Volvo says the EX60 is a game changer, which is what car companies say when they want a press release to sound as though Moses has just come down the mountain with a charge cable, yet there is enough substance here to stop the whole thing drifting off on a cloud of Scandinavian incense.
The EX60 has entered production at Torslanda, just outside Gothenburg, and Volvo has already decided to build more of them in 2026 because early European demand came in well ahead of forecasts. That is the bit which matters. Not the mood music. Not the corporate throat-clearing. The bit where customers have started waving money around before summer deliveries even begin.
Volvo is also making a patriotic meal of it, which is fair enough. This is the first fully electric car the company says was designed, developed, and built in Sweden, and it is being pitched not only as a new model, but as an industrial statement. Gothenburg gets the jobs, Western Sweden gets the halo, and the export story gets another glossy chapter with a battery pack bolted underneath.
There is, of course, a touch of theatre in all this. Carmakers adore words like transformation, ambition, and milestone because they make ordinary factory news sound like the opening of a royal pavilion. Still, a plant does not stay open for an extra summer week on applause alone. Volvo says orders in Sweden, Germany, and the wider European book ran ahead of internal expectations, which is a rather more convincing endorsement than another executive promising the future while standing in front of a blue-lit stage wall.
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ABOVE: EX60 production begins in Sweden.
The numbers are suitably juicy
Volvo is claiming up to 503 miles of range, a 10 to 80% charging time of 16 minutes, and pricing pitched against the XC60 plug-in hybrid. Read in one go, that sounds rather like someone in Gothenburg finally worked out that electrification does not need to come wrapped in punishment. Buyers still want the familiar shape of a mid-size SUV, they still want a number on the range chart big enough to silence the family group chat, and they still want to feel as though the whole affair is vaguely sane.
If those figures hold up outside the warm embrace of official test conditions, the EX60 could be a very tidy bit of business. Volvo has not exactly been asleep, though it has occasionally looked as if it were composing thoughtful poetry while the Chinese arrived with sharpened pencils and open cheque books. The EX60 feels more like an answer than an experiment, which is exactly where it needs to be.
Torslanda has had a proper makeover
The Torslanda plant has been reworked with around SEK 10 billion in investment, which bought Volvo mega casting, a new battery assembly plant, a refurbished paint shop, and fresh final assembly lines. That is not a quick lick of Dulux and a management presentation. It is serious money, spent because the company believes the EX60 will earn it back.
Volvo also says the site may stay open for an extra week this summer, something it claims would be a first. That is the sort of detail I like. It is small, specific, and impossible to fake with a slogan. Plants either build cars or they do not. If Torslanda is being stretched because demand is there, then the EX60 has begun life with a little more swagger than the average solemn electric launch.
The small print is where the halo slips
Naturally, the fine print arrives with a bucket of cold water. The 503-mile figure is preliminary, based on WLTP, and charging times depend on everything from battery condition to weather to the mood of the charging hardware. Such is modern motoring. You are sold a miracle, then handed a footnote. That does not make the EX60 any less interesting, but it does mean the grown-ups should keep one eyebrow raised until independent numbers start rolling in.
Even so, this is one of the more important Volvo launches in years. The company needs a volume electric SUV with proper reach, sensible packaging, and enough polish to stop buyers wandering off to BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Kia, or whichever Chinese upstart has decided this week to ruin the margins of Europe’s old guard. If the EX60 can do what Volvo says it will, then the company may finally have a mainstream electric hero instead of another worthy chapter in the long gospel of almost.
Production has started, the order books look healthy, and Torslanda is humming away with that clean Swedish confidence premium brands love to bottle and sell back to us. Now comes the interesting part. Volvo has told the world the EX60 is a game changer. Soon enough, drivers will decide whether it changes the game, or simply joins the queue of electric SUVs asking to be taken terribly seriously.
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Alan Zurvas is the founder and editor of Gay Car Boys, Australia's leading LGBTQI+ automotive publication. Before launching GCB in 2008, Alan's automotive writing was published in SameSame.com.au and the Star Observer. With over 16 years of hands-on car reviewing experience, Alan brings an honest, irreverent voice to every review — championing value and innovation over brand loyalty.
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