure from Chinese manufacturers, and the unresolved economics of the energy transition, all of which bear directly on the future geography of vehicle production.
The Torslanda plant has been part of Swedish manufacturing since the 1960s, and its continuing relevance in the electric era was never a certainty. That it has been substantially upgraded rather than wound down reflects a deliberate decision by Volvo's leadership to anchor the company's next chapter in Sweden - a decision that also commits considerable capital to making that choice succeed.
A ramp that will define Volvo's next decade
The production trajectory from here will be observed carefully, both within the company and across the industry. Ramping a new electric vehicle at volume, with new manufacturing processes including megacasting and a new battery assembly line, is operationally demanding. Doing so while managing a strong and still-growing order book across multiple markets adds complexity to every decision in the launch sequence.
Volvo's emphasis on a "steady ramp-up" reflects hard lessons from across the industry, where production pressure and quality assurance have at times pulled in opposite directions during high-profile EV launches. For a premium brand whose price positioning depends on sustained product quality, a poor initial ownership experience with a flagship model carries reputational consequences that take years to fully repair.
What Volvo Cars is attempting with the EX60 is, in essence, a proof of concept for a broader industrial thesis: that a European premium manufacturer can design, build and profitably sell a fully electric vehicle at competitive price points, from a high-cost production base, at volumes sufficient to matter economically. The early demand data suggests the thesis has found an audience. Whether Torslanda can deliver on it - at pace, at quality, and at the kind of margin that justifies the SEK 10 billion ($1.1 billion) wager already made - will determine rather more than the fate of one model.
