Volvo Cars, the premium car maker, has announced that it aims to sell a total of up to one million electrified cars by 2025.
The Swedish company plans to achieve this aim by offering at least two hybrid versions of every model in its range and releasing the first all-electric car in 2019.
“It is a deliberately ambitious target,” said Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive. “It is going to be a challenge, but Volvo wants to be at the forefront of this shift to electrification.”
Volvo Cars has been readying itself for the emergence of electrified vehicles for the last five years. It has developed two all new vehicle architectures for larger and smaller cars – Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) and Compact Modular Architecture (CMA) – that can incorporate either hybrid or fully electric car technology.
The new electrified car pledge forms part of a wide ranging review of Volvo’s strategic sustainability programme announced today that contains several new commitments that place sustainability at the centre of its future business operations.
The new commitment has been christened ‘omtanke’, a Swedish word that means ‘consideration’ or ‘caring’.
Among the commitments being made by Volvo Cars are that it will impose climate neutral operations by 2025, have 35% of its leading positions held by women by 2020, move further toward its vision that by 2020 no one will be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo, and work with international partners to promote sustainability.
“Sustainability is nothing new or something that sits outside our operations, it is something that forms an integral part of everything we do. It is simply our way of operating,” said Samuelsson. “This new sustainability commitment reflects Volvo Cars’ fundamental belief that we must also grow responsibly.”
April 22, 2016