Is Volvo's EX60 the closest thing we have to the Apple Car? Volvo along with premium peers, slam the door shut on EV first-movers

Volvo's new EX60 based on the SPA III software-defined platform.

Presenting its new EX60, which is much more than just a new model, demonstrates that Western OEMs can finally lead the EV pack with profitable, non-compromised, tech-driven electric cars, with a sprinkling of the all-important garnish... brand equity.

No spaceships, no brashness, no gimmicks… Forget boisterous models draped with indistinguishable light bars from new market entrants, looking to make a statement and poke their heads above the water, 2026 is all about a return to classic, understated premium design.

Like wolves in sheep's clothing, albeit be it high-quality fine cashmere wool, this new breed of non-compromised software-defined vehicles (SDV) are hiding their supercomputers under their well-dressed outer shells.

After years of being sold follies, we can finally say incumbent OEMs are delivering the future, today, and that the previously overused analogy of a smartphone on wheels can finally be justified for this new generation of SDV models.

It’s perhaps no coincidence, then, that Volvo’s EX60 presentation, held on the outskirts of Stockholm at a snow-covered contemporary art gallery this week, was more like a Steve Jobs new-product presentation than a traditional new-car launch.

One of Sweden’s most treasured musicians of recent times, José González got the wheels in motion, opening the event with the emotionally-packed Stay Alive song.

Was this Volvo telling us that they are very much alive and kicking? Perhaps!

The secret-sauce for success in today's hyper-competitive European new passenger car market?

Crammed into a package boasting premium brand equity and cutting-edge technological advancements... the secret-sauce for success in today's hyper-competitive European new passenger car market, EX60 marks the third key mid-sized premium all-electric SDV-SUV, launched during 2026 and confirming EV pioneer Tesla’s demotion to an even more crowded mass-market where self-destructive price battles are often the bread and butter strategy of winning market share.

If you believe Volvo’s German peers, BMW and Mercedes, who are releasing same sector competitor models almost in parallel to Volvo, demand for their new breed of EVs is greater than expected, with order books reportedly already stretching into the second half of the year.

With generous fiscal handouts to German corporate drivers, who often have the pleasure of driving these vehicles, it is unsurprising, given that Berlin raised the price threshold to €100,000 last year for BEV models that can claim the lowest rate of so-called benefit-in-kind tax each month.

That’s one-quarter the tax rate of combustion engine models, or half the rate of PHEVs, while this trio of models are all capable of everyday driving without compromise.

The Volvo, starting at just over €60,000, offers an on-paper maximum WLTP range of over 800km.

A limited top speed of 180km/h, now common across Volvo models, should make this even more achievable than the lead-footed German models.

Volvo a firm member of the premium brand league

The Swedes have now firmly confirmed their place in the premium brand league, a position many doubted after Geely took a majority stake in 2010.

Despite recent profit margins hiding that premium position due to heavy investments, with the peak now behind them, a move to the 8%-10% margin corridor should not be long in coming following EX60's launch. Alongside stronger and stable pricing, premium membership also offers protection from new market entrants through a premium moat, at least in Europe, that is.

However, while others are fighting those hyper-competitive new market entrants, primarily from China, Volvo stands to gain, thanks to its majority shareholder. Leveraging the collective scale of Geely Holding and Geely Auto brands globally, Volvo can achieve scaling benefits, giving it a key procurement advantage usually reserved for much larger companies. 100 next year! This is allowing them to punch above their weight while leveraging that more niche, design-oriented Scandinavian DNA and helping the 99-year-old company potentially turn into what Audi “was” – and will likely return to – for Volkswagen Group... a money-printing machine.  

Money-making machine?

Despite not initially springing to mind, the EX60 – or rather the SPA III architecture – has a lot in common with a combine harvester.

