Volvo will preview the styling of its next-generation models with a concept timed to mark the company’s centenary, and design chief Thomas Ingenlath has promised that future models will reintroduce more physical controls.
Ingenlath returned to Volvo as head of design earlier this year, after a stint as CEO of spin-off company Polestar. It will introduce a renewed design language for the Swedish brand, which will launch 13 new models worldwide by the end of 2030.
During Volvo’s global strategy update, Ingenlath confirmed that the first sign of its new design would be a new concept to be shown in 2027. While he didn’t give any details, he did suggest that the design would draw on Volvo’s history and heritage.
“Brands that have heritage have a strong history,” Ingenlath said. “The basis of how you recognize a Volvo at first glance is the iron mark, a diagonal bar supporting that iron mark and the surrounding grille that has framed our cars and the logo for a long, long time.”
Ingenlath added that it was a “big, big task” for design departments to “identify a way forward” and said it was a task “that we still have ahead of us at Volvo to define the future.”
He also said he was thinking about rethinking the user experience inside Volvo models. At Polestar he was a leading proponent of minimalist interiors that featured few buttons and moved most controls to the touchscreen, but said Volvo and other companies “have to listen to our customers and recognize that, to put it bluntly, there is no appreciation of what interaction is like in cars today.”
“The overemphasis on screens and interaction with screens is something that customers and journalists strongly criticize, and we have to aim for a better harmony, a better balance between the interaction we have with our digital device and the physical interaction.”
Citing the example of a Leica camera, Ingenlath said Volvo will “not just introduce rows and rows of buttons” but “take advantage of what a physical interaction can do for you in a positive way as a customer.”
“We won’t move away from the touchscreen, we’ll just use the screen for what it’s good at. My dogma is that any feature you show all the time on the screen shouldn’t be on the screen. The screen is about flexibility and showing what you don’t need to show all the time. So it’s using the touchscreen for what it’s good at and the reintroduction of a couple more buttons than in today’s cars.”
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