Thomas Ingenlath returns to Volvo with fresh experience of the industry’s challenges

Thomas Ingenlath has returned to Volvo as the company’s Chief Design Officer. The German designer, who trained at London’s Royal College of Art, has a wealth of experience.

From early days at VW Group, where he worked on Audi and Volkswagen, he became Chief Designer at Skoda in 2000 and then Director of Design at VW’s Design Centre in 2006. Ingenlath left the VW Group in 2012 to take up the role as Volvo’s Head of Design. In 2017, he diversified, heading up the newly formed Polestar as CEO – appropriately enough given Polestar’s first two models, the 1 and 2, were developed from Volvo concept cars from his time at the sister brand.

In 2024, Ingenlath resigned from Polestar and took a role in Geely exploring the Chinese parent company’s various brand ventures. It was a non-executive role that ‘finally gave me time to sit and think’, he says, ‘I was not in competition with anyone.’ Despite enjoying this neutral and slightly detached point of view, which involved regular visits to Geely’s main design studios in Shanghai, Ingenlath was lured back to Volvo by CEO Håkan Samuelsson (himself a returnee to the company having headed it up from 2012 to 2022).

Now Ingenlath finds himself back at Volvo, this time as Chief Design Officer. The company will celebrate its centenary in 2027 and Ingenlath is both a safe pair of hands with extensive brand experience and someone with the chops to commandeer a start-up with its rapid way of thinking and acceptance of fresh ideas.

After admitting that he was slightly worried about the return, Ingenlath adds that ‘it felt like a completely new thing. There is lots to do, with a great product offer.’ It’s a personal challenge, for sure, but without the uncertainty that greeted his first stint at the company. ‘It’s very different to 14 years ago,’ he says, adding mischievously that the first time around, Volvo had been ‘very suspicious of that German guy.’

Volvo’s current position is one of strength. It occupies a premium slot in the marketplace, with a carefully considered portfolio of products that share clean, minimal design. However, a century is as good a place as any to consider future plans, next steps and natural evolutions. This time around, Ingenlath brings a comprehensive awareness of Swedish working culture, as well as long-established trust.

What defines the challenge ahead is therefore not immediately apparently. Volvo’s current premium position and clean, minimal design language is very much bedded in, with familiar consistency from the small EX30 right up to newly launched EX60.

The company’s other EVs include the EX40 and EC40, the flagship EX90, with the relatively new ES90 Saloon. All of these models would have been signed off and readied for production in the years Ingenlath’s focus was on Polestar, so he is effectively coming with a clean slate – not that one is needed.

Ingenlath is quietly critical of what he describes as the industry’s ‘half-baked shift to electrification’, stymied by short-term political thinking around the world that stuck an array of spanners in the gears of carefully planned product rollouts. He also admits to being more pragmatic than he used to be about full electrification. ‘I can be dogmatic about what a superior drivetrain [EVs have] but customers simply have the choice,’ Ingenlath says. Polestar’s pure EV stance was easier to convey through its start-up like feel and absence of history, but in a country like Sweden with its classic car culture (and curious passion for big, gas-guzzling Detroit relics), even a straightforward switch to EVs isn’t a given.

Ingenlath is philosophical about these slow shifts in cultural traditions and perception. ‘What does a car mean?’, he asks, ‘is it the psychology of freedom?’ Rather than divert attention with powertrain debates, he believes Volvo can do more to reassert its role as a psychological mainstay, a provider of mobility but also emotion, support and comfort.

One oft-cited criticism of contemporary Volvos is their over-reliance on touchscreens, along with many other Geely brands (and, to be fair, manufacturers across the board). In a Volvo, this new focus felt especially galling given the company’s hugely impressive safety heritage and the equally huge distraction that a screen creates in the cabin, especially when one is trying to hunt down a control).

He admits that screens can be ‘so overwhelming’ and, without giving anything away, hints that more tactile and haptic (force feedback) controls could return to cabins, combined with the existing screens. ‘How do we then do switches that are special, meaningful and have tactile feedback?’ Ingenlath asks, rhetorically. Doubtless, he already has some answers but isn’t ready to share them just yet. ‘I would not be surprised if the idea of ‘more screens’ is better will be completely the opposite in six months,’ he adds.

What is clear is that Ingenlath wants to bring a bit more spark and verve back to Volvo design. Having set the brand on a course towards Scandinavian austerity and material simplicity, perhaps it’s time to make more of an impact. ‘I want to be a bit more joyful about doing things,’ says the designer, pointing to the Volvos of the 50s, 60s and 70s with their bold colours and friendly lines and graphic playfulness.

As noted, next year marks the company’s centenary. ‘2027 will be 100 years of Volvo – it is a great opportunity,’ says Ingenlath, ‘on the one hand we can build on our link to that great history, but how can we transform that tradition into a meaningful future?’ It seems likely that there’ll be some conceptual forays revealed around the celebration events, offered an intensely concentrated taste of what Volvo’s future could and should be.

The motor industry is changing fast. Chinese companies are pumping new brands Western markets like a CEO with a T-shirt gun at a company retreat. Despite this, legacy brands can still rely on a huge cache of cultural memory – provided they’d don’t dilute it with inappropriate new products.

We recently spent time in one of Volvo’s much-loved by also very much outgoing models, the V60 estate. Still for sale (unlike the larger and now discontinued V90), the mild hybrid V60 is a competent all-rounder with a sober, slightly dull but relentlessly practical image. It’s the spiritual descendant of the estate cars that made Volvo’s name back in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

In an SUV-focused world, is there any life left in the wagon/estate format? More to the point, should cars be getting smaller? Recent releases from Audi and Zeekr suggest peak SUV is still some way off. ‘In 2019, I was out in one of the first XC90s in Gothenburg and I parked it next to a new Range Rover,’ Ingenlath recalls, ‘I couldn’t believe how small the Volvo felt.’

Nonetheless, Volvos still need a certain heft and scale to convey solidity and safety. Could the brand go smaller than the current EX30? ‘It’s a nice question for any premium brand and a lovely task for a designer,’ he muses, ‘but as a brand, the EX30 is a good small car.’

Scale and screens aside, Ingenlath wants Volvo to reassert its humanist, Scandinavian roots. ‘The basic idea and value of Volvo is not about technology – it’s human-centric. That is where we start,’ he says, ‘we are the human-defined vehicle builder. That is so valid today. We’ve ignored the fact that the technology we have has one purpose: to serve the person driving the car.’

Finally, there is design. Where should Volvo go? ‘How do we transform from a 100-year old visual identity into an identity for the next 100 years?’, Ingenlath says, ‘the ‘iron mark’ was our identity for a century, a grille flanked by two headlights. This is a question for all companies who have the luxury of having that heritage. We need a modern expression and we don’t have the answer just yet. But everyone is going through this. We can’t be stuck – we have to move on.’

Few car companies make it to their second century, even fewer with an identity that has remained so cohesive and as widely respected as Volvo’s. In Thomas Ingenlath’s capable hands, Volvo will be setting the tone of the next generation.

Volvo.com, @VolvoCars