Volvo Cars

'We've come to the conclusion that the timing is not optimal'

Volvo Cars and Volvo Trucks are separate companies, and have been for almost 20 years. The separation occurred in 1999, when Volvo Group sold its car manufacturing business to Ford, which in turn sold Volvo Cars to Geely in 2010. But despite being separate, the vehicle makers share a name, and now they will also share data between their products to prevent accidents.

South Carolina plant will add another 2,500 workers to the 2,000 already being recruited.

Diesels are 50 percent of the market in Europe, and most XC90s sold there are diesel.

Volvo says it will unveil its first fully electric car by 2019.

Following the acquisition of Volvo by China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group in 2010, we definitely saw this news coming. The two companies have signed an agreement that will give Chinese automaker Geely access to key technologies developed by Volvo, and in turn, the deal could help the Swedish automaker lower its production costs.

Volvo has been named the top automaker in the 2011 Sustainable Brands survey. That's definitely an achievement, but before we applaud the Sweden-based automaker for grabbing the top spot it's worth mentioning that Sustainable Brands surveyed 3,000 Swedish consumers to compile its final rankings. Seems like someone may have had a home court advantage, doesn't it?

Emerging reports indicate that Ford is moving ahead with the sale of Volvo Cars with a determined push to find a new buyer around the middle of February. Although it's undoubtedly a bad time to be selling, Ford needs the cash on hand and a streamlined corporate structure in order to weather the current storm without going into debt.

The Volvo Group, successfully spun off ball bearing company SKF in 1927, no longer has much to do with the Volvo brand of cars. While it does build large commercial vehicles, the automotive unit was sold to Ford all the way back in 1999, and the only real ties the two corporations share is joint-ownership of the Volvo logo and trademark. Unfortunately, things haven't really been all that rosy for the Swedish brand since it was purchased by the Blue Oval. Despite its lack of involvement, Volvo Gr