For our last stop in this journey, we took the train to Gothenburg, where we visited Volvo Cars and Volvo Group. They are officially two separate companies that share the Volvo brand name. We began with Volvo Cars. Historically, Volvo Cars have been guided by safety and distinctive Swedish design. They created the three-point safety belt, and since they waived their patent for other car companies to use the same seatbelt design, the system has saved over a million lives. More recently, Volvo Cars have been working towards net neutral carbon emissions, aside from their goal to create a carbon-neutral vehicle, they have made other sustainability efforts. For instance, the C40 Recharge and other fully electric cars cannot be purchased with a leather interior. Instead, they use a synthetic leather material called Nordico, commonly used for artificial leather handbags. One feature of the C40 that shows its distinctive Swedish design is the “hockey stick” bend on the side of the hood. Not only is this curve aesthetically striking, but it also. Improves the vehicle’s safety by strengthening the hood, which would remain more rigid in the case of a head-on collision. This is just one example of Volvo Cars making responsible, high-quality design decisions. Furthermore, they take pride in their Scandinavian heritage by designing their headlights and taillights to loosely resemble Thor’s hammer.
We went up the street from Volvo Cars to Volvo Group and CampX. This was the same company that one of the founders of Einride, Christopher Laurell, worked at before leaving due to how “slow” it was, and it was clear to see the impact that Volvo group had left on him and the company. With Volvo Group, we met up with Jenny Erneman, the Director of Technology, Strategy, and Outlook. She explained Volvo Group, the split-off from Volvo Cars in 2015, and what they have achieved. Their primary focus was trucks, buses, and construction vehicles. After a look around the premise and presentation, we finally had a second chance to work on a case study. While it was a great way to see what they were doing, it was surprisingly unorganized compared to Einride. The focus was meant to see how the upcoming landscape will change with the Volvo Group but with an unclear goal on how much Volvo Group wanted to change. It’s hard to predict the future regarding restructuring the power grid and Volvo Group’s business. One item Volvo Group explained well was their growth and leadership strategy, presented by Kristina Nilsson. An important takeaway from her portion would be that in Volvo, you need to be a manager and a leader instead of one or the other. The innovation landscape has changed over the past few years, and companies must adapt to overcome it. Luckily, the company takes pride in innovation, leading innovation across 190 markets.
We have had such a great time exploring Scandinavia and visiting these companies. We thank Mario Leone and Niklas Myhr for organizing this trip and guiding us through our site visits. You guys are the best!
P.S. We continued bouncing around Scandinavia after the school trip. On our way out of Oslo, Henry and I found a kiosk selling Skandinavisk, so we had to take a pic as a final farewell.
