Volvo accelerates sustainable mobility with innovation hubs on 3 continents

Volvo Group now has four innovation hubs located across three continents – in France, Sweden, India, and the US – as it announces the opening of the new CampX Lyon in France.

Under the CampX concept, startups with promising technologies for electric and autonomous vehicles and digital solutions are invited to collaborate with Volvo’s chief engineers and business experts during short validation projects at the CampX innovation hubs. CampX also offers an ecosystem where startups in an earlier phase are provided with mentoring, networks, and business insights by Volvo Group experts. Here they can validate their ideas and test them out at laboratories, workshops and in test vehicles.

“Climate change is by far the biggest challenge of our generation. At the same time, demand for transport and infrastructure continues to grow and we must be able to meet this demand with sustainable mobility solutions. Volvo Group is therefore committed to the decarbonisation of the transport industry by developing innovative technologies within electrification, automation, and digitalisation. CampX is our strategic engine to boost this transformation through partnerships with innovating startups. We co-create to accelerate,” said Lars Stenqvist, Chief Technology Officer Volvo Group.

First launched in Gothenburg, Sweden in 2019, there are now an additional three CampX by Volvo Group innovation hubs located near the main Volvo Group Research & Development sites in Bangalore in India, Greensboro in the USA, and Lyon in France – which is opening today near the headquarters of Renault Trucks.

CampX Lyon will focus mainly on decarbonization, urban logistics, and uptime services to better support customer needs and help tackle the many challenges posed by continuously growing cities. With seven partnership agreements signed already, CampX Lyon is on its way to validating and bringing new innovations to market through the collaborations with startups.

Across all four of the CampX sites, engineers from Volvo Group work cross-functionally on a variety of global projects. By using a demand driven approach for new technology and business innovations, the time spent on product and strategy development can be significantly reduced.