Volvo has confirmed it will build a new small electric crossover based on a platform developed to underpin vehicles from a very interesting spectrum of future cars, including Polestar, Lotus and even those new electric London taxis.
Volvo has a plan to boost its battery-powered vehicle sales exponentially in the next five years, and now the hazy gap between next year’s all-electric XC40 crossover and 2022’s planned all-electric XC90 may be filled with something on all-new architecture.
From Automotive News:
Volvo Cars confirmed it will build a small electric car, which will be a crucial part of its effort to get half of its global sales from battery-powered vehicles by 2025.
The model will use the recently revealed Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA) that the Swedish automaker helped parent Zhejiang Geely Holding develop.
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The SEA underpinnings will be used by other Geely-controlled brands including Polestar, Lotus, and London taxi maker LEVC.
Volvo’s SEA-based model is expected to be a crossover, based on comments Samuelsson gave to UK motoring magazine Auto Express. The CEO, however, declined to define the “Baby Volvo” as a crossover or SUV.
“I think the SUVs in the future might not be exactly as SUVs are today,” Samuelsson told the publication. “Ground clearance and off-roading capability are probably not the most important things now.”
Samuelsson also explained why Volvo decided to go with the new SEA platform, which it hasn’t used before, over its own CMA (Compact Module Architecture) platform. “It’s difficult to push the CMA platform, which is a combination platform for EVs and combustion-engine cars, further down. So if you want to do a smaller car than XC40, then SEA can do it.”
The SEA architecture will also be used by Volvo and Geely joint-venture brand Lynk & Co, with its debut electric sedan supposedly going on sale also next year. That would mean that the SEA platform Volvo plans to use is production-ready, so we could be closer to that new crossover than the automaker has revealed so far.
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