Staff Reporter
Volvo’s much-anticipated XC40 small SUV was officially launched at the Tourism Expo in Windhoek last night. According to local Volvo salespersons this means that the XC40 is now available on the local market and prospective customers have been invited to test drive the award-winning vehicle as of next week Monday. However, due to overwhelming demand and because Volvo allows the choice of specifications of their new vehicle, a customer is expected to wait between three and four months before the XC40 can be parked in their garage.
In fact, the demand for the XC40 is so huge that globally the company has received almost 80 000 orders for the new small SUV and is thus expanding production in Europe and China in order to meet demand.
Volvo have confirmed that production will be expanded at its Ghent manufacturing plant and Volvo Cars will add XC40 production capacity at its Luqiao plant in China in the first half of next year, underlining the popularity of this year’s European Car of the Year.
In addition, the company has also recently announced that it will capitalise on the popularity of its new smaller models with the introduction of new models on its Compact Modular Architecture (CMA), replacing the current V40.
“The XC40’s success has surpassed even our highest expectations,” said Håkan Samuelsson, president and CEO of Volvo Cars. “The small SUV segment is the fastest-growing segment in the industry now, and with these additional CMA-based models we expect to benefit further from that growth.”
The coming new models based on CMA will include fully electric vehicles and will be sold globally in all major regions. More product details will be disclosed at a later stage.
The XC40 was launched in late 2017 to global acclaim and was the first-ever Volvo to win European Car of the Year in March of this year.
The new XC40 is the first model on Volvo Cars’ new CMA vehicle architecture. Co-developed with Geely Holding, CMA provides Volvo Cars with the necessary economies of scale for this segment.
In March, Volvo Cars announced it will produce cars for its new sister brand Lynk & Co at the Ghent plant. Like the XC40, the first Lynk & Co model is based on CMA.
In neighbouring South Africa, the XC40 is following the global trend of high demand. According to Volvo Car South Africa MD, Greg Maruszewski; “Our initial allocation of 350 vehicles sold out before many even arrived in the country, so we have increased our XC40 volume to 700 units for the year. The XC40 is making a big impact in the local SUV segment.”