Volvo is a Swedish multinational manufacturing company headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden. Its principal activity is the production, distribution and sale of trucks, buses, and construction equipment. Volvo also supplies marine and industrial drive systems, and provides financial services. Although Volvo was established in 1915 as a subsidiary of AB SKF, a Swedish ball bearing manufacturer, the auto manufacturer considers itself officially founded on April 14, 1927, when they released their first car, the Volvo ÖV 4 series.
Volvo means “I roll” in Latin, conjugated from “Volvere.” The name Volvo was originally registered in May 1911 as a separate company within SKF AB and as a registered trademark with the intention to be used for a special series of ball bearing. This idea was only used for a short period of time and SKF decided to use “SKF” as the trademark for all its bearing products.
In 1999, Volvo sold its car division Volvo Cars to Ford Motor Company for $6.45 billion. The Volvo trademark was shared between AB Volvo, where it is used on heavy vehicles, and the unit of Ford, where it was used on cars. Volvo stopped posting profits in 2005,and in 2008, Ford decided to sell its interest in Volvo Cars.
In August 2010, Ford completed its sale of Volvo Cars to the Chinese motor manufacturer, Geely Automobile (Zhejiang Geely Holding Group)f, or $1.8 billion.
Every year, Volvo puts a large of budget on R&D department to develop a safe car. Cars are driven by people. The guiding principle behind everything they make at Volvo is safety. The mission of Volvo is “Our global success will be driven by making life less complicated for people, while strengthening our commitment to safety, quality and the environment.”
The company’s short-term goal, “Vision 2020,” is to create a vehicle that will not create any harm for the passenger.
Volvo always focuses on the customer’s needs. In all aspects of Volvo operations, from product development and production, to delivery and customer support, the focus is on customers’ need and expectations. Here is the picture of a Volvo representative showing us one of their cars.
During the tour, Volvo gave us an opportunity to experience a cross-section of the Volvo model range with the latest technical features first-hand at our demo track at Torslanda in Gothenburg. Below is a video of the test track:
