Volvo announces that all its models will be electric from 2019

Every week we usually have news about some new electric or hybrid model that will reach the market, one more step in the transition towards increasingly cleaner vehicles that all companies will inevitably have to take. Of all the energy sources that will power the cars of the future, electric is the one gaining the most advantage over the rest, and companies such as Volvo, which had not yet taken the step towards electrification, have already announced their first fully electric model for 2019.

But now they have gone further, and will move to a catalogue by 2019 in which every model we see will be electric. Before reaching this point, the Swedish company has made a couple of moves that may help to better understand this decision: the first came in May, with the idea from its chief executive of abandoning diesel engines for the next generation of Volvo models; the second move came just a few days ago, when Polestar, the performance division of Volvo now independent within the Volvo Cars group, announced its decision to build electric sports cars.

Now we can close the circle with Volvo’s decision, since across its entire range of vehicles we will find pure electric, plug-in hybrid and mild hybrid models. In the words of Volvo’s chief executive, Håkan Samuelsson, this decision is based on the insistence of its customers to have electric vehicles in its line-up, something that in the near future will be solved with a wide variety of such models to suit all tastes.

This process of change will begin in 2019 and will extend until 2021, during which years Volvo Cars will launch five fully electric models, three of them from Volvo and the remaining two from Polestar. In addition, these five models will be complemented by a range of plug-in hybrid petrol and diesel models, as well as 48-volt mild hybrid options for all models. This means that, from 2019, Volvo will begin a new era in which it will no longer have any model powered exclusively by an internal combustion engine.

But this change will not only affect its models; Volvo Cars will also do everything possible to reduce the environmental impact produced in the manufacturing process. The goal set by the company is that, by 2025, its manufacturing processes will have no impact on the environment.