Simulation · Enterprise Training · Multiplayer

Volvo Cars SIM

An experience built for big workshops at Volvo Cars. Most business games simplify the finance until the lesson disappears. Volvo Cars SIM does the opposite. Five teams run a virtual carmaker across seven simulated years, and every decision lands somewhere real: a balance sheet, an income statement, and a value-creation tree that ends at return on invested capital measured against cost of capital.

Results

  • 01Played by 400+ Volvo Cars participants in hackathons and workshops worldwide
  • 02Seven simulated years, five competing teams, five markets, four product tiers
  • 03Five languages shipped, each with generated voice-over narration
  • 04Full corporate finance model: balance sheet, income statement, ROIC against cost of capital
  • 05Deployed on AWS for Europe, with a separate build for mainland China

01

Business acumen

The shape is fixed before anyone starts: seven years, five companies, five markets, four product tiers, one winner. A facilitator hands out a code and the room becomes a market. Empty seats go to ARK, the scripted rival.

02

Guided learning

First-timers get RoboTutor. The board dims, one control lights up, and the game waits until you use it. Two hundred scripted steps carry a player through the first two years, narrated as generated voice-over in all five languages.

03

Market competition

Each year opens with five companies bidding for the same order cards in real time, and marketing spend decides who picks first. Win too much and you cannot produce it. Win too little and your plants idle at full cost.

04

Capital investment

Four EV tiers, Primo through Nuovo, and everything upstream of them: procurement, assembly lines at 60 MU and three quarters to install, changeover, maintenance, depreciation, and whatever inventory that creates.

05

Value creation

The year ends on real statements: salaries, overheads, depreciation, then an income statement and a balance sheet stacked seven years wide. Twenty percent corporate tax, and a quarter off the price of anything delivered late.