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Volvo aiming for a stock IPO by the end of 2021

Volvo Cars is "making good progress" toward a potential initial public offering by the end of this year, the chief executive of the Swedish premium auto brand told Reuters on Wednesday. "We are looking at the possibility of doing an IPO before the end of the year," listing shares on the Nasdaq Stockholm exchange, company CEO Hakan Samuelsson said in an interview. Samuelsson and other Volvo executives on Wednesday laid out an extensive road map to becoming a fully electric car maker by 2030, including plans to sell 600,000 battery electric vehicles at mid-decade and build a European battery gigafactory in 2026. Volvo earlier this year scrapped a proposed merger with the company's Chinese parent, Hong Kong-listed Geely Automobile. In March, Geely said Volvo would explore capital market options, including an initial public offering and stock market listing. Many startups have gone public in the United States and China over the past two years, following electric vehicle market leader Tesla Inc in taking advantage of investor enthusiasm to raise cheap capital to compete with established brands such as Volvo. Samuelsson said Volvo and Geely will continue to share vehicle architectures, internal combustion powertrains and other components. But the companies will do so at "an arm's length distance," consistent with the way independent companies do business, he said. During Wednesday's briefing, Volvo also said it plans to equip many of its future vehicles with self-driving technology, including standard lidar sensors from Luminar Technologies Inc and computers from Nvidia Corp. "Our goal is to build the safest cars possible, using all available technology," Samuelsson said. As it launches new electric vehicles, Volvo also plans a slew of related products, including insurance and vehicle subscription payment plans offered directly by the automaker, Samuelsson said. "The whole vehicle business will be recurring revenue," Samuelsson said. In Europe, the company plans to change its retail operations so that customers order new electric vehicles directly from the manufacturer, with dealers paid commissions to deliver them, Samuelsson said. In the United States, where laws protect existing dealers, Volvo will still sell vehicles through franchised retailers. For its future electric vehicles, Volvo is working with Swedish partner Northvolt on a new generation of batteries with higher energy and designed to be packaged as a structural element of the vehicle.

Volvo Polestar reveals new V8 Supercars engine

Volvo may be better known for turbo fives and inline fours, but in 2005 it launched the XC90 with a new eight-cylinder engine built for it by Yamaha. Fast forward to this past June when Volvo announced its intention to enter Australia's V8 Supercars series, where it would compete with the likes of Ford, Holden, Nissan and Mercedes-AMG. This is the engine with which it intends to do so.
Revealed this weekend at the Sydney 500, this competition-spec powerplant is based on the same B8444S that powered the XC90 and S80 (not to mention the Noble M600), but tuned for racing duty to be shoehorned into the new S60 touring car. The 60-degree aluminum block has been bored out from 4.4 liters to 5.0, its compression ratio boosted to 10:1, modified to run on E85 bio-ethanol and its redline increased to 7500 rpm. Volvo also promises a unique engine note from its new racers.
While Volvo and its racing partner Polestar haven't released official output numbers, regulations call for outputs between 620 and 650 horsepower - in any event, a whole lot more than the 311 hp it produces in stock form. (Noble managed to squeeze that much out of the same block, but that required twin turbochargers while this unit remains naturally aspirated.) Scope out the details in the press release below and the photos from the reveal in the gallery above.

Volvo, Polestar reportedly planning twin city-friendly electric SUVs

Volvo is nearly ready to unveil the next generation of the XC90, its flagship model, but it's not forgetting about the other end of its range. It's reportedly planning to launch an entry-level model that will take the form of a pocket-sized crossover powered by an electric drivetrain. Without citing sources, British magazine Autocar reported that the model will ride on a modular platform developed by Volvo parent company Geely and called SEA internally. This architecture already underpins the 001 sold by Zeekr, which is another brand in the Geely empire. No technical specifications are available at this point, but the report sketches the outline of a high-riding model with a sleek-looking silhouette. This isn't the first time we've heard about Volvo's city-friendly SUV; earlier rumors claimed it would be called XC20 or C20, names that would have clearly signaled the model's positioning as being below the 40-badged cars. Volvo is moving away from this naming system, however, and the cars it will launch in the coming years will receive actual names. With that said, both the XC20 and the C20 names are off the table. Polestar's take on the concept of an electric entry-level crossover will be positioned between the 2 and the 3, though it will somewhat confusingly be called 4. It sounds like the model will be bigger and more expensive than Volvo's, and Autocar learned that it could be closely related to the C40 Recharge (pictured) underneath the sheetmetal. If that's accurate, it will share its CMA architecture with the 2, among other models, and it will be offered with either a single electric motor that zaps the front wheels or dual-motor all-wheel-drive. Both EVs will have at least one thing in common: a mission to boost sales. For Volvo, launching a battery-powered car pegged near the bottom of its range will increase the percentage of EVs in its global sales mix. It's planning to cross the 50% mark by 2025. For Polestar, entering cheaper segments will allow it to boost its annual sales by reaching less affluent buyers, though it will remain a premium brand. Polestar 4 is tentatively due out in 2023. There's no word on when Volvo will release its smallest EV to date.