Volvo gears up with Dassault for electric vehicle development

Volvo Cars is to deploy Dassault Systèmes’ 3DExperience platform in its engineering processes in the development of electric vehicles.

A renowned brand in the automotive industry in operation since 1927, and still based at its original home in Gothenburg, Sweden, Volvo is committing to becoming a fully electric car company, and to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.

In October 2024, it reported global sales of 61,686 vehicles, up 3% compared with the same period last year. The sales increase was said to be driven primarily by the strong performance of electrified models in Europe.

Sales in the US and China declined, but the performance of the electrified range was solid. The company’s sales of electrified models – fully electric and plug-in hybrid models – grew 40% on an annual basis, and accounted for 48% of all of its cars sold during October. The share of fully electric cars constituted 22% of all of its cars sold for the month.

However, Volvo said we must do more than “merely electrify” cars, and rethink sustainability in our operations, vehicles and society.

The manufacturer was already using Dassault Systèmes’ Catia applications, and chose to enhance the role of Dassault Systèmes as its partner to complete its mission to be a fully electric automotive company. Dassault said the automaker can benefit from a seamless migration of its data from Catia applications and third-party offerings to one scalable virtual platform that facilitates collaborative vehicle design and development.

The 3DExperience platform is designed to help automotive manufacturers streamline collaboration and deliver data-driven approaches to manage complexity in the electric vehicle market. By using the software, Dassault said Volvo’s engineers can use the software to improve quality, part reuse, issue management, the test and validation cycle, requirements and traceability. These individual offerings include Efficient Multi-Energy Platform, Global Modular Architecture, Smart, Safe & Connected, and Sustainable Multi-functional Vehicle.

In addition, Dassault said it can build up its revenue pipeline by reducing engineering time, lead time and costs, maximising the reuse of parts, increasing product quality, and overcoming regulation challenges.

“Automakers are under pressure to deliver new products and functions quickly and cost-effectively,” said Laurence Montanari, vice-president of transportation and mobility industry at Dassault Systèmes. “Volvo Cars excels in developing unique vehicle experiences.

“In order to build these best-in-class experiences, their engineers need advanced technology solutions, including the ability to combine the development of hardware and software together. The 3DExperience platform will provide this.”