Volvo Cars started series production of the EX60 at its Torslanda plant in Gothenburg in late April 2026. The plan was about 2,000 vehicles a week. By mid-October, Automotive News was reporting output of about 200 a week, according to Motor1. Volvo has not confirmed a weekly rate. The EX60 production problems have become the main story of Volvo's year: the company says it has over 50,000 European orders but has built only about 5,000 cars, according to Electrek and Investing.com's transcript of the earnings call.
On 23 October 2026 Volvo reported a third-quarter operating loss of SEK 3.7bn and announced about 2,500 job cuts. Early coverage named megacasting, the large single-piece aluminium casting Volvo uses for the EX60 rear underbody, as part of the problem. Volvo's chief executive says the casting has not been the issue. Where the delay actually sits matters to anyone planning a new-technology launch in a plant that is already running.
The timeline
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February 2022: Volvo commits SEK 10bn (about $1.09bn) to Torslanda. The money covers megacasting of aluminium body parts, a new battery assembly plant, and refurbished paint and final assembly shops (Electrek).
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About two years before SOP: Torslanda begins megacasting the EX60 rear floor and shipping it to pilot plants (Automotive Manufacturing Solutions).
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Late April 2026: EX60 series production starts. The target is about 2,000 a week.
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Late September 2026: A dealer memo, quoted by Electrek, says the delays "are not related to vehicle quality, safety, or product performance."
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Mid-October 2026: Automotive News reports output of about 200 a week, and that US dealers should expect little volume until the second half of 2027 (via Motor1, Electrek and Jalopnik).
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23 October 2026: Volvo publishes its Q3 results. The release blames "new industrial technology such as cell-to-body" and does not mention megacasting.
What Volvo says went wrong
The Q3 release puts it in one sentence: "Due to new industrial technology such as cell-to-body it is taking longer than planned to ramp up production, but Volvo Cars is steadily improving built volumes."
On the earnings call, JP Morgan analyst Jose Asumendi asked about the ramp. CEO Håkan Samuelsson answered, according to Investing.com's transcript: "In this new car, its mega casting has caused us no headaches." He said the difficulty is attaching the battery to the underbody in a highly automated process, on a line that "does not exist anywhere else in the world." Answering Citi's Ross MacDonald, he said the issue is "the uptime of the automated assembly system," not the quality of the car, and that it has no effect on warranty costs. He also said Volvo was "maybe too optimistic in the ramp-up."
Chief Commercial Officer Erik Severinson was blunter: "EX60 problem is a mechanical production problem." He said Volvo is "constantly increasing production week by week in the batteries" and expects to reach the full planned pace "over the course of next year," meaning 2027.
Reporting attributed to Automotive News adds a second constraint. Both Electrek and Motor1 say the trouble covers integrating the high-voltage pack with the body and also electric-motor production at Torslanda. Motor1 notes that "Volvo has not disclosed a detailed technical root cause for the slowdown."
The only official statement that puts megacasting in the same frame came from Volvo spokesperson Jacquelyn Johnson, quoted by Jalopnik. She said the EX60 "introduces industry-first state-of-the-art concepts for which there are no blueprints to copy." That is a general description of how new the car is, listing megacasting next to cell-to-body. It does not identify a cause. Samuelsson's answer on the call does, and it points at the battery line.
Why the casting cell ramped and the battery line did not
The two technologies arrived at series production at very different levels of maturity.
The casting side is a known system. Bühler supplied two Carat 840 die-casting cells, each with "8,400 tonnes of locking force," which produce the EX60 rear underbody as one aluminium part replacing "around 100 conventionally manufactured and assembled parts," according to Foundry-Planet. Each cell is 7.6 metres high, covers about 160 m² and weighs more than 1,000 tonnes once installed. Moving the two cells took 120 truckloads. Bühler had passed its 50th Carat megacasting order by 2025, so other plants run the same kind of equipment.
Torslanda also had time with it. Plant manager Magnus Olsson told AMS that the megacast rear floor "has been produced here at Torslanda, and supplied to all pilot plants" for about two years before series production. He said megacasting had "taken away hundreds of robots in the body shop," and that die refurbishment intervals of about 100,000 cycles let the plant make improvements every six months to a year rather than every seven to ten years.
The battery line had neither a reference installation nor that run-in period. AMS describes the process: prismatic cells from CATL and Sunwoda are coated for insulation, built into modules, placed in an aluminium tray made in-house, busbar-welded for 800 V and fitted to the car as a structural member. (AMS calls it cell-to-pack; Volvo calls it cell-to-body.) By Samuelsson's account, no other plant in the world runs the automated system that joins this pack to the body. When availability on that system falls short, the whole vehicle is held back.
