If Volvo’s newly announced vow to go all electric by 2030 sounds unimpressive to you, that’s because a lot of automakers want to make it sound like they’re doing the same, but actually aren’t. The Swedish automaker is eschewing the small print, and promising not to sell another ICE vehicle after 2030.
Whereas other automakers have made promises to be carbon-neutral and to electrify their entire lineups in the near future, many of those announcements have caveats.
For instance, Mercedes has said that it will have an all-electric lineup by 2030, but allows that it may have to continue selling internal combustion vehicles in some markets that aren’t ready for EVs on an infrastructure level.
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Others are only committing to electrifying their entire lineup, meaning that every model they sell will have a battery, but the vehicles themselves could range from EVs to hybrids. Volvo previously made a similar pledge, but it has now committed to going electric only.
“Volvo will not sell a single car that is not full-electric after 2030, regardless of market,” Bjorn Annwall, Volvo’s chief commercial officer, told Autonews. “There’s no ifs, no buts.”
That could potentially cost it in markets that aren’t ready for EVs, but it could also cost it others, like the U.S. Although there’s a big push to electrify, projections suggest that EVs will only make up a minority (27 percent) of the market’s sales by 2030.
“There might be a few markets where we lose a little bit of sales,” said Annwall. But “we would give up a lot of growth if we didn’t focus on battery [vehicles …] Last time I looked, that’s a very strong growing market, and ICE is a shrinking market.”
Meanwhile, Volvo’s CEO, Jim Rowan, asked why his company should invest in “old technology.” He, too, admitted that going EV only may cost sales in the short term, but claimed that Volvo will “gain a lot more than we sacrifice.”
Still, 2030 is years away, meaning that Volvo’s existing internal combustion vehicles will continue to receive attention. Annwall said that the company’s existing lineup will still get “a bit of love,” but that Volvo is “not investing in their base technology.” Updates will be reserved for their tech and design, not their engines.
