Volvo partners with its hometown of Gothenburg

With the aim of achieving a climate-neutral city by 2030, Volvo Cars teams up with the City of Gothenburg in Sweden for the creation of new urban zones that will be used as testbeds for future sustainable technologies. The initiative, called Gothenburg Green City Zone, aims to establish an area that is completely emission-free, with a variety of climate-neutral transportation modes and a connected infrastructure.

Using a real city as a testing ground will enable Volvo to accelerate development of technologies and services in the areas of electrification, shared mobility, autonomous driving, connectivity and safety. As part of the testbed, Volvo plans to run robotaxis operated by its fully owned mobility provider, M, within the zone.

Examples of technologies to be tested include geo-enabling solutions and services ensuring that cars in the zone operate in electric-only mode and remain within speed limits, as well as traffic infrastructure that can connect to active safety features in cars and share information between road users.

Since Volvo Cars also has an active role in the planning process of this initiative, it can ensure that, from the start, the zone integrates its electrified mobility services and develops them in a live environment, increasing the impact on sustainability goals.

During 2020, M has proven to reduce congestion and lower emissions in Gothenburg, with one car from M now replacing eight privately owned cars in the city. Similar to the City of Gothenburg's aim, Volvo Cars is continuously reducing its carbon footprint, with the ambition to be a climate-neutral company by 2040. To realise this goal, the company has devised a number of objectives to be completed by 2025.

A few examples include a 40% reduction of its CO₂ footprint per car, global sales consisting of 50% fully electric cars, with the rest hybrids, and a 25% reduction of carbon emissions generated by the company's overall operations, including manufacturing and logistics. The Green City Zone initiative starts in spring 2021 and will gradually scale up going forward.