Too many new things at once in a running plant
The broader lesson is that Torslanda took on several firsts at the same time. It became the reference plant for the new SPA3 platform, with Košice, Slovakia, planned as the second site. It added megacasting, in-house 800 V battery assembly and motor production. And it did all of this while continuing to build the XC60, which AMS says ran "without interruption" through the transition. The plant employs about 6,500 people.
Volvo's own dealer memo acknowledged the risk: "Introducing a brand-new platform and product into a running factory is always a challenge." When a launch carries several new processes in series, the ramp moves at the pace of the least mature one. On the EX60 that is the battery-to-body line, not the casting cell.
What the slow ramp is costing
The financial impact is large:
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Q3 results: revenue was SEK 66.9bn, down from SEK 86.4bn a year earlier. Operating income excluding JVs and items affecting comparability was SEK -3.7bn, a margin of -5.6%.
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Restructuring: about 2,500 job cuts globally, 2,000 of them in Sweden, plus another SEK 5bn in indirect spend and variable cost reductions. Production will be concentrated in "five dedicated Volvo plants globally." Samuelsson said that "with severely challenged volumes, we need to reinforce our turnaround plan" with actions "lowering our break-even point and improving cash flows."
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Delayed profit: CFO Fredrik Hansson said on the call that the EX60's financial contribution will arrive later because the ramp is not tracking the original plan. Jalopnik, citing Automotive News, reports that Volvo scrapped its 2026 volume and cash-flow outlook and has not given new short-term guidance.
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US market: a dealer told Automotive News (via Electrek) that Volvo had expected to sell about 7,000 EX60s in the US by the end of 2026. Automotive News' source (via Jalopnik) said there would be no more US allocations this year. One dealer said dealers "effectively need to write off 2026, and potentially the first half of 2027." Volvo says "a significant number" will reach US dealers in early 2027.
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Sales trend: GlobalData estimates cited by Automotive News, via Jalopnik, show global EX60 sales falling from about 500 in July to about 250 in August.
For anyone building a business case, the point is that each week below plan delays contribution from a platform whose capital is already spent. Our downtime cost calculator separates lost contribution from recovery costs, which is the right way to size a constrained ramp like this one.
Where megacasting risk still applies
The EX60 does not show that megacasting is risk-free. It shows that the risk did not materialise in this launch, and the main reason was early run-in. For casting suppliers and tooling houses, the exposure is real:
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Die cost and upkeep: Ducker Carlisle's Leonard Ling told MOTOR that "Tooling and dies are expensive, each costing several million dollars and requiring frequent maintenance."
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Process control: Ling said presses above 6,000 tons need "extremely precise process control to avoid porosity, distortion or cracking." NIST's Dilip Banerjee noted that cast microstructures are "prone to porosity caused by bubbles or voids."
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Brownfield fit: legacy OEMs face "reconfiguration of body shops and balancing new investment with existing stamping capacity," according to Ling.
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Design lock-in: in 2024, Tesla dropped plans to cast a next-generation car's entire underbody as one piece and kept the three large castings used on Model Y and Cybertruck, as InsideEVs reported based on Reuters.
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Repair economics: a two-year study by Thatcham Research and the Allianz Centre for Technology, reported by WardsAuto, found partial rear repairs on a Tesla Model Y megacast were about £2,167 cheaper than on a multi-part steel Model 3. However, at 25 km/h the casting needed full replacement, and repairs that involve welding must be done at Tesla-approved facilities. Thatcham's Richard Billyeald warned that a poorly designed unit may not protect occupants as well.
What operators should take from the EX60
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Don't stack first-of-kind processes on a single SOP. If a step has no reference line anywhere, treat it as the pacing item and plan the launch around it.
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Run new steps in pilot long enough to measure availability. Torslanda's two years of megacast pre-series output is the main reason the casting cell was not the bottleneck.
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Build ramp curves and cash plans on demonstrated uptime, not nameplate rate. A line rated for 2,000 a week that runs at a fraction of its availability target sets output for the whole vehicle.
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Casting and tooling suppliers should price die maintenance into contracts. Refurbishment intervals of about 100,000 cycles at Torslanda are a scheduling and cost item, not a footnote.
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Tier suppliers should treat an OEM ramp delay as a demand-timing risk. Parts sized for 2,000 a week will see much lower call-offs into 2027. Plan inventory and working capital accordingly.
The decision that matters
Whether megacasting carries launch risk the industry has not priced in is still an open question, and Tesla's 2024 retreat shows the design choices are not settled. But on the EX60 evidence, the risk that hurt Volvo was battery-to-body automation, not the 8,400-tonne casting cells. The decision to examine is sequencing: how many new technologies a running plant can absorb in one launch, and which of them have had time to prove their uptime before the customer orders arrive.
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