When I signed up for this trip almost a year ago, I was told that our visit to Volvo was up in the air. I wanted to go anyways, but I really wanted to know. Then in october, JJ told us that he had confirmed out visit to Volvo. A few weeks later, he told me that our hosts had arranged for us to witness a crash test. This morning we met at 9:20 and jumped on the 6 tram and rode it across the city. We transferred to the 27 bus and rode it into the area. What was immediately apparent is just how large this facility is.
We walked into a nice building with a few of their cars.
At this point one of our hosts walked in. His name is Morgan Ericsson, and he is a PSCE Project Pre-Trim & MP for Volvo. Morgan is a 20 year veteran of Volvo. He took us over to a different building and we met our second host, Sylvia Knutti (who happens to be engaged to Morgan). We had lunch in one of their cafeteria. It was very good. I had a pulled chicken sandwich with pineapple salsa and steak fries.
After this, we walked across some of their campus and got into a few different Volvos to drive to the crash test. I rode in a Volvo S60. An important note- We were not allowed to take pictures or videos in either the factory or crash test. It sounds like they don’t publish a lot of what we saw. We got into the crash test theater and listened to a brief presentation about Volvo’s commitment to safety. Volvo originally held the patent for seatbelts but decided to release it for the safety of the general, non-volvo driving public. Additionally, Volvo’s safety vision states “that nobody will be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo cars by 2020”.
After this, we witnessed a 35 mile per hour, 30 degree offset crash of one of their new models. It was utterly brutal. I knew that it would be, but it was even more so than I expected. All of the airbags went off and smoke filtered out of the car. Moments later the team that we had seen prepping the area walked out of their room to take some data. They took some pictures and plugged a few sensors into their laptops. We watched them mill around for a while before leaving the room for the factory.
We were given some safety equipment, steel toed boots and a lab coat, and walked into the factory. As I mentioned before, we were not allowed to take pictures so I don’t have any of the really impressive things we saw. They really gave us a VIP tour. We saw some especially cool things, like a crane that takes the cars over the pathway and the device that collects energy during braking to charge the hybrid system. The factory is a classic production line and had some clever rotations of employees going on. We continued on and eventually walked out of the factory. We got on a bus, transferred to a tram and got back to the Hostel. We had about 2 hours before we left for the 2nd event of the day, a trip to a cooking school called Aveqia.
At this school we were going to was about a ten minute walk away from out hostel. We got there and were greeted by Sou Chef Michael who led us into the kitchen where we would be cooking. We were told that this was going to be a 4 course meal, with us being split into 4 teams each making a dish. I selected team 3 as we were dealing with the meat and not everyone was willing to do so. We were then introduced to Chef Daniel, the head chef of Aveqia. After this, Micheal and Daniel walked us through some of the kitchen and where to put things. They then jumped into our cooking. We were responsible for the 3rd (main) course.
The first course was salmon with a cold potato foam, potatoes, very small onion rings, halved potatoes, pickled onion, and swedish caviar.
The second dish was mayo, beets, fruit leather, and cheese.
The third dish was Reindeer with celery root puree, kale chips, and onions.
The dessert was focused on the sour cream ice cream, puffed rice and chocolate sprinkled on top. At the end of it all, JJ asked us what our favorite parts of the trip were so far. I brought up 2 things. First was the feeling that came over me when we were landing in Copenhagen. It totally surreal to be flying to europe for school. The second was today’s crash test at Volvo. I really enjoyed seeing the process that they go through After this, we thanked our hosts, and headed back to the hostel.
Daily Impressions
Reindeer tastes really unique
I knew that crash would be brutal and it still made me jump.
Morgan has a fantastic sense of humor
I love how logical everything is on the Volvo campus.
Sam's Trip to Sweden 