Johan Taws

PROGRAM CHIEF ENGINEER, 2019 VOLVO XC40.

- Gary Witzenburg

Born and raised in Gothenburg, Sweden, Johan Taws’ automotive interest began with his father’s MG TF and led him to engineering. He earned a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Gothenburg and worked with Volvo as a consultant with an outside firm before the company hired him in 2000. Volvo then sent him to the U.S. as a body and trim quality engineer.

“My kids were one and three when we moved to New Jersey,” he says, “and my three years there were probably the best three years of my life. I was moving around the U.S., sitting in roundtable sessions, collecting customer feedback, and sending it back to Sweden. That gave me an awareness of the importance of really understanding the competition and satisfying the needs of the customer. At that point, I made the choice that this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life.”

Taws returned to Sweden as a body and trim engineering program manager, working on mid-cycle upgrades and facelifts of the previous XC60 CUV and V60 wagon, before being sent to China as senior program manager for Volvo’s first Chinese-adapted car, the long-wheelbase S60 sedan, and to help set up a plant in Chengdu to assemble it. For the first six months, he commuted back and forth between Gothenburg and Shanghai every two weeks. “I was constantly jet-lagged for half a year,” he says with a chuckle. He then moved to chief program engineer for the Chinese XC60 CUV before returning to Gothenburg to lead this all-new XC40 program.