Late last year, Volvo Cars announced that production of its S90 sedan was set to be moved from Europe to China, with plans to make China its “global manufacturing and export hub”.
And now the South African arm of the Swedish automaker has revealed that SA-spec S90 models will be sourced directly from China starting in “the latter half of 2017”.
The S90, which runs on the brand’s Scalable Product Architecture (SPA), is now being produced at the Geely-owned automaker’s plant in Daqing, Heilongjiang province, in northern China.
It’s from this same Daqing plant that Volvo will export China-built cars to Europe by train – a first for the industry – via China’s new “One Belt, One Road” trade initiative. The Swedish brand says the connection brings down the time it takes to transport vehicles to Europe by two thirds compared with the naval route, meaning customers receive their cars faster after placing their orders.
Meanwhile, the brand’s upcoming 60-series, SPA-based cars will be built at its plant in Chengdu, Szechuan province, in Western China, with the planned 40-series smaller cars, based on the new Compact Modular Architecture (CMA), set to be produced at a plant in Luqiao, 350 km south of Shanghai.
Last year, Volvo said that its Gothenburg plant would continue to build the XC90, V90 and V90 Cross Country as well as some 60-series, SPA-based models, while the plant in Ghent, Belgium, would eventually become a CMA-exclusive production facility.
Volvo will also make SPA-based vehicles for the US market (and for export) at a new plant in South Carolina.
