Anders Bell is now the head of research and development at Volvo Cars, but recently he served a rather lengthy stint at Tesla Motors as senior director of engineering.
He started at Tesla in 2016 and spent 6 years there before ending his stint with Tesla in November of last year. Prior to that, he worked with Volvo, so he’s returning to the Swedish brand. He brings some 25 years of engineering experience in the automotive field.
The news here is not that Anders Bell is back at Volvo but rather what Bell brings to Volvo and what he has to say about Tesla.
You see, Bell was senior director of engineering at Tesla when both the Model 3 and Model Y were being developed and moved into production, so he played a vital role in engineering these two high-volume and extremely popular electric cars.
Bell, a Tesla Model Y owner, actually “accidentally” drove the Tesla (he owns a Volvo too) to work at Volvo one day. He seems to imply he was quite embarrassed by this, but that’s not really what caught our attention in the Swedish language article posted by CarUp.
With Volvo committing to a full transition to electric cars, Bell’s experience at Tesla will likely make this a smoother process. Bell stated, “When I was at Tesla, there was a lot in the media. Half of it was hit-and-miss. I had been to the meeting with Elon, I saw the results.”
His time at Tesla, both in California and Berlin, provided him with much-needed insight into the Tesla way of developing and engineering cars. Most notably, Bell was there when megacasting became a thing and this is something that Volvo plans to adopt. With first-hand experience with megacastings, Bell can likely speed the process for Volvo.
Lastly, Bell made a rather interesting comparison between Tesla and other automakers. He said that for Tesla, there was never a newspaper or print edition. Tesla started out digital. Other automakers must transition from print to digital and this move doesn’t always progress as planned, it seems.