All Volvo car models launched after 2019 will be electric or hybrids, the Chinese-owned company said on Wednesday, making it the first major traditional automaker to set a date for phasing out vehicles powered solely by the internal combustion engine.
The Sweden-based company will continue to produce pure combustion-engine Volvos from models launched before that date, but its move signals the eventual end of nearly a century of Volvos powered solely that way.
While electric and hybrid vehicles are still only a small fraction of new cars sales, they are gaining ground at the premium end of the market, where Volvo operates and where Elon Musk's Tesla Motors has been a pure-play battery carmaker from day one. As technology improves and prices fall, many in the industry expect mass-market adoption to follow.
"This announcement marks the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car," Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson said.
The company, owned by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, said five new models set to be launched in 2019 through 2021 - three of them Volvos and two Polestar-branded - would all be fully electric.
"These five cars will be supplemented by a range of petrol and diesel plug in hybrid and mild hybrid 48-volt options on all models," Volvo said. "This means that there will in future be no Volvo cars without an electric motor."
Source: Reuters
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 06 2017, @02:16PM (1 child)
Smart are going all-electric in a number of countries, here's Canada reporting in,
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-drive/reviews/new-cars/review-smart-goes-all-electric-with-2018ev/article35534331/ [theglobeandmail.com]
Also announced for USA for 2018. Still requires a subsidy to make the price comparable with a combustion car.
Will be interesting to see how this works out for Smart.
My personal prediction--the big guzzling S-class Mercedes soon comes with a Smart-e as a mandatory option, so that the two together balance out on economy. This saves Daimler-Benz (parent company) some/all of the gas guzzler tax in USA. Are there guzzler taxes in other countries?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday July 08 2017, @03:57AM
What is "Smart-e" ?
(usually when something is deemed smart, it usually isn't.. at least for the customer)