Volvo Aims To Make Its New Cars In Just 20 Months

Once its new modular platforms are implemented, Volvo thinks it can develop new cars in roughly half the time it used to, and even sooner than bigger automakers can.

Speaking to AutoNews at the Geneva Motor Show, Peter Mertens, Volvo Cars’ head of R&D, said once the replacement for the current Volvo V40 comes, all of the company’s cars will take 20 months to develop. The V40 that’s on sale now (everywhere but North America) took 42 months to develop, Mertens said, and Toyota and Mazda take about 26 months to make a car – and those companies are fairly nimble by auto industry standards.

Volvo is cutting down to just two basic platforms, the SPA – which debuts on the 2016 Volvo XC90 and is basically going to underpin replacements for all of the current Volvos except for the V40 – and the CMA. That’s the compact platform being co-developed with Volvo parent Geely and is set to be the basis for entry-level cars from the Swedish brand and a new compact model for the Chinese brand.

While more modular architectures are going to enable automakers to change models faster and with less expense, Volvo is making a big claim here about cutting the time it takes to make a new car. By doing this, it can shorten model life cycles and possibly prevent itself from keeping cars on the market for 10 or 12 years without a complete redesign, as it’s done in the past.

And for a relatively small automaker, that’s an important step in competing with the large companies.