Volvo Autonomous Solutions Säffle build: key haulage insights for mine engineers
Reviewed by Tom Sullivan
First reported on International Mining – News
30 Second Briefing
Volvo Autonomous Solutions has begun series assembly of its Volvo FH Autonomous mining trucks at Volvo Buses’ Säffle plant in Sweden, marking the shift from pilot builds to industrial production. The facility, long used for high-volume bus manufacturing, has been retooled to integrate V.A.S. autonomous hardware and software stacks directly into the FH platform on the main line. For mine operators, this signals impending availability of OEM-built autonomous haul trucks with factory-integrated perception, control and redundancy systems rather than retrofit kits.
Technical Brief
- Säffle plant’s long bus-manufacturing history provides established QA processes for complex electrical and control systems.
- Factory build allows routing of sensor cabling, power supplies and compute racks within original FH body envelope.
- OEM integration enables designed-in redundancy for braking, steering and drive control rather than bolt-on fail-safes.
- Direct-from-factory autonomy reduces on-site retrofit time, aiding brownfield mines with tight shutdown windows.
- For other OEMs, this move signals a shift from retrofit autonomy kits to line-built autonomous haul platforms.
Our Take
Volvo Autonomous Solutions is one of only a few OEM-focused autonomy stories in our 263 Mining pieces, suggesting the Säffle plant is part of a small but growing cluster of factory-level automation initiatives rather than mine-site retrofits.
Locating autonomous truck assembly at the existing Säffle plant, historically tied to Volvo Buses, signals a reuse of established heavy-vehicle manufacturing infrastructure, which can shorten industrialisation timelines for autonomous haulage fleets compared with greenfield facilities.
Across the 553 tag-matched ‘Projects’ and ‘Product’ items, most mining vehicle autonomy coverage centres on on-site trials; bringing build capability in-house at Säffle positions Volvo Autonomous Solutions to offer more standardised, fleet-scale deployments rather than bespoke pilot units.
Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io’s proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.
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