The Plan
Part of their plan to transition to a fully electrified lineup includes five new all-electric vehicles to be released between 2019 and 2021. Of these five, three will be release under the Volvo brand, while two will be released as high performance electric cars under the Polestar brand. This makes sense as Volvo recently announced that Polestar would become a fully electric performance standalone brand, as a partner to the Volvo brand.
In addition to these five fully-electric options, the rest of Volvo’s lineup will be plug-in hybrids or mild hybrids, with all vehicles receiving some form of electrification. President and Chief Executive Håkan Samuelsson says this move was made to tailor to customer needs and wants. The Volvo brand felt that their customers wanted electrification, so that is the direction that they decided to go.
It is likely that Volvo’s Chinese parent company, Geely, played a large part in this decision. China has been making a lot of efforts to put more electric cars on the road in order to reduce pollution. As such, the electric car market in China is hot right now. Volvo is likely going to try and capture some of that market share.
It will be interesting to see how other automakers respond to this all-electric move from Volvo. Look for more companies to follow suit in the near future.
While you wait, why not check out one of our videos on Volvo’s upcoming hybrid automobiles:
