By Staff Reporter

olvo Cars starts production of its award-winning XC40 in Luqiao, China to meet growing demand for the company’s first small premium SUV. The manufacturing plant in Luqiao south of Shanghai is owned by Geely and operated by Volvo Cars. Until now Volvo Cars’ Ghent plant in Belgium has been the sole production site for the XC40 which has sold over 100,000 units globally already.

The Volvo XC40 is also popular locally having sold the first batch of vehicles before the cars actually reached South Africa. With some length waiting periods on certain derivatives of the XC40, this move bodes well for Volvo Car South Africa with MD of the company, Greg Maruszewski, confirming that, “Building the XC40 in Luqiao creates extra capacity and adds flexibility to our global manufacturing network.”

The Luqiao plant already builds the 01 SUV sold by Lynk & Co, Volvo’s sister brand which it co-owns with Geely. Polestar, the electric performance brand co-owned by Volvo Cars and Geely, announced this week it will build the fully electric Polestar 2 fastback in Luqiao as of next year.

This means that the Luqiao plant will soon build three models of three different brands within the wider Volvo Car Group on a single production line. The Volvo XC40, Lynk & Co 01 and Polestar 2 are all based on the Compact Modular Architecture (CMA), co-developed with Geely.