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Volvo To Open Battery R&D Center In Gothenburg With Partner Northvolt

Volvo and Northvolt will open a joint research and development center in Gothenburg, Sweden. The center will be tasked with developing new batteries for EVs that deliver on range and charging time expectations while reducing the carbon footprint of the batteries themselves.

The R&D center will become operational in 2022 and the location has been chosen to keep it close to Volvo’s own R&D center as well as Northvolt‘s existing innovation campus in Västerås, Sweden, to ease cooperation.

“Our partnership with Northvolt secures the supply of high-quality, sustainably-produced batteries for the next generation of pure electric Volvos,” said Håkan Samuelsson, chief executive for Volvo Cars. “It will strengthen our core competencies and our position in the transformation to a fully electric car company.”

Volvo says that the partnership will focus on developing “tailor-made” batteries that give buyers long ranges and quick charging times. The automaker wants to collaborate with Northvolt to create an end-to-end system for battery manufacturing to allow it to develop its own batteries. Since batteries are the single largest component of an electric vehicle and the single biggest contributor to their carbon footprint, the development of new technology will be an important area of focus.

The center is being created as part of a SEK30 billion ($3.3 billion) investment in battery development. Batteries developed there will also power Polestar vehicles, which announced this year that it intends to build climate-neutral cars by 2030.

Following the completion of the R&D center, Volvo and Northvolt will build a battery manufacturing plant in Europe. Although the exact location of the site is not yet known, Volvo says it will be announced in early 2022.

The plant will have a potential annual capacity of 50 GWh, enough to supply about 500,000 vehicles, the automaker says. Construction is expected to commence in 2023 and large-scale production should kick off in 2026. Part of Volvo’s commitment to sell only electric vehicles by 2030, the plant and the R&D center are quite important when it comes to the automaker’s plans for the future.

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Bugatti Rimac Is Officially In Business, With An HQ In Croatia And Mate Rimac As The CEO

Four months after the official announcement of the marriage between Bugatti and Rimac, the “Bugatti Rimac” joint company is officially in business, with its headquarters in Sveta Nedelja, Croatia, and Mate Rimac undertaking the CEO role.

Despite the new joint venture, both Bugatti and Rimac will continue “to act as independent brands” retaining their production sites and sales channels. They will keep offering different vehicles, although jointly developed models are planned for the future. Mate Rimac said: “I am very excited to see what impact Bugatti Rimac will have on the industry and how we will develop innovative new hyper sports cars and technologies. It’s hard to find a better combination for new and exciting projects”.

The complex shareholder structure of Bugatti Rimac involves Porsche, Hyundai, Rimac, and other investors.

The Rimac Group holds the majority stake in the new venture with 55 percent of the shares, and Porsche AG is holding the remaining 45 percent. Thus, Mate Rimac, founder and CEO of Rimac Automobili became the CEO of Bugatti Rimac, while the supervisory board includes high-ranked officials from Porsche AG – Oliver Blume (chairman), and CFO Lutz Meschke (deputy chairman, CFO).

Stephan Winkelmann who has been Bugatti’s president since January 2018 and Lamborghini’s president since December 2020, will now focus on the latter role as Chairman and CEO of Automobili Lamborghini. After his term in Bugatti leading to the automaker’s most successful year, Winkelmann said: “I would like to thank the entire Bugatti team and our customers for three and a half unbelievable, exciting, intense and successful years. Together, we have developed fantastic hyper sports cars and led Bugatti into a new dimension”.

Christophe Piochon who was the Managing Director of Production and Logistics at Bugatti, is now the new President and the Chief Operating Officer (COO) in Bugatti Rimac. In his first statement under the new role, he said that Bugatti will keep their independence and continue making handmade vehicles at the Molsheim Atelier in France, securing all jobs in the historic location.

Other changes in the high-ranking positions include Hendrik Malinowski who is the Managing Director responsible for Sales and Marketing in Bugatti, Larissa Fleischer who is leaving Porsche AG to become Chief Financial Officer of Bugatti Rimac, and Emilio Scervo who is Chief Technology Officer of Bugatti Rimac after undertaking similar roles in McLaren and Rimac Automobili.

A total of 435 employees will work for Bugatti Rimac, with 300 located in Zagreb, Croatia, and 135 in Molsheim, France. An additional 180 employees will be working for the joint company from the Wolfsburg development site in Germany.

