Volvo wants half of its 2025 sales to be electric cars

One in every two Volvo sold in 2025 will be an electric car. At least that is the intention of the Swedish brand, which bases this forecast on the strong pull of the Chinese market.

They cannot say it louder or more clearly. The Beijing Motor Show, where the Volvo S90 Ambience Concept was presented, has been the setting in which Volvo announced its intention that by 2025, one out of every two cars it sells will be an electric car.

Electric car sales in the Chinese market will exceed 7 million cars a year by 2025

And mind you, because Volvo is referring to “fully electric” cars. This would be the second phase of the electrification process announced in 2017, when Volvo announced that from 2019 all of its new models would have some form of electrification. And that included everything, from mild hybrids or light hybrids to plug-in hybrids. They are on track to achieve it.

The gamble is total. Of course Volvo is not playing it down, and it is playing its cards. It has the technology, and it also has the factories. Currently, at the Volvo Cars China plants, the Volvo S90 is produced in its combustion engine and plug-in hybrid (PHEV) versions, and the XC60 T8 Twin Engine, also a PHEV. And in Beijing, the hybrid version of the new Volvo XC40, for which it has already been announced there will be 100% electric powertrain variants.

The figures add up for Volvo. The plans point to in China, 20 percent of annual sales will be electric cars by 2025. That figure is above 7 million cars, and the Chinese market is already the main one for Volvo, which exceeded 100,000 units in 2017, with growth of almost 25 percent.