Goodbye for good to diesel! Volvo will stop manufacturing cars with diesel engines in early 2024

It is curious that Volvo was the first brand to put a plug-in hybrid with diesel technology on the market, the V60 PHEV, back in 2019. And now the Swedish brand announces that it will abandon this type of engine as early as in a few months: from early 2024 Volvo will stop producing vehicles with diesel engines. That is how clear and how categorical the Swedish manufacturer has been with the announcement made during New York Climate Week.

Let us recall that last year Volvo announced its decision to abandon the development of new combustion engines of any kind: “we will no longer dedicate a single krona of our R&D budget to the development of new internal combustion engines”, announced the top executives of the Swedish brand. And to think that just four years ago, in 2019, most of the vehicles sold by Volvo in Europe were diesel…

In the current Volvo range, the Volvo XC90, the XC60, the XC40, the V90, the V60, the S90 and the S60 still have diesel engines. All of them, therefore, will stop offering this type of engine from 2024.

And what about petrol engines? Well, as the saying goes, “make do with what you have…” Volvo will still sell versions with its current petrol engines for a while, which will also be used in the plug-in hybrids. But it will no longer develop new technology; it will make do with what it has, with the adaptations needed to keep meeting anti-pollution regulations, until in 2030 it moves to selling only 100 percent electric cars.

The response from Volvo: electric and more electric

“We are committed to electrification because it is the right thing to do. It is high time the industry and political leaders were strong and decisive and implemented meaningful policies and actions to fight climate change. We are committed to doing our part and to encouraging our peers and political leaders around the world to do theirs”, states emphatically Jim Rowan, chief executive of Volvo Cars.

With plug-in hybrids still as a complement in the transition to electric, Volvo’s latest launches are all battery-only engines: the Volvo C40, the EX90 and the EX30, and the EM90, the first fully electric MPV from Volvo, has already been announced.

Volvo is not the first brand to say a definitive goodbye to diesel. Smart, to name one, gave up combustion engines in 2020, and since then it has sold only electric cars. And many brands have announced their intention to launch only new electric cars on the market: DS from 20245, Jaguar from 2025, Audi from 2026… These brands will continue to sell cars with combustion engines for some years, in many cases plug-in hybrids. But every new model launch will be exclusively electric, with 2035 as the horizon by which the European Union, unless synthetic fuels change things, has banned combustion engines.