Volvo will triple EV output at Belgium plant

Volvo Cars is boosting production of full-electric cars at its plant in Ghent, Belgium.

The company is adding output of a second battery-powered car at the factory in addition to the full-electric XC40 Recharge compact SUV.

The new EV will use the same architecture as the XC40 Recharge. Volvo will provide more details on the model, which is expected to be called the C40, on March 2.

Volvo plans to launch a new full-electric car every year until 2025, when it expects that half of its global sales will be battery-powered models.

Last year the automaker produced 194,890 cars in Ghent, including 6,604 full-electric XC40 Recharge models and 36,905 plug-in hybrid versions of the SUV, according to company figures.

XC40s and V60 midsize station wagons powered by combustion engines accounted for the rest of the production.

Volvo estimates output of full-electric cars at Ghent will triple from 2020 to 2022, at which time full-electric cars will account for about 60 percent of the plant's total production capacity.

"As we continue to electrify our lineup and boost our electric production capacity, Ghent is a real trailblazer for our global manufacturing network," Javier Varela, Volvo's head of global industrial operations and quality, said in a release.

Last year Volvo more than doubled sales of its Recharge line of full-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids to 115,436, up from 45,933 in 2019, according to company figures. The XC40 Recharge accounted for 4,659 of those sales and plug-in hybrid versions of models including its global top-seller, the XC60, for the rest.

As a result, the Recharge family accounted for 17 percent of Volvo's global volume, up from 6.5 percent share in 2019.

That, however, was below the 20 percent share targeted for 2020 by CEO Hakan Samuelsson, who envisions Volvo being an electric-only brand by 2030.

By market region, Recharge models represented 6 percent of Volvo's sales in Asia Pacific, 9 percent in the Americas and 31 percent of its volume in Europe, the company said.

The strong demand for its electrified cars in Europe put Volvo in position to financially benefit from helping its former owner Ford Motor to avoid a fine from the European Union for missing its 2020 CO2 emissions reduction target. Ford  asked to pool its CO2 output with Volvo. Ford owned Volvo from 1999 until it sold the automaker to China's Zhejiang Geely Holding in 2010.

Ford declined to say how much it paid Volvo to join its pool.

Volvo also declined to comment, only saying in a release that the "resulting revenue from the deal will be reinvested in new green technology projects."

Volvo and its subsidiary, Polestar, were on track to be well below their mandated EU CO2 target of 110.3 grams per km for 2020 with a figure of 103.1 g/km after eight months, according to data from market researcher JATO Dynamics.

That was a big improvement on where Volvo was in 2017, when its fleet CO2 was 130 g/km, JATO's figures show.

Volvo aggressive electrification plans include building the battery-driven version of its next-generation XC90 flagship SUV at its U.S. factory starting next year.

In addition, the automaker will start complete production of electric motors at its powertrain plant in Skovde, Sweden, by the mid-2020s. Volvo will invest 700 million crowns ($83 million) at the plant to add e-motor output.