Volvo unveils first pedestrian airbag
Volvo Car Corp. showed a fivedoor hatchback this week in Geneva featuring the world’s first pedestrian airbag. The Swedish carmaker is counting on such innovations to burnish its safety image and help double sales.
The V40, Volvo’s first model designed under owner Zhejianggeely Holding Group Co. of China, has an airbag that ejects from the hood to protect pedestrians from injury. It also has a backswept headlight and panoramic glass roof to give it a sporty look.
Volvo is targeting the hatchback at potential buyers of BMW AG’S 1-Series, Audi AG’S A3 and Daimler AG’S Mercedes-benz A-class as the carmaker tries to push into the premium market.
Volvo will need to fill other gaps in its product lineup and replace aging vehicles to meet a target of lifting annual volume to 800,000 by 2020.
Old models and holes in Volvo’s product portfolio highlight the high development costs in the auto industry and the difficult choices facing an automaker that is not part of a larger group.
Volvo sold 449,255 cars last year. That compares with 1.3 million at Audi, itself a unit of Volkswagen AG, which delivered 8.27 million vehicles across all its brands.
The V40 “is an important model for the brand as it further progresses along the road to making Volvo a more viable premium- brand competitor,” said Jonathon Poskitt, head of European sales forecasting at LMC Automotive in Oxford. “For Volvo to really take the fight to the likes of Audi and BMW, it will need to look to roll out this new, sharper styling to the replacements that come over the next few years.”
Volvo, which will start building the car in May, targets annual sales of 90,000, mainly in Europe.