A recent trademark request suggests Volvo’s small electric SUV could be called EX30.
Volvo’s current all-electric line up consists of two models – the XC40 Recharge and its C40 coupe-SUV alternative. Despite this, Volvo expects 10 per cent of its sales in 2022 to be fully-electric, with the Swedish firm looking to become purely electric by 2030.
Within its electrification plan, Volvo is looking to add a new electric SUV to sit underneath the XC40 Recharge. Volvo’s CEO Hakan Samuelsson had previously said Volvo will move its nomenclature from the traditional codenames to proper names. However, recent trademark requests suggest the new baby SUV could be named EX30 with the ‘E’ standing for electrification, ‘X’ for SUV and ‘30’ representing the smallest model in Volvo’s range.
The Swedish brand’s CEO Hakan Samuelsson has already confirmed that the new model will feature an SUV body style and be based on a pure-electric platform developed by Volvo’s owner, Chinese conglomerate Geely. Volvo itself has already teased the new car, including it in a model line-up image shown at a presentation last year, and the model is expected to play a major role in the company’s ambition to increase sales from around 800,000 units per year to 1.2 million by 2025.
Volvo has said the new ‘EX30’ SUV EV would follow the upcoming EX90, which itself will be an all-electric successor to the XC90. Samuelsson has spoken on the baby SUV’s launch date, saying, “We’ve said the next new electric car is really the successor of our SUV flagship, after that there will be a smaller SUV, and that’s what we’re talking about here. It’s very likely it will be made in China, yes.”
Rather than use the CMA platform currently shared between Volvo and Geely, underpinning the new Volvo SUV could be Geely’s Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA), which will also be used by Volvo’s Polestar sub-brand in the future. SEA is a modular platform, meaning it can accommodate a range of vehicle sizes, from large SUVs like the EX90 and Polestar. The smallest version (SEA-E, ‘E’ standing for “entry”), is already used on the new Smart #1 – a car that should rival Volvo’s new small SUV.
In the Smart #1, there’s a maximum range of 440km on a single charge and the 150kW recharge rate allows a 10 to 80 per cent top up of its 66kW battery. The Volvo SUV is a few years off, so we could see it improve on those figures when it’s released.
Alastair Crooks