According to Volvo boss Hakan Samuelsson, his company plans on topping Tesla in the next 10 years, which he considers to be a segment leader at the moment.
Since Tesla’s approach to the EV market has always been an emotional one (not just pragmatic), Samuelsson thinks Volvo too can be equally innovative in their approach, concerning both design as well as technology.
“It’s all about how we can bring new value to our customers,” he said. “That’s important and that’s how you can improve the emotional value of the car. We need to have something that is not just transportation, but that has some other emotional values also.”
The Volvo boss told Autoexpress that “pure performance cars – that could be something we want to go in to with electrification. More premium, more emotion and a higher price. More functionality, more connectivity, more service. Someone else can have the honor of pure petrol-driven sports cars.”
Samuelsson also had high praise for Tesla, saying that they deserve credit for what they managed to accomplish. “I must give them credit – they have made a car with emotional values also. I think Tesla is a better benchmark. It is premium and pure; it is built with passion. You cannot just do transportation from A to B – you can do that with a Ford Fiesta, but I doubt that [for Tesla] that would be enough.”
Last year, Volvo announced plans for a full range of plug-in models, spearheaded by a Tesla Model 3-rivaling S60-sized EV scheduled for 2019.
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