VOLVO TO CONVERT ITS LINEUP TO ELECTRIC-ONLY BY 2030
CEO says, ‘If you want to be in the game you have to transform fast’
Volvo one-upped larger rivals like General Motors and added momentum to the movement toward electric vehicles Tuesday by saying it would convert its entire lineup to battery power by 2030, no longer selling cars with internal combustion engines.
The declaration by the Swedish carmaker is the latest attempt by a traditional auto company to break with its fossil fuels past. It is also one of the most ambitious proposals and ratchets up the pressure on others to follow suit.
Where once automakers bragged about horsepower and acceleration, now they are competing to be the greenest. GM said in January that it would go all-electric by 2035. Ford said last month it would sell only batterypowered cars in Europe starting in 2030, and the maker of Jaguar luxury cars made a similar promise.
Gasoline- and diesel-powered cars still account for the vast majority of sales, but in Europe sales of cars powered solely by batteries more than doubled last year, to about 730,000 vehicles, according to Schmidt Automotive Research. Sales of conventional autos slumped.
“If you want to be in the game you have to transform fast,” said Håkan Samuelsson, CEO of Volvo. “Otherwise you get stuck in a shrinking segment.”
BMW, Audi and MercedesBenz, German carmakers that target the same aff luent buyers as Volvo, have not yet set expiration dates for internal combustion models. They may be fearful of unsettling buyers of gasoline vehicles.
But they are no longer investing heavily in internal combustion engines and are rushing to produce vehicles that can compete with Tesla’s electric models.
Later this year, Volkswagen will begin selling its ID.4 electric SUV in the United States for about $40,000, before subtracting a federal tax credit of up to $7,500.
“They are all thinking pure electric,” said Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, a longtime industry analyst. “The only thing they are not doing is announcing a date.”
Volvo, owned by Geely Holding of China, has been ahead of larger rivals in converting to electric power. All the models it sells in Europe are either hybrids or run solely on batteries. But some of the Volvos are so-called mild hybrids, which have an electric motor that assists the gasoline engine but are not capable of running solely on battery power. Hybrids have better fuel economy than conventional vehicles, but they may not be much better for the climate or for urban air quality if drivers do not use the electric capabilities.
By 2030, Volvo will “phase out any car in its global portfolio with an internal combustion engine, including hybrids,” the company said in a statement Tuesday.
In another break from the practice of traditional carmakers, Volvo’s electric models will be sold exclusively online.
Dealers will still offer test drives and deliver vehicles, Samuelsson said, but ordering will be done on the Internet and prices will be fixed.
Volvo has only one batterypowered car on the market now, a version of its XC40 SUV. On Tuesday, Volvo unveiled a second model, the C40 crossover, which the company said is its first vehicle designed from the ground up to run on batteries. (Volvo also owns Polestar, which produces electric cars at a Geely Auto factory in China.)
The C40 will be able to travel 210 miles on a charge, Volvo said, a somewhat shorter range than the Tesla Model 3.