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Volvo to finally replace XC90 in 2014

There's not a whole lot of life left in the current Volvo XC90, but it seems a replacement is on the way. According to What Car?, Volvo will launch its new flagship crossover sometime in 2014, riding on an all new platform that will eventually underpin several models in the company's range.
According to Volvo boss Hakan Samuelsson, this new architecture will eventually underpin the next-generation S60, V70, S80 and XC60, all of which will be getting mid-cycle enhancements over the next year. In speaking to What Car?, Samuelsson said that Volvo would not try to follow the paths set by BMW and Mercedes-Benz, instead focusing on "safety, elegant design and user-friendly functionality" for its next round of new cars.
The new XC90 will remain a seven-passenger vehicle and will be powered by a range of four-cylinder engines. Volvo will soon be dropping the five- and six-cylinder powertrains from its lineup.

Volvo uncovers widespread cheating by its Chinese dealers

According to a report in Reuters, the findings of an internal investigation conducted by Geely-owned Volvo is that its Chinese dealers vastly overreported their sales numbers in 2011, then even more vastly underreported their 2012 sales figures. About "half the dealers" out of the 151 total outlets gamed the system in order to get incentives for reaching volume objectives, falsely recording about 7,000 more units sold than was actually the case. Instead of 47,140 cars sold in China in 2011, the real number should have been 39,871.
Volvo corporate books a sale once it ships a car to a dealer, so that meant there were 7,000 more cars in inventory than there should have been. To restore the balance, the dealers underreported their 2012 sales while they unloaded those extra cars since, naturally, they couldn't claim the sale again. That made it look like sales declined by 11 percent in 2012, even though they actually increased year-on-year. The adjusted sales number for 2012 totalled 45,896.
Volvo has met with its dealers and told them to stop the deceitful practice. The discrepancies weren't so great that the company plans to restate its historic numbers, but from now on, it apparently plans to occasionally check inventory to make sure the numbers match and that it has a true picture of how individual models are selling.

Future Polestar Volvo models could feature diesel, EV tech

Volvo's Polestar sub-brand has made the transition nicely from being the company's racing arm to building some seriously cool, Swedish cars. Now that it has a few models under its belt, it plans to grow larger and greener. The next-generation of Polestar-tuned vehicles are rumored to include high-performance hybrid and diesel powertrains.
While it still doesn't have the brand recognition of BMW M or Mercedes-Benz AMG, Polestar is on the growth path. It's representatives recently told Autoblog that its latest, tuned S60 and V60 models "mark the start of an extended production car model range." In addition to that expansion, Volvo has given its performance division a greater responsibility for engineering future vehicles, according to Autocar. It even helped develop the new Drive-E engine, which we quite liked when we took it for a spin in an S60.
Polestar's boss hinted at a hybrid model to Autocar, a move that seems obvious once you think about it. The Drive-E engine was designed from the beginning to accept hybrid layouts. The division's plan is to put and electric motor on the rear axle to both increase torque off the line and provide all-wheel drive. As Drive-E also offers diesel variants, that is in the cards as well for the future, but the company didn't go into much detail. Polestar appears to be the upcoming shooting star of the performance car world.