Volvo to build electric cars with Tesla-style “gigapresses”
Idra broke the news on social media and announced that Volvo Cars had ordered two 9,000-tonne Giga presses for its new car plant in Kosice, Slovakia. Reportedly, this will be a pure electric car plant with a targeted annual capacity of 250,000 electric cars per year once it goes live in 2026.
Gigapresses have become popular among carmakers since Tesla introduced the same machines to make large single pieces of vehicle underbodies and reduce the work of even robots. Also, in China, casting machines are being used.
Geely-owned Volvo Cars is not the only company looking into it for their operations in Europe and the USA. According to a report by Reuters, Ford and Hyundai have also reached for Idra’s Giga presses. Reporters saw a ‘gigapress 6,100’, which produces a clamping force of over 6,000 tons, with the Ford logo imprinted, being tested in Idra’s plant in Travalgiato, near Brescia, northern Italy, during an industry event organised by the company this week.
Another 9,000 model without a logo was also tested at the same event. A source close to the matter told Reuters it would be shipped to the Hyundai group, adding that both Hyundai and Ford would initially use these only for R&D purposes.
At Tesla, the strongest gigapress will help form the Cybertruck. The company otherwise uses the 6,000-ton version to press parts of the Model Y body.
Volvo Cars has yet to confirm models to be built in Slovakia. What is clear is that the plant will manufacture vehicles on the advanced Scalable Product Architecture 2, a purely electric platform, in contrast to the SPA used since 2014.
The all-electric Volvo XC90 and Polestar 3 will use the SPA2 platform, and it is likely that European production of these two models will be in Slovakia. If the XC90 successor and the Polestar 3 are produced exclusively in the USA for the world markets, Slovakia could, for example, build the electric successor to Volvo’s best-selling XC60.
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