Volvo to sell Chinese-made cars in US this year

The Volvo badge on an all-new V60 is pictured on Aug 3, 2013. [Hao Yan / chinadaily.com.cn]

Exporting Chinese-produced mainstream passenger cars to the United States and other advanced auto markets has been a long-standing goal of China's indigenous automakers – an objective that has largely eluded the industry.

"It would be a big breakthrough" not just for Geely but for China's industry, said James Chao, Asia-Pacific director of consulting and research firm IHS Automotive.

"Volvo is not an indigenous Chinese brand but it is wholly Chinese-owned. Perhaps this is the model or strategy that finally works for Chinese companies trying to enter the US market and other markets."

Chao added Volvo's owner, Geely, could follow Volvo into the US market with its own products, perhaps leveraging Volvo's manufacturing and parts supply chains.

Geely's purchase of Volvo from Ford Motor Co five years ago surprised many in the auto industry, who doubted that a relative newcomer could turn around the nearly 90-year-old Swedish business while protecting its famous brand.

The S60L was developed originally as a China-specific model to cater to wealthy Chinese consumers who prefer cars with bigger, comfortable rear seats because many of these owners have chauffeurs. Volvo expects to ship roughly 1,500 made-in-China S60L cars to the United States this year, compared with the car's projected volume in China this year of 26,000.

The additional car Volvo plans to export to the United States, those executives said, is a flagship large sedan that might be called the S90 which uses Volvo's new vehicle underpinning technology called "scalable platform architecture" or SPA. The S90 will be a second vehicle based on that new architecture, following the redesigned XC90 sport utility vehicle based on the same technology.

Volvo announced in late 2013 that it would produce "a large premium sedan" based on SPA at a new plant in the northeastern Chinese city of Daqing. At Daqing, Volvo began producing in September last year the XC Classic, the previous generation of the redesigned XC90.