Volvo will be fully electric by 2030

Volvo will be fully electric by 2030

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The carmaker, which is owned in China, on Tuesday planned to sell fossil fuel cars by 2030, which is part of an accelerated trend in the industry to respond to pressure to address the climate crisis. It also said that its new electric vehicles will only be sold online.

The Swedish brand has said that as part of the transition it wants half of its sales in 2025 electric cars and the other half of hybrids. This means that it will only stop selling vehicles that run on petrol or diesel only four years from now.

The targets are aggressive for a company that has only launched one fully electric vehicle, the XC40 Recharge. But it reflects a growing consensus that carmakers cannot slow down the switch to electric vehicles without losing customers and angering regulators.

“There is no long-term future for cars with an internal combustion engine,” Volvo’s chief technology officer Henrik Green said in a statement. The transition to selling electric cars only will enable Volvo to ‘meet the expectations of our customers and be part of the solution when it comes to combating climate change,’ he added.

The carmaker said its second fully electric car, a new model in the 40 series, will be unveiled later Tuesday. Several additional electric models will be introduced in the coming years.

Volvo said it would invest heavily in online sales and drastically reduce the complexity of its product offerings. The price will be transparent, he said. The strategy is similar to the strategy used by Tesla, the leader in electric cars, which is only sold online.

The announcements come less than a week after Volvo’s owner, Geely (BODY), scrapped plans to merge the carmakers. China’s largest independent carmaker has said the two companies will maintain their independent corporate structures, although they will work together on electrical and autonomous management technology.
The Volvo XC40 Recharge will be unveiled at an event in Los Angeles, California, in 2019.
Other automakers have announced plans in recent months to speed up their transition to electric vehicles. Ford (F) said in February that it intends to sell only electric passenger vehicles by 2030. General Motors (GM) recently announced that it intends to sell emission-free vehicles only by 2035.

Many of the actions take place in Volvo’s home market. Europe has imposed aggressive targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by vehicles, and carmakers face huge potential fines if they do not comply. It helped the continent adapt to electric vehicles ahead of the United States.

German carmaker Volkswagen (VLKAF), which announced an alliance with Ford in 2019, is the leader in the sale of electric vehicles in Europe. Tesla (TSLA) is building its first European factory outside Berlin, which opens later this year.

Electric vehicles are expected to be manufactured cheaper than traditional petrol-powered cars, thanks to less moving parts and therefore less manpower to assemble them.

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