Volvo Group Makes Business Area Devoted to Hastening Electrification

The Volvo Group’s offer of electric cars and machines varies from city busses and trucks for waste disposal, building, and urban delivery to small excavators and loaders.

FREMONT, CA: Volvo Energy’s latest business field will boost the Volvo Group’s life-cycle battery business flow as well as the customer’s charging infrastructure package. Around the same time, the environmental effects of diesel and hybrid electric passenger cars and machinery can be minimized by giving the discarded batteries a second life in various applications.

The Volvo Group’s offer of electric cars and machines varies from city busses and trucks for waste disposal, building, and urban delivery to small excavators and loaders. The roll-out of additional electric vehicles and associated facilities will begin at a fast speed and, later this year will also include, for example, heavy-duty trucks for rural transport or manufacturing.

“There is a great and growing interest for electric vehicles and machines among our customers. This is of course very positive as it accelerates the transition towards more sustainable transport solutions. Our ambition is to offer our customers the most competitive solutions when it comes to electrification, including batteries and charging infrastructure. With Volvo Energy, we are taking a holistic view of the entire life cycle, which benefits both our customers’ business and society as a whole”, says Martin Lundstedt, President and CEO, Volvo Group.

Volvo Energy will be a business area of full gains and loss of liability. It will have both an internal role, supplying batteries and charging solutions to other market areas of the Volvo Group, and an external role, offering used, remanufactured, and refurbished batteries to consumers for use in various applications. Volvo Energy will now be responsible for hydrogen storage solutions for fuel cell electric vehicles.

Commercial vehicle batteries can be installed in the vehicle for several years until they need to be replaced or remanufactured, or refurbished. However, suppose the vehicle is equipped with brand new batteries. In that case, the used ones will usually have a long life to give, making them suitable for energy conservation applications in homes, for example, or developing renewable energy. Therefore, the reuse of these batteries ensures the renewable resources are conserved.

“With Volvo Energy, we are further increasing our focus on this important area. We are also giving vehicle batteries a second life, which is both a business opportunity and a way to contribute to the creation of a circular economy and a fossil free society”, says Lundstedt.

Oachim Rosenberg, a member of the Volvo Group Executive Board and Chairman of UD Trucks, will lead the new business field. Starting in February 2021, he will lead the initiative to build Volvo Energy while operating UD Trucks and plan for the transition of ownership of UD Trucks to Isuzu Motors as part of a previously communicated strategic partnership between the Volvo Group and Isuzu Motors.