Volvo unveiled the XC40 EV earlier this week as its first purely electric car, promising to launch 5 more EVs in the next five years.
An interesting trivia has now been reported by the Verge – Volvo engineers had to change course half way through development as Tesla had crashed the party with its high-range Model 3.
When Volvo understood that the Model 3 would have a 300+ mile range, the company decided that they would have to upgrade the battery as Tesla had moved the bar on range and performance for that segment. Elon Musk unveiled the Model 3 in March 2016 to an ecstatic response as over 230,000 Americans put down a deposit in the first few days.
“We decided to go for a bigger size than we originally thought,” Green is quoted saying.
Volvo had to make the tough phone call to its battery suppliers South Korea’s LG Chem and CTAL in China, asking for extra modules to increase the range. “That was not a fun decision,” Green said, “being adamant about quality and everything about producing vehicles, doing that very late in the program was super critical.”
The Volvo XC40 Recharge has a range of over 400 km in the WLTP standard with an output of 408 hp.
[Source – TheVerge.com]
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