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This Odd Looking Volvo Is The World’s First Vehicle Made Of Fossil-Free Steel

The Volvo Group unveiled a load carrier designed for use in mining in quarrying that it claims is the first vehicle ever made of steel made using no fossil fuel.

The unveiling follows the automaker’s announcement in June that it would partner with SSAB to source steel made without the use of fossil fuels. The steel is made using hydrogen instead of the carbon-intensive coking coal that is traditionally used in steel production.

Per SSAB, the steel industry accounts for about 7 percent of global direct carbon emissions. That, in turn, accounts for about 35 percent of the CO2 emitted in the manufacturing of Volvo’s internal combustion vehicles or 20 percent for EVs.

“Having the world´s first actual vehicle made using SSAB´s fossil-free steel is a true milestone,” said Martin Lindqvist, President and CEO of SSAB. “Our collaboration with Volvo Group shows that green transition is possible and brings results.”

This is just the first in a series of concept vehicles as Volvo plans to debut more in 2022. The steel will play an important part in reducing Volvo’s carbon emissions, something it has committed to doing, saying that it will be climate neutral by 2040.

“Volvo Group is committed to pioneering partnerships such as this with SSAB to develop attractive, safe, and efficient new vehicles and machines that pave the way for a more sustainable transport and infrastructure system adopted for the future,” said Martin Lundstedt, President and CEO Volvo Group.

Unfortunately, Volvo won’t be able to make production vehicles with the steel for a few years as SSAB anticipates that it will only be ready to produce steel at a commercial scale in 2026. When that happens, it will be joined by Mercedes, which has also signed a deal with SSAB for its steel. The German automaker plans to produce the first prototype body parts using the steel next year.

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GM To Increase Production In Coming Weeks As It Works Around Chip Shortage

General Motors plans to increase shipments of its vehicles over the coming weeks as the pressure of the semiconductor shortage begins to ease.

In its recently-released financial results, GM said its figures for the first half of the year would be “significantly better” than previously forecast, having indicated that profit would fall to about $500 million in the second quarter from more than $3 billion in the first quarter.

Now, GM has confirmed that it will increase production of its heavy-duty pickup trucks at its Flint, Michigan plant in July, increasing output by about 1,000 trucks per month. In addition, various factories will forego typical summer vacation closures to help recover lost production. The New York Times reports that GM will also ship approximately 30,000 midsize pickups to dealers that were originally assembled without select electronic features and kept at the Wentzville, Missouri plant until they could be finished.

“The global semiconductor shortage remains complex and very fluid,” GM’s vice president for North America manufacturing and labor relations Phil Kienle said in a statement. “Customer demand continues to be very strong, and G.M.’s engineering, supply chain and manufacturing teams have done a remarkable job maximizing production of high-demand and capacity-constrained vehicles.”

GM has revealed that it will be able to increase production of the Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra because it has worked out ways to improve efficiency on the Flint production line.

“We were already on production target. But every year we go through productivity improvement,” shop chairman for UAW Local 598 that represents workers at the plant, Eric Welter, told the Detroit Free Press. “We increased line speed and that increase will equal 1,000 more pickups built a month.”

PSA Boss Carlos Tavares Says FCA Merger Is Still On Track

PSA chief executive Carlos Tavares says that his company’s $50 billion merger with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles will go forward as planned and deliver synergies of at least 3.7 billion euros ($4.2 billion).

“The merger with FCA is the best among the solutions to cope with the crisis and its uncertainties,” said the PSA boss, who also stated that this deal has become more vital than ever given the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, reports Autonews Europe.

“The timetable of the merger with FCA is being strictly respected,” he said, while adding that the previously mentioned projected synergies of 3.7 billion euros from the deal were actually the “floor”.

Tavares also played down the EU’s antitrust investigation of his company’s merger, saying that he was confident it would all be finalized in the first quarter of 2021 “at the latest”. Meanwhile, EU antitrust regulators began their four-month investigation into the deal last week, claiming that it could lead to negative ramifications in the small van segment across 14 EU countries and Britain.

Neither PSA nor FCA offered concessions to alleviate these concerns while the issue was still in a preliminary review stage.

The PSA CEO then said that the “time has not come to discuss this issue,” when asked if the terms of the merger could be revised to reflect the downturn of the entire car industry on a global scale.

Still, one aspect of the merger has already been revised. Back in May, the two companies said that they would not pay their planned ordinary dividend on 2019 results, blaming the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.