Volvo will go fully electric by 2030

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The Chinese carmaker on Tuesday announced plans to stop selling fossil fuel-powered cars by 2030 as part of an accelerating trend within the industry to respond to pressures to address the climate crisis. It also said its new electric vehicles will only be sold online.

The Swedish brand said that as part of the transition, it wants half of its sales by 2025 to be electric cars and the other half hybrids. That means it will stop selling vehicles that run exclusively on petrol or diesel within four years.

The targets are aggressive for a company that has only marketed one all-electric car, the XC40 Recharge. But they reflect a growing consensus that carmakers cannot delay the move to electric vehicles without losing customers and angering regulators.

“There is no long-term future for cars with internal combustion engines,” said Henrik Green, Volvo’s Chief Technology Officer. The move to electric-only sales allows Volvo to “meet our customers’ expectations and be part of the solution when it comes to fighting climate change,” he added.

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

Volvo said it will invest heavily in online sales and “radically reduce” the complexity of its product offering. Prices will be transparent, he said. The strategy is similar to that of Tesla, the market leader in electric cars, which only sells online.

The announcements come less than a week after Volvo’s owner, Geely BODY, scrapped plans to merge car manufacturers. China’s largest independent carmaker said the two companies will maintain their independent business structures, although they will work together on electric and autonomous driving technology.
The Volvo XC40 Recharge will be displayed at an event in Los Angeles, California in 2019.
Other automakers have announced plans in recent months to accelerate their transition to electric vehicles. Ford F. said in February that it plans to sell only electric passenger cars in Europe by 2030. General engines GM recently announced that it aims to sell only zero-emission vehicles by 2035.

Much of the action takes place in Volvo’s home market. Europe has set aggressive targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, and car manufacturers could face huge fines for not complying with the rules. That has helped put the continent ahead of the United States in adopting electric vehicles.

German car manufacturer Volkswagen VLKAF, which announced an alliance with Ford in 2019, is the leader in electric vehicle sales in Europe. Tesla TSLA is building its first European factory outside of Berlin, which will open later this year.

It is expected that electric vehicles will ultimately be cheaper to produce than traditional gasoline cars due to fewer moving parts and therefore less labor to assemble them.

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