The cars Volvo is developing in Sweden with its new parent company, the emerging Chinese automotive superpower, Geely, scheduled for export to North America, will have powertrains designed to accommodate plug-in hybrid systems.
What’s more, Volvo plans a 90 series-size full battery electric vehicle with a dedicated body off the SPA platform in 2019. It will have a long range, good performance and will be totally usable. The most important factors of SPA are number one, design, and number two, dynamic behavior.
Volvo says its two new modular platforms accelerate development times. The goal is that by 2020, a new “top hat” -- essentially the body shell -- can be brought to production within 20 months for either SPA or CMA.
Volvo expects 10 percent of its cars and CUVs sold globally will have some level of electrification -- plug-in hybrid power (which Volvo calls “Twin-Engine”) or pure BEV -- by the end of the decade. Although that’s not a game-changing number considering the need to quickly lower carbon-dioxide emissions, it’s at least double the number most analysts expect for the overall global fleet.
