Chimney Sweep in Ridgeville, SC

Volvo Cars will begin building its most popular vehicle, the XC60 midsize SUV, at its Ridgeville facility in late 2026, following the U.S. tariffs on imported cars and electric vehicles.

According to a press release from Volvo Cars, the addition of this model to their South Carolina production line will be used “to increase the utilization of its Charleston plant and to reduce the effects of import tariffs.”

President Donald Trump has announced a host of tariffs on all manner of products and materials in recent months, which has thrown global trade into disarray and led to price increases for some products bought in the U.S.

The changes in global trade have driven a transformation in automobile operations, with the transition at Volvo’s South Carolina facility representing a key milestone in its U.S. strategy and offering a significant boost to the state’s automotive manufacturing sector.

Located just outside of Charleston, this production shift brings Volvo’s bestselling model to American soil for the first time.

Volvo states the XC60 is currently the best-selling Volvo model in the U.S., accounting for over 33% of sales so far in 2025.

The company also anticipates that the addition of this model will help ramp up output at its plant in Berkeley County, which can produce 150,000 vehicles per year, as well as help stabilize operations and expand its local footprint.

“Adding the XC60 to our Charleston production line will further strengthen its position and attractiveness in the competitive U.S. market, while supporting and creating American manufacturing jobs,” said Hakan Samuelsson, CEO of Volvo Cars, in a statement.

Currently manufactured in Sweden and China, the XC60 will join the all-electric EX90 and the Polestar 3 SUV on the South Carolina production line.

Both are already assembled at the facility, which Volvo opened in 2015 after receiving more than $200 million in state and local incentives.

Volvo officials said the decision aligns with the company’s long-held “build where we sell” strategy, which has become even more vital amid ongoing global trade tensions and rising tariffs.

In addition to its traditional mild hybrid version, the Ridgeville-built XC60 will also be produced as a plug-in hybrid to broaden the company’s electrification efforts.

Since breaking ground in 2015, Volvo has invested over $1.3 billion in the Ridgeville plant with recent upgrades including a state-of-the-art battery pack production line and major expansions to the facility’s body and paint shops.

The plant first started production in 2018 with the S60 sedan, which was discontinued last year as the plant shifted its focus toward production of the EX90.

The most popular car made by Volvo will start rolling off a Lowcountry production line by the end of next year.

Volvo Cars announced July 16 that it will add its best-selling XC60 mid-size SUV to the production line of its Ridgeville plant. The car currently is assembled in Sweden and China. The facility also is the assembly site for the fully electric flagship EX90.

The XC60 has been the company’s best-selling model globally for years and is also the most popular Volvo model among U.S. customers, according to a news release. In the first six months of 2025, XC60 sales in the United States were up almost 23%.

“Adding the XC60 to our Charleston production line will further strengthen its position and attractiveness in the competitive U.S. market, while supporting and creating American manufacturing jobs,” Håkan Samuelsson, CEO of Volvo Cars, said in the news release. “It is also in line with our ambition to build where we sell and reinforces our long-term commitment to the U.S. market, where we are celebrating our 70th anniversary and have sold over 5 million cars.”

In addition to its popularity in the United States, the XC60 is a car of global importance to Volvo Cars as well, the release stated. It recently surpassed the 240 wagon as its all-time best-selling model, with more than 2.7 million XC60s now on roads around the world.

The company says American customers like the XC60 for its combination of safety, luxury and Scandinavian design. Already this year, over 33% of Volvo Cars’ sales in the U.S. are the XC60, and 25% of those are plug-in hybrids.

As the fourth best-selling luxury plug-in hybrid in the United States, it’s also an important bridge toward electrification for customers. Once they experience electrification in plug-in hybrids, they are more likely to want another plug-in hybrid or fully electric powertrain in their next car, the company says.

“The XC60 is already beloved around the world and in the U.S. and we’re proud we’ll soon be able to offer American families the XC60 they love, assembled here by American autoworkers,” Luis Rezende, president, Volvo Cars Americas. “The XC60 is the right car for this market. It offers the best of Volvo in a versatile size with the powertrain options to suit our U.S. customers. We continue to be impressed by the entrepreneurial spirit in South Carolina and are grateful to the state of South Carolina and Gov. McMaster for their leadership.”

Volvo Cars broke ground on its first U.S. manufacturing plant in 2015, nearly a decade ago. Today, the state-of-the-art facility assembles the Volvo EX90 and the Polestar 3 SUV models.

Volvo Cars has invested $1.3 billion in the plant in the last decade, with extensive investments to make it ready for the future, the release stated. The body shop and paint shop have been renewed and expanded significantly, while the plant also has a state-of-the-art battery pack production line.

Volvo Cars will continue to produce its fully electric, seven-seater flagship EX90 SUV in Ridgeville.

Volvo Cars will move production of its most popular vehicle to South Carolina to avoid tariffs that threaten to weaken the automaker’s profits, the company said Wednesday.

Volvo’s $1.2 billion factory in Ridgeville will start building the mid-sized XC60 sport-utility crossover in late 2026.

“As Volvo celebrates its 70th anniversary, the XC60 stands out as a growth driver …” reads a release from the automaker. “With over 2.7 million sold globally, the XC60 has officially surpassed the iconic 240 wagon to become Volvo’s best-selling model of all time.”

Volvo has previously stated its intention to add another car to the production line in Berkeley County, which is operating far below capacity — 13% according to industry estimates.

“Volvo Cars is committed to its long-held strategy of building where we sell — a principle that is more important now than ever,” a spokesperson said in the release. “As part of this strategy, Volvo Cars has previously communicated that it’s considering adding production of another model at our U.S. plant, which has a capacity of 150,000 vehicles per year.”