After years of cultivation, Volvo is finally ready to harvest those investments and hopes to see a healthy margin yield. CFO Fredrik Hansson confirmed to us on the fringes of the event in Stockholm this week that when the model leaves the factory gate, it will already command a higher profit margin than the XC60 PHEV model.

So while others are waiting for price and profit parity from their BEVs, Volvo is already there. That’s not to mention the EX60's ability to generate higher profits throughout its lifecycle by offering paid-for service downloads and updates, and the possibility of further contributing to regulatory credit windfalls from struggling competitors, such as those they will receive from Mercedes-Benz.

Where, in traditional model launches, the entire project team could celebrate the launch with a drop of Champagne, and then effectively clean their hands of the project with a nice sign-off, with Software Defined Vehicles like the EX60, that Champagne keeps hitting the side of the model, again and again, with each update, with the possibility of new revenue streams.

However, spare some thoughts for that development team.

They barely have time to finish their glass before the work continues, like a hamster on a wheel.

Thanks to its in-house team writing the crucial lines of code that update the software, alongside the hardware, which used to be handled by traditional tier-one suppliers, more of the value is remaining with the OEM, with those suppliers threatening to turn into lower-margin commoditised hardware suppliers only, with the high-margin pre-coded ECU components business evaporating.

More of the value remains with the OEM.

EX60 completes a sector that now includes both the BMW and Mercedes models mentioned previously, as well as the Audi Q6 and Porsche Macan, which are based on the more traditional PPE platform, with both VW Group models now eagerly awaiting the Rivan JV to add the magic software dust that Mercedes, BMW and Volvo have all now achieved.

With an early attempt to transition to software-defined vehicles, Volvo stumbled with the EX90’s SPA II platform, which may have contributed to former CEO Jim Rowan’s downfall, among other things.

CTO Anders Bell told us that SPA II was compromised by its multi-fuel architecture, which also accommodates the XC90 combustion variant, the BEV ES90, and the US-made Polestar 3 (contributing licensing revenues, as will the SPA III-based Polestar 7 and likely other Geely models).

Non-compromised

So while SPA II was compromised, this latest architecture is “non-compromised”.

It was likely no coincidence that Volvo took its first SDV baby steps with a low-volume model, where it could learn from any potential errors with less severe consequences. CEO Håken Sammulson puts it more elegantly by saying SPA III builds on the foundations of SPA II!

So, SPA III is now the real McCoy.

It is designed for BEVs from the ground up, incorporating a cell-to-body design – accommodating CATL cells rather than the failed Northvolt and then NOVO cells as originally planned – aluminium mega-casting, similar to some of its peers, while its core compute technology means the entire company is becoming more vertically integrated with more of the value chain remaining within the company.

Those software developments are also one reason Volvo has decided not to initially match BMW’s peak charging speed of 400kW.

While pushing some Snus – a traditional Swedish tobacco – behind his upper gum, Bell tells us, that the reason the EX60 peaks at “only” 370kW, which still leaves the possibility of a 10% to 80% charging time below the new benchmark of below 20 minutes, is about nurturing the battery and providing stable, well-managed thermal management.

Learning from that and progressively ramping up speeds once they can be assured that customers won’t suffer any negative trade-off in real-world scenarios, will then be possible.

The same applies to the core-competence safety systems, which constantly pull data from real-world crash scenarios to make the models safer, with key updates tweaked over the air.  

While Apple gave up the ghost on manufacturing a passenger car a long time ago, one can’t help but imagine the Apple Car would have been pretty much like this.

Design-focused yet heavily safety-oriented and tech-focused.  

While Steve Jobs famously drove a Mercedes SL, in the 2013 film Jobs he was depicted driving a Volvo estate in his early years.

One can certainly imagine if he were still alive, sitting behind the wheel of the EX60.

With exactly that model proving that Volvo, very much is alive!

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*Western Europe 18 Markets: EU Member States prior to the 2004 enlargement plus EFTA markets Norway, Switzerland, Iceland, plus UK