Last week, Volvo announced that will be building a factory in South Carolina that will go online in 2018 and build 100,000 vehicles per year. Quite ambitious considering the brand only sold 56,366 vehicles in the U.S. last year. But the plant is part of a new comeback plan for Volvo.
"We have reinvented ourselves and we believe it now makes sense to go on the attack again in the United States," said Lex Kerssemakers, CEO of Volvo Cars of North America.
Now you might be scratching your head, wondering how a plant that will build more cars than Volvo actually sells at the moment will help the automaker. Well there is precedent with this decision. Both BMW and Mercedes-Benz built plants in anticipation of future growth almost two decades ago and it has worked like a charm.
But for this happen, Volvo also needs some new products and tech to pull this off. Well the company is rolling out its brand new XC90 crossover and their Drive-E engine lineup.
"All the planets are aligning for Volvo right now. They have wanted a bigger U.S. manufacturing presence for a long time. Now they have the investment and the future product lineup, and the U.S. market is expanding to support it," said Michael Robinet, managing director of IHS Automotive.
Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)
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