Håkan Samuelsson: Exit interview with the CEO who rebooted Volvo

Håkan Samuelsson joined Volvo's board of directors in 2010. In 2012, he stepped up to become CEO. Now, 10 years after taking the reins, he's handing them over to Jim Rowan, who was former CEO of Dyson and, before that, COO at Blackberry. In that decade under Samuelsson, Volkswagen cycled through four CEOs and Ford chambered just as many. And while those companies struggled through turmoil and global controversy, Volvo has seen continued and unprecedented growth.

It's actually thanks to Ford that Samuelsson's first days with the company were very busy indeed. In late 2010, Ford sold its ownership of Volvo to Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, current parent company to Geely Auto, Lotus, Lynk & Co, Polestar and Proton. That change in financial parentage freed Volvo to chart its own way forward, to create a stronger identity and double down on its distinctive attributes of sophisticated style and relentless safety. 

However, as freeing as that would be, this move had the decidedly more stressful effect of creating a deadline: Volvo needed to redesign all its cars to expunge any dependency on Ford. After 11 years of prior ownership, that reliance was understandably baked in across the entire product portfolio.

"That was, of course, for the company a very radical change," Samuelsson told me in an interview last week. "We suddenly wound up being a real company. We had nobody to ask for money or help. ... Of course we had a new management and I came in with the board. That was really a change, being a company."

The 2020 Volvo XC90 T8 impresses six ways to Sunday

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The first product to see the light of day out of this reinvention was the XC90, a tall, stately SUV that somehow managed to be both striking yet subtle in its design and, perhaps best of all, still looked every bit a Volvo. My favorite part of that car was the interior, which couldn't have looked more Mid-Century Modern if they'd somehow managed to wedge an Eames lounge chair in there. 

"We had a new head of design [Thomas Ingenlath] that made Volvos really appealing and not as boxy as they were perceived earlier," Samuelsson told me. "They looked suddenly super good."

Design matters more than ever, but even more important was the foundation. Underpinning the XC90 was a new, modular platform and powertrain that could be applied to a variety of machines, ultimately going on to create the S60, S90, V60, V90 and XC60 models.

Shrugging off Ford also meant rethinking production, with Volvo opening three factories in China between 2013 and 2019, plus a US-based factory in South Carolina. Samuelsson cites that factory in particular as a key reason for the brand's success here. "Earlier we were sort of someone selling cars, now we are a real player," he said. "We were on the decline and suddenly we almost touch down on a volume of 60,000 cars a year. And now we are back at the size we should be in the US. The factory played a big role."

Volvo's global car sales in 2021 were 698,693, nearly double the amount under the last year of Ford ownership. 122,173 of those cars were sold in the US. That's more than double the number of a decade ago. 

So the new vehicle architecture was working, but Samuelsson wanted to reinvent the software platform, as well. That led to a controversial partnership with Google, Volvo becoming the first to bring Android Automotive to market. Why controversial? Many in the auto industry have long feared handing over the keys to what's become the second-most important touchpoint of their vehicles after the steering wheel: the infotainment system.

"There is one school that said this we should do ourselves, we should not be involved with partners, we should not be controlled by partners. But I've always seen it as we should concentrate on something we do really good then collaborate with partners on others," Samuelsson said. He referenced the company's partnership with Bowers & Wilkins to create the premium sound system on the XC90 and others, a speaker package that always blows me away. "You should work with the absolute best partners, and the same of course with navigation."

While there are plenty of highlights, not every initiative in Samuelsson's time was so successful. Prior to his tenure, Volvo launched something called Vision 2020, a goal of zero fatalities in Volvo cars by the year 2020. Sadly, that proved unachievable. Volvo has since repositioned that to be Safety Vision, losing the date and evolving into an ongoing pledge -- and perhaps acknowledging that early optimism in driver assistance systems overcoming human foibles has proved unfounded.

Samuelsson also pointed out that the challenges facing safe driving have evolved rapidly and radically. "Text and drive, distracted, that was not something we included in the vision 10 years ago, nor if you were driving drunk, nor if you were driving 150 mph where 50 is allowed." To that end, Volvo limited the maximum speed of its cars to 112 mph and is extending and enhancing its driver monitoring and face detection systems, augmenting that with external lidar sensors to better read the road and the world around the vehicle.

As Samuelsson makes his departure, it's time to rethink the platform again. The industry is sweeping rapidly from internal combustion to electrification, more quickly than Volvo expected. "The move towards electrification came very fast, every year a bit faster. We were surprised that the turning point came so quick. We need to do it in steps first," Samuelsson said, talking of the company's early adoption of plug-in hybrid technology across its new lineup. "Then the all-electric cars came very rapidly."

And that takes us to Polestar, which Samuelsson said is "the avant garde" of Volvo's electrification plans. It's also where he will still spend some time, remaining on as chairperson of Polestar's board of directors. He told me he'll also be spending some time advising startups and sharing his expertise, but promised he would "try to save some time for doing travel and enjoying life." After all he's done for Volvo and the automotive industry as a whole, he clearly deserves it.