Volvo boss wants 25 percent of 2021 sales to be EVs and plug-in hybrids

Volvo has already announced plans to unveil an all-new electric vehicle on March 2 as part of the company’s efforts to intensify its green push. The compact EV will join the zero-emissions XC40 Recharge as part of the Swedish automaker’s electric vehicle family, complementing a series of plug-in hybrid models. The two lineups could account for a quarter of the firm’s sales this year.

At least that’s what CEO Hakan Samuelsson wants as he has established a rather ambitious sales target for 2021: “About a quarter of our sales globally should be Recharge this year,” he told Automotive News Europe. In case you’re not familiar with the term “Recharge,” it’s used by Volvo to signal its plug-in hybrid and fully electric offerings.

Sales of the Recharge lineup are rising year after year, from 6.5 percent of Volvo’s global volume in 2019 to 17 percent last year. In the second half of 2020, PHEVs and EVs represented 19 percent of all sales managed by the Geely-owned brand.

In the long run, Volvo wants to become a pure EV brand by the end of the decade. To get there, it has vowed to introduce a new electric car every year to follow the XC40 Recharge and the upcoming new compact EV. Come 2022, the next-generation XC90 large SUV will spawn a battery-powered derivative.

By the middle of the decade, Volvo aims to have a total of five EVs in its family and those are estimated to account for half of all the company’s sales by 2025. Volvo Chief Financial Officer Carla De Geyseleer admitted in an interview with ANE the rise in EV volume has another benefit as the company is “making a good margin” with each electric car delivered.

Volvo has long abandoned developing new diesel engines while gasoline powertrains are gradually losing their importance in favor of entirely electric drivetrains. They still play a key role in plug-in hybrids, meaning the combustion engine is still sticking around for a while.

Source: Automotive News Europe