A Tesla Model Y has been registered in Sweden, a year ahead of the launch of the electric SUV in Europe, as Volvo imports the vehicle. It’s likely looking to reverse engineer it.
Generally, when Tesla launches a new vehicle, production starts at the Fremont factory and Tesla delivers the vehicle in the US starting with California.
The automaker then expands to Canada a few months later, and in Europe about a year after the original launch.
But this time it’s going to be different as Elon Musk linked the Tesla Model Y release in Europe to the start of production at Gigafactory Berlin.
With new factories being built in China and Europe, the CEO now wants Tesla to launch Model Y in those markets once the vehicle is being locally produced there.
For Europe, it means that they won’t get Model Y electric SUVs until at least July 2021, which is when they aim to start production at Gigafactory Berlin.
It’s why it was surprising that a Model Y vehicle was registered in Sweden this week, according to Car.info, which tracks car registrations in the country (hat tip to Franz):
The registration shows that Volvo registered the electric SUV made in California.
The Swedish automaker is likely to reverse-engineer and benchmark the Model Y in order to learn from it.
It’s not the first time that Volvo is interested in new Tesla vehicles. The automaker imported an early Tesla Model 3 to Sweden before it was available in Europe back in 2018.
In the past, Volvo has also praised Tesla’s EV technology — admitting that “Tesla is far ahead of everyone else on energy efficiency.”
Though Tesla also took some interest in Volvo and in 2018, it hired Ian Kettle, the lead designer behind Volvo’s praised XC40 SUV.
At Tesla, Kettle provided support on the Model Y exterior design and was the lead designer of the Tesla Cybertruck.
Volvo is now also bringing an electric version of the XC40 to market, the XC40 Recharge, and it is expected to be a competitor to Model Y.
Electrek’s Take
Good on Volvo for learning from the best when it comes to electric vehicles.
They were early to check out Model 3, and now it’s one of the first European automakers to check out the Model Y as far as we know.
With Model Y, they might be interested in a few things in particular, like “Octovalve,” the heat pump, which Elon called “some of the best engineering I’ve seen in a while,” and the giant rear-casting.
What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.
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