During FISITA’s World Mobility Conference 2025, held at the Palau de Congressos de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, on June 3-5, ATTI sat down with Mehdi Ferhan, Volvo Group’s senior vice president for powertrain engineering, to discusses legislation, sustainability and Volvo’s future vehicle development
How are you prioritizing testing resources within the current regulatory and cost landscape?
Testing is a very important and strategic resource in our organization, especially when talking to engineers and engineering groups. It is one of the specificities of the commercial vehicle industry, where the trucks are used by a lot of customers. Maybe one of the main differences with the passenger car industry, where you have 5-10% utilization, is in the truck industry you have 80-85%, so the reliability of the truck is very important.
In that regard, we have full-blown test campaigns, including seasonal expeditions. We do summer expeditions in the south of Spain where we get very hot conditions. The best camps for winter expeditions are in the north of Sweden, where we test in harsh winter conditions such as -20°C or -25°C. This is a very extreme testing condition.
But we also have a lot of test beds and different laboratories where we test and develop all the components before they are introduced industrially. We start with single components, which can be electronics modules, engines, e-axles, that are tested in our different facilities. Full trucks are tested on rolling benches.
Which of these are better performed as real-world tests rather than in simulation?
The end-user features are very difficult to get to through the digital world – so this is where we put ourselves in the shoes of real customers by driving the trucks.
In the session (‘Managing change: OEMs and the evolution of mobility’) we discussed driving several thousand kilometers in Europe as a truck driver to test the full product and see the features, performance, noise and the feeling that you are going to find in the cabin or behind the steering wheel. This is the perception that the market would get of our product, so we are paying a lot of attention to those very tiny details that are most of the time unnoticeable by real drivers. Our experts really put themselves in the shoes of real truck drivers.
Regarding digitization and simulation, it’s a hot topic. Right now, we are putting a lot of effort on improving the simulation confidence levels in our organization across the entire engineering division, taking advantage of the data, data acquisition and data knowledge which are more and more available. Thanks to connectivity solutions, for instance, and we also now have the capacity with compute power and artificial intelligence to manage development; create connections and new functions and services; and perform validation on long test profiles with other software user types of components where the physical part is left to the latter stage in the development cycle.
I like how you keep the human-in-the-loop element with the drivers. What are your thoughts on autonomous vehicle technology without a driver?
Having a real driver involved during the entire development process is key to ensuring the customer chooses us instead of our competitors. However, we have partners in the autonomous value chain. We see that autonomous transport will be needed in the long run given the increased demand for transport and we are already delivering in this direction.
When you are driving a long-haul truck, particularly in harsh conditions with traffic, there are a lot of issues with visibility, weather and climate. On highways we are using a virtual driver together with a safety driver until we feel it is safe and reliable enough to remove the safety driver. We are partnering with Aurora, which recently began driverless trucking in Texas without a safety operator.
The technology is progressing fast, but it’s not just about the technology, it’s also about the ecosystem and regulation and what to do with this tool that cannot be used for all use cases. The existing technology is valuable for extreme operating fields, and one of the very intensive use cases we have today is our closed operation mining in Norway, where we handle the full technology in a controlled environment. Those trucks are operating 24/7 – we are generating a lot of data and learning about it [the technology].
Interest will take time. The need for commercial vehicles in logistics is forecast to increase greatly and there won’t be enough human drivers to perform the extra miles.
In which areas of development and testing do you feel most pressure?
In my core experience, which is with powertrains, there is definitely pressure on pollutants and CO2. Most of the tests we perform are to ensure we are fully compliant and to anticipate the future, reducing carbon and pollutant emissions by adhering to Euro 7 regulation.
If you look at the past few years, Volvo Group has been very committed to sustainability and becoming carbon neutral by 2040. A few months ago, we passed a very important milestone of 5,000 battery electric trucks delivered to customers in 50 countries, which puts us in a leadership position, and so we continue to invest in R&D to develop the technology further. We are one of the most advanced companies in the world at generating real-data mileage accumulation to prepare for the next generation of electric vehicles. Next year, we will offer a unique chassis architecture that enables us to reach 600km of range, which combats range anxiety.
Our strategy now is to focus on three main technology areas for sustainable mobility, and to reach customer satisfaction we have very specific activities that address customer demands. This is why we believe in a three-path approach, where we develop battery electric trucks, hydrogen combustion trucks and fuel cell electric trucks for certain markets, as well as conventional commercial trucks with low-carbon fuel, which will be fit for certain areas of operation.
Hydrogen is still at the very beginning of its engineering journey, whereas diesel has more than a century of good engine development, so we are learning a lot from internal combustion engines. It’s about using the existing and digital technology, developing the technology for energy production and then for hydrogen progression.
For electric trucks in very demanding conditions, as well as e-axle technology we are also developing battery solutions – calibrating and using the truck’s mileage accumulation as a knowledge source to improve the next generation. By enhancing the next generation of products, we ensure our competitive advantage.
If we step back and look at the entire commercial vehicle industry, safety is more and more important, especially so in the truck business. For example, last year Euro NCAP launched its truck safety ratings, and Volvo Group took all three podium places. It was a huge recognition for our engineering efforts over the past few years in active and passive safety.
What are the key benefits for auto makers of FISITA WMC?
Being at FISITA WMC is a great opportunity to take the pulse of the industry and look at the similarities and areas where companies diverge, particularly on our approaches to the product lifecycle.
However, the commitment to sustainability and electrification, for instance, is very similar, so it’s good here to see not only the OEMs but also the suppliers from different markets, including from Southeast Asia, China, Japan and Korea, and many other regions of the world. We see that it’s a global industry in transformation.