Volvo Cars sold 571,577 vehicles in 2017 — a record number that was 7% larger than the 2016 total, driven by growth in all regions.
Sales of the new XC60 and the 90-series cars were particularly buoyant, highlighting the effect of the group’s in-house developed Scalable Product Architecture (a modular vehicle architecture) “in terms of design, technology and brand”.
In the Asia Pacific region, sales grew by 20.9% on the back of a record performance in China, Volvo’s largest market, where sales increased by 25.8% compared with 2016.
Meanwhile sales in Europe, the Middle East and Africa grew by 3.3% in 2017 compared to 2016, while sales in the Americas grew by 0.7%.
Last year, Volvo Cars announced that it would place electrification at the core of its future business and stated that every car it launches from 2019 will have an electric motor (hybrids will still have an internal combustion engine).
In a further commitment to electrification, Volvo also launched Polestar, a new stand-alone electric-car brand within the group.
During the course of the year, Volvo Cars also deepened its partnership with Geely Holding by creating a joint-venture technology company to provide the economies of scale that will allow the more-rapid development of next-generation electric-vehicle technology.
Volvo Cars also continued to build a new manufacturing plant in South Carolina — its first in the USA.
The company said the plant would, in addition to the upcoming S60 mid-size saloon, build the next-generation XC90 from 2021.
The company’s total investment in its US manufacturing operations stands at over $1.1 billion and will see almost 4,000 jobs created at the Charleston site.
Furthermore, late last year, Volvo Cars opened up an entirely new market, as it signed a framework agreement with Uber to sell tens of thousands of cars compatible with autonomous driving to the ride-hailing company between 2019 and 2021.
Volvo Cars, which has been owned by Zhejiang Geely Holding (Geely Holding) of China since 2010, had over 31,000 employees world-wide at the end of 2016.
The company’s head office is in Gothenburg, Sweden, while its head office for China is in Shanghai.
Its main car production plants are located in Gothenburg, Ghent (Belgium), Chengdu and Daqing (China), while engines are manufactured in Skövde (Sweden) and Zhangjiakou (China); body components are manufactured in Olofström (Sweden).