Volvo has not officially confirmed an EX40 replacement just yet, but a new report nods to its development.
You’ve probably heard the age-old expression time waits for no one, and that’s particularly true in the car industry. For the most part, the consistent turn and burn of model launches means automakers like Volvo are moving beyond the three-row EX90 and the recent midsize EX60 launch to shore up the older part of its portfolio. Namely, the electric EX40, which is supposedly going to get a replacement called the EX50 sometime next year, according to Automotive News.
As the situation stands right now, the EX40 has been in a weird spot compared to its siblings since it first hit the scene for the 2024 model year. It joined the gas-powered XC40 as Volvo aimed to bring more electric options onto the market, but it’s changing directions for its entry-level EV moving forward.
In the U.S., at least, the upcoming Volvo EX50 will be our entry point to the brand’s latest EV portfolio, since we no longer get the tiny (but fun) EX30. This new model will ride on the same SPA3 platform Volvo is using for the EX60. With that, it’s likely we’ll see similar drivetrain offerings as well. That is, a rear-motor option with 369 horsepower will kick off the lineup, while dual-motor options could take the power rating up to a hefty 670 horsepower. The actual figures may change a little bit car-to-car, but the platform and technology shift should bring the EX40’s replacement a hefty bump over the 402 hp it tops out at now.
On the size front, it seems the new 2027/2028 Volvo EX50 will directly compete with the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Ford Mustang Mach-E and Tesla Model Y, if and when it does hit the market. Fortunately, the report also notes the EX50 should be less expensive than its forebear, even as it grows in size to compete with those three popular EVs. Other models like the Cadillac Optiq and Genesis GV60 are also in the cards, and we’d expect a price tag to suit: somewhere around the $50,000 mark.
A upper-$40K to lower-$50K price tag would space it out a bit farther from the larger EX60, and give Volvo a better value option to bring folks over onto the electric side of its SUV lineup. Of course, all this is academic for the time being, since the company itself has not confirmed the EX50’s existence. That said, the AN report suggests Volvo will build this car in about a year’s time at its new plant in Kosice, Slovakia. While that country makes sense for manufacturing — Slovakia builds more cars per capita than anywhere else in the world — it remains to be seen whether it will actually hit that price tag, given the 15-25% tariffs leveraged against cars imported from the EU.
None of this information also bring much more clarity to what’s happening with the gas-powered XC40. That model should follow its XC60/XC90 siblings with a refresh in the next several months. However, it may stick to the existing CMA platform, so it and the EX50 will diverge a bit from the current status quo (though SPA remains a closely related architecture used for Volvo and parent company Geely’s cars).
