2012 Volvo S60 T5 on 2040-cars

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Volvo Cars, Northvolt to build battery plant with 3,000 jobs

Northvolt's new facility in Skelleftea, Sweden.   STOCKHOLM — Automaker Volvo Cars and battery manufacturer Northvolt will build their joint battery plant in Gothenburg, western Sweden, the two companies said on Friday. The new 50-gigawatt-hour (GWh) plant will create up to 3,000 jobs and make battery cells specifically developed for use in pure electric Volvo and Polestar cars, the Sweden-based companies said. Operations will begin in 2025. The two companies said last year they would form a joint venture to develop batteries, including setting up a gigafactory for production and a research and development centre, a total investment of about 30 billion crowns ($3.3 billion). Northvolt and Volvo said former Tesla executive Adrian Clarke had been appointed to lead the production company. "He comes with a long experience from Tesla as well as around how to build these type of factories," Northvolt CEO Peter Carlsson, who also previously worked for Tesla, told Reuters. Volvo Cars head of engineering and operations, Javier Varela, said access to fossil-free energy, skills and infrastructure had been factors for choosing Gothenburg, Volvo's hometown. Competition for talent is fierce, with most battery engineers based in Asia. Tesla and Asian companies such as LG and Samsung SDI are also setting up factories in Europe. Northvolt's gigafactory in the Swedish town of Skelleftea assembled its first battery cell at the end of December, making it the first European company to design and manufacture a battery in Europe. Carlsson said it was running as planned, although he said global supply-chain problems, semiconductor shortages and the COVID-19 had made it more of a challenge. "It has not been the easiest of times," he said. Volvo Cars, majority owned by China's Geely Holding, aims to sell 50% pure electric cars by the middle of this decade and fully electric cars only by 2030. Northvolt, whose biggest shareholder is Volkswagen, has so far receive more than $30 billion worth of contracts from customers such as BMW, Fluence, Scania, Volkswagen, Volvo Cars and Polestar.  

Junkyard Gem: 1969 Volvo 145 Wagon

Volvo managed to sell the 1940s-design PV544 and its 1950s-design Amazon descendant all the way into the mid-to-late 1960s in the United States, but those iconic machines were replaced here by one that began a line of even more iconic Volvos: the 140 Series. Starting with the 1968 model year, the 140 became available in the United States as a two-door sedan (the 142), a four-door sedan (the 144 and 164), and a station wagon (the 145). These rear-wheel-drive, brick-shaped cars later evolved into the 200 Series and its heirs, with the very last of the breed appearing here in the form of the 1998 S90/V90. That's a lot of history all wrapped up in one vehicle, and so I was pleased to find this 145 in a Denver-area car graveyard earlier this month. This car rolled out of Goteborg with a gleaming coat of Morkgron (dark green) paint and, according to this build tag, was built to California specifications. At some point, it made its way to Colorado. Very few US-market cars had six-digit odometers prior to the middle 1980s, but Volvo felt optimistic about their cars' longevity (at a time when reaching the magical 100,000-mile mark was something that rarely happened with non-Mercedes-Benz vehicles) and so now we can see that this car made it well past 200k miles. The 2.0-liter pushrod four-cylinder engine in this car can trace its ancestry back to the Amazons, P1800s, and PV544s of the early 1960s, and it was rated at 115 horsepower. A six-cylinder version of the 140 sedan, known as the 164, could be purchased here as well (though it had few American takers). But wait— what's that Detroit-looking two-barrel carburetor doing on an engine that's supposed to have a Stromberg 175? Yes, it's a GM-spec Rochester clone built at the ancient Bay City Plant (now known as GM Powertrain) in Michigan. Earlier Volvos came with a pair of British-made Skinner Union sidedrafts, which could be pretty painful to keep working right, but perhaps even the less-oddball Stromberg proved too much hassle for whoever installed this carb (which was meant to go on engines with much more displacement than a Volvo B20). Transmission choices in the 1969 140: a four-on-the-floor manual or a three-speed automatic. This car has the manual. The interior is pretty thrashed, as is usually the case with the 140s I find during my junkyard explorations.

Volvo's pedestrian airbags may already be on their way out

As proof of just how quickly automotive technology can advance, just check out the Volvo V40. Developed with an external airbag aimed at better protecting pedestrians in the event of a collision, this innovative safety device could be phased out soon in place of more advanced active safety technologies like pedestrian detection and auto braking.
Go Auto had a chance to talk to Volvo senior VP Lex Kerssmakers at the Tokyo Motor Show, and he suggested that the V40's under-hood airbag will not be used on the next-gen XC90 and might not even be continued on non-SUV models. The passive airbag was designed to deploy at speeds of less than 31 miles per hour to help limit head injuries to pedestrians, but new active technologies are designed to prevent collisions in the first place.
The interview also reveals some details about the new XC90, such as the inclusion of a plug-in hybrid system and the debut of a new safety technology. Kerssmakers told Go Auto that a new Volvo concept will be unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show in January, but it won't be for the XC90.