The Volvo Car Group and Northvolt, a Swedish battery manufacturer, have established a 50:50 joint venture to create sustainable batteries for the next generation of Volvo and Polestar automobiles. The Volvo XC60 will be the first vehicle to employ this joint venture.
A joint R&D centre will be established in Sweden as part of the agreement, where both businesses will pool their knowledge in battery research. By 2022, this plant will be operating. By 2026, the businesses want to build a battery plant in Europe with a capacity of 50GWh per year. Meanwhile, Volvo will begin obtaining batteries from Northvolt’s facility in 2024, as part of a strategy to acquire 15GWh of battery cells per year from the latter.
Volvo’s electrification aspirations have taken a big step ahead with this breakthrough. By 2025, the Swedish automaker intends to switch half of its fleet to electric vehicles, with a total makeover by 2030. The XC60 SUV, as previously stated, will be the first Volvo vehicle to undergo this electric makeover. The SUV, which is the most popular Volvo model worldwide, was first introduced in 2009 and subsequently updated in 2017. We believe this to be the final XC60 iteration to employ an internal combustion engine, given the facelifted second-gen model was introduced a few months ago.
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