Volvo has said moving some production to the U.S. would help mute this country’s tariffs of 25% on all imported vehicles.

Hakan Samuelsson, Volvo’s CEO, said adding the XC60 to the Lowcountry plant “will further strengthen its position and attractiveness in the U.S. market while supporting and creating American manufacturing jobs.”

Luis Rezende, president of Volvo Cars Americas, called the XC60 “the right car for this market.”

“It offers the best of Volvo in a versatile size with the powertrain options to suit our U.S. customers,” he said.

The Lowcountry factory currently builds the all-electric EX90 SUV — a model that has been beset by production problems and sagging sales. Volvo sold just 7,797 EX90s globally through the first six months of this year.

By contrast, Volvo tallied 120,407 sales of its XC60 in the first half of 2025 – a 23% year-over-year increase and far more than any of the automaker’s other models. The XC60, currently built in Sweden and China, accounts for nearly two-thirds of all Volvo sales in the U.S. this year.

“As the fourth best-selling luxury plug-in hybrid in the U.S., it’s also an important bridge toward electrification for American drivers,” a spokesperson said. “This milestone builds on nearly a decade of Volvo Cars production in Charleston, marking the next chapter for Volvo’s most iconic nameplate, still a favorite for American drivers seeking comfort, safety, performance and real-world electrification.”

The production shifts follow significant financial problems Volvo announced earlier this week. The automaker said it would take a $1.2 billion cash impairment charge — an accounting term describing the lowered value of an asset — due to escalating tariff costs and delays in introducing new EV models.

The automaker specifically cited the EX90, saying “significant launch delays in the past and subsequent development costs” for that model have diminished its expected profitability. Volvo also said tariffs on the China-made ES90 battery powered hatchback sedan mean it can’t be sold profitably in the U.S.

“We have reassessed volume assumptions for these two cars,” Fredrick Hansson, Volvo’s chief financial officer, said in a statement, adding that “has resulted in a lower than planned lifecycle profitability.”

In May, Volvo announced layoffs of 5% of its Ridgeville workforce of 2,500 — or about 125 people. More recently, the automaker said it will cut about 3,000 white-collar jobs worldwide as part of a $1.9 billion plan to reduce costs.

In addition to slow sales, the EX90 — with a list price topping $80,000 — has received poor reviews because of ongoing software glitches in what Volvo has marketed as its most-connected and technologically advanced vehicle. Consumer Reports, for example, calls the EX90 “an unfinished electric SUV” with “buggy software, inactive features, lit-up warning lights” and “an extraordinary number of issues” that aren’t acceptable on a new car.

In addition to the EX90, the Ridgeville plant is currently building the Polestar 3 SUV for Volvo’s high-performance sister brand. They will continue to be built alongside the XC60, the automaker said.

Volvo, which is based in Sweden but majority-owned by China’s Geely Holding Group, announced plans to build its first and only U.S. plant in Ridgeville in 2015. The automaker, which received more than $200 million in incentives to locate its 2.3 million-square-foot factory off Interstate 26 in the Palmetto State, started production of its first car in 2018.

That first vehicle, the S60 sedan, was discontinued last year as the plant shifted its focus toward production of the EX90.

Every car company is still scrambling to figure out what to do with the rapidly changing import tariff situation in America. But Volvo might be able to salvage a suboptimal situation. The Swedish company has a huge factory in South Carolina that was supposed to be all-in on EVs, but is currently running at minimal capacity. Sounds like the perfect place to start cranking out the Volvos people actually buy here.

A report from s, citing “two people familiar with the [not public] plan,” says Volvo will start building the XC60 (the brand’s best-selling model at the end of last year) at the Ridgeville, SC facility in 2027 and the XC90 (second-best seller) there by 2028.

On July 16, Volvo confirmed that XC60 production will indeed be coming to the Ridgeville facility.

As of this writing, both those SUVs are still currently being built in Sweden.

Volvo opened its 2.3 million square-foot South Carolina factory in 2018. In 2021, it was being hyped as “the cornerstone of the Swedish automaker’s ambitious plan to become an EV-only brand by 2030,” Automotive News wrote. Safe to say that’s no longer happening, and the factory that built “about 20,000 vehicles last year” is said to be running at just 13 percent capacity. The EX90 electric SUV is the plant’s only publicly known project at the moment.

I dropped Volvo’s people a note for comments on all this, and here’s the official line I got from a spokesperson (before the XC60 confirmation press release went live):

“Volvo Cars is committed to its long-held strategy of building where we sell — a principle that is more important now than ever. As part of this strategy, Volvo Cars has previously communicated that it’s considering adding production of another model at our U.S. plant, which has a capacity of 150,000 vehicles per year.

We are not commenting on future product or production plans at this time, but we look forward to sharing more soon.”

If all those numbers above are accurate, that makes for a lot of idle facilities and headroom to build more vehicles. And pivoting the best-selling SUVs to local production to avoid tariffs would make sense. It’s not trivial to retool a factory at all, which is why the facility hasn’t already been reassigned, but it’ll be a heck of a lot easier for Volvo to set up an existing factory to build more cars stateside than it’d be for other automakers to build entire facilities from the ground up.

So in a circuitous way, Volvo might end up benefiting from its underutilized factory and scuttled EV dreams, and its 1,600-acre headache could end up being a secret weapon against tariffs.

The Ridgeville factory was employing about 860 hourly workers in 2021 when it was building the S60 midsize sedan. What the XC60 and XC90 pivot would do for local employment remains to be seen. As of this moment, Volvo only has one job posting at Ridgeville, for a software engineer position.

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