Volvo Cars is strongly committed to electric mobility, developing and producing hybrid and all-electric cars. In 2020, the company doubled its e-vehicle sales, which today already accounts for 29% of Volvo’s total sales in Europe and which is projected to represent half of the company’s worldwide sales by 2025.

Volvo’s Ghent assembly plant is a forerunner in e-mobility. In spring 2020, a new factory was commissioned to assemble the electric batteries for its own cars. In autumn 2020, the first fully electric XC40 Recharge rolled off the assembly line.

In 2021, the factory is preparing for a second all-electric model. Details will only be unveiled in March, but the model will be based on the same compact modular architecture (CMA) platform as the electric XC40 and will come into production in the second half of the year.

Thanks to the expansion at Volvo Car Gent, Belgium and its northern region of Flanders are more than ever becoming a knowledge center for e-mobility. German premium brand Audi, for instance, has produced its first electric model, the SUV e-tron, in Vorst since 2018. More recently, the factory also began producing the Sportback version of the e-tron. In addition, Volvo Trucks chose Ghent (Flanders) as the production site for its EU e-truck battery hub.

But it doesn’t end there. Various other foreign companies have been investing in Flanders’ e-mobility scene. These include International Car Operators (ICO), a Japanese firm that helped turn the Port of Zeebrugge into an e-car hub, and AGP, a Latin American manufacturer that built its European eGlass 2.0 center in Ghent.

Even more, Flanders-based start-up Magnax recently developed a new electric motor that delivers three to four times the power of best-in-class e-car engines. The company aims to start assembling in 2022.