Volvo's next electric SUV, the EX60, to debut most advanced architecture

GOTHENBURG, Sweden — Volvo's next electric crossover, the midsize EX60, will ride on the automaker's new SPA3 platform when it arrives in the U.S. and Europe in 2026.

At an event Sept. 5, Volvo revealed the third generation of its modular scalable platform architecture, or SPA3, which the company said is its most advanced.

SPA3 is an evolution of the platform that underpins the new EX90 electric crossover and the planned ES90 electric sedan. The EX90 platform, called SPA2, enables Volvo to build future models of all sizes quickly and for less money.

SPA3 vehicles will be powered by Volvo's next generation, in-house developed e-motors. The automaker said it is aiming for 93 percent efficiency with the new motors, up from 85 percent in its first EVs and 91 percent now.
 
SPA 3 models will have higher-density battery cells that deliver a longer range. The battery pack in will be part of the SPA3-based vehicles' body structure, reducing weight, cost and creating more interior space.

SPA3 models also will share batteries, computers, even production processes such as megacasting and modular manufacturing, squeezing out cost and complexity in vehicle development.

Volvo expects to see an eight-to-10 percentage point increase in gross margins with SPA3 EVs versus first-generations EVs such as the EX40 and EC40 (sold as the XC40 Recharge and C40 Recharge in the U.S.) that are underpinned by the compact modular architecture (CMA).

"A lot of the components, a lot of the intelligence and a lot of engineering work that we do for SPA2 can be dropped into SPA3," Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan told Automotive News Europe in December.

"It means we don't need to change everything," Rowan said. "We can reuse large parts of that existing architecture, put in a higher computational chipset, put in slightly different software, upgrade it from 400 to 800 volts and so on."

According to AutoForecast Solutions, EX60 production begins in Torslanda, Sweden, in February 2026.

The EX60 will be sibling to the XC60, which is Volvo's global best-seller. Volvo said that the XC60 as well as its full range of cars with mild hybrid and plug-in hybrid powertrains will continue to be built beyond 2030, a change in strategy for the company that previously said it would be an electric-only brand by 2030.

New approach

The ES90, EX60 and three future models will be based on Volvo Cars' “superset” tech stack — a combination of core technology.

Volvo compared the unified technology and software base to a set of building blocks that can be configured differently depending on the vehicle type and capabilities.

The tech stack "allows all of our engineering effort to be channeled into one single direction that powers all our products, instead of working on specific car projects," Anders Bell, Volvo Cars' chief engineering and technology officer, said in a statement on Sept. 5. "Our engineers will work on one superset, constantly improving, growing and expanding its capabilities and features. This allows for dramatically improved quality, increased speed-to-market and continually better cars for our customers."

Volvo will upgrade future models to Nvidia's Drive Thor system. The next-generation centralized car computer is capable of more than 1,000 trillion operations per second, or four times that of Nvidia's Drive Orin system that powers the EX90's core computing system.

Volvo said the increased computing capacity will help enable autonomous driving and introduce generative artificial intelligence-based in-vehicle experiences.   

Douglas A. Bolduc contributed reporting