Volvo inizia a fare l’EX30 in Europa

Volvo’s EX30 has been one of the best-selling EVs in Europe in 2024, but since it was made in China it was impacted by the EU’s supplementary tariffs on Chinese EVs.

That’s all in the past however, as today Volvo has started production of the EX30 at its plant in Ghent, Belgium. The addition of the EX30 at the Ghent facility will result in around 350 new jobs, bringing the plant’s total to almost 6,600 people.

To make the EX30’s production possible in Ghent, Volvo invested around €200 million for the addition of a completely new car platform, 600 new or refurbished robots, an extension of the battery hall, a new door production line, as well as a new battery pack assembly line.

Between the Ghent, Belgium, and Torslanda, Sweden plants, Volvo now makes 10 different electric and hybrid car models in Europe.

Volvo’s Ghent facility opened in 1965 and is “the only remaining fully developed car factory in Belgium”, Volvo says. The company also has a third European plant under construction in Slovakia.

Even before the tariffs Volvo worked on a strategy they call “build where we sell”, tariffs and geopolitical hurdles sped up the timeline. Moving things around takes time, but this was planned beforehand. They have production in Sweden, Belgium, United States and China. In addition, they are building their first new assembly plant in Europe since Belgium, this time in Slovakia. That factory is currently being built and will go online by end of next year (is the goal). At the same time, they are making big upgrades to the Swedish plant in anticipation of the next generation EVs built on the new SPA3-platform, to be unveiled later this year.

In Europe there will be a sort of hierarchy. Swedish plant will produce the higher end models. Belgian plant will produce the mid-tier models, and the Slovakian plant will produce the lower end models. In addition, they have production in the US and in China that will produce the specific models that are deemed extra popular in those regions, such as the big EX90 SUV in the US, or the full-size luxury sedan (ES90) in China.

Car manufacturing is a global business and I have to say that Volvo’s strategy makes a whole lot of sense when you think about it.

What was special about the EX30 is that they did not expect it to be so popular in the EU. That is why they added additional manufacturing to Europe. The EX30 thus became one of those edge cases like the EX90 in the US and the ES90 in China.

How can companies produce locally without Tariffs, did Europe say thank you to Volvo?

Volvo is now the only car manufacturer with a factory in Belgium after Renault, Opel and Audi left so this is good news!

Great! Now make it smaller. Stop these stupid SUVs we are good with pandas 4×4 in the most extreme cases