Malaysia Is Volvo's Only PHEV Competency Centre Outside Sweden

Exports of Volvo Cars from Malaysia to Taiwan are underway, making it the only major automotive brand other than Proton and Perodua to export Malaysian-built cars beyond the ASEAN region. The range of models being shipped to the island republic currently consist of regular combustion engine models, but they will be soon be joined by the T8 plug-in hybrid variants of the XC90 and S90.

At present, Volvo is already exporting cars from Malaysia to Thailand for six years, with the XC90 T8 among models being shipped to the kingdom and set to be joined by the S90 T8 as well.

The decision to assemble the XC90 T8 and S90 T8 in Malaysia is of huge significance. The Shah Alam plant is now Volvo’s only core competency centre for PHEVs outside of Sweden. No other Volvo plant in the world exports PHEVs.

Volvo also manufactures PHEVs in China, but it is the S60 PHEV, now a previous-generation product relative to the new SPA range, and the cars are made exclusively for domestic consumption in the People’s Republic.

It was already reported earlier that Volvo Cars have plans to grow its export business from Malaysia to markets such as Indonesia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Taiwan. Future plans for exports to Laos and Cambodia are being explored as well. The company projects to hit an annual export volume of 5,000 cars within the next few years.

Volvo’s Shah Alam plant is the oldest automotive plant operating in Malaysia, having started off in 1967. The company had earlier spent RM 20 million to upgrade the facility to bring it in line with its latest production standards, readying it for production Volvo’s upcoming generation of vehicles underpinned by the Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) platform.

Moving forward, Volvo Cars has committed to ensure that the full Volvo model range will be electrified to some degree or another by 2019, meaning by then, every new Volvo in the showroom, will have some form of an electric motor contributing to its motion.