Volvo expects one in 10 of the automobiles it sells in 2022 to be pure electric, nearly doubling the percentage share of zero-emissions automobiles it sold in the final quarter of last year.
The Swedish brand’s round-up of financial results revealed that amid a record year for revenue, 34 per cent of Volvo’s sales in Q4 2021 were of chargeable automobiles – and six per cent were automobiles without a combustion engine altogether.
New 2022 Volvo XC90 replacement could be called Embla
Speaking at the presentation, Volvo’s chief financial officer Bjorn Annwall said that one of the goals for 2022 is to accelerate the share of EVs in the company’s sales. The gradual easing of the semi-conductor crisis will help this, along with Volvo’s full takeover of a production site in Taizhou, China.
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Annwall said Volvo now has to match the progress made considering that 2019, when six per cent of its sales were of chargeable vehicles. “Now the focus shifts to the full-electric cars,” Annwall said. “We need to do the exact same journey that we’ve made with chargeable on BEVs – six per cent to around 34 per cent. It will be hard, but we have a full organisation ready to make this happen.”
Volvo’s outgoing CEO Hakan Samuelsson said the firm is “on track” to be fully electric by 2030, despite the still-modest proportion of EV sales. “We have sold every BEV that we have built,” he said. “The method has always been to offer PHEVs first, because there are still problems with the charging network. We’re in a very high percentage chargeable, we now have a new 40-series automobile that is born electric, we have a new flagship coming that will be born electric, and then something that is in size a lot more of a ’20’; that will be a big contributor to our volume. We are on track.”
The new flagship – a successor to the current XC90 that is tipped to be called Embla – will be followed by additional large models with different body styles, Samuelsson revealed.
“We’ll show everyone the new flagship this year,” he said. “The body styles will be a lot more streamlined for pure-electric cars, but people still like the ease of step-in, step-out that comes with a higher vehicle. so that will come first, but there will be a lot more variants on the big-car platform.”
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