Every Volvo vehicle launched from 2019 will have an electric motor, company says

Volvo Cars announced earlier this week that every Volvo it launches from 2019 will have an electric motor, “marking the historic end of cars that only have an internal combustion engine (ICE) and placing electrification at the core of its future business.”

Volvo Cars, the premium car maker, has announced that Polestar, its performance car arm, is to become a new separately-branded electrified global high performance car company, marking the latest stage in Volvo’s ongoing transformation. Credit: Volvo Cars.

“The announcement represents one of the most significant strategies by any car maker to embrace electrification and highlights how over a century after the invention of the internal combustion engine electrification is paving the way for a new chapter in automotive history,” Volvo Car Canada Limited said in a press release.

The company reported that it will introduce a portfolio of electrified cars across its model range, embracing fully electric cars, plug-in hybrid cars and mild hybrid cars. It will launch five fully electric cars between 2019 and 2021, three of which will be Volvo models and two of which will be high performance electrified cars from Polestar, Volvo Cars’ performance car arm. Full details of these models will be announced at a later date, the release said.

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. “This means that there will in future be no Volvo cars without an electric motor, as pure ICE cars are gradually phased out and replaced by ICE cars that are enhanced with electrified options,” the release said.

“This announcement marks the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car,” said Volvo president and chief executive Håkan Samuelsson. “Volvo Cars has stated that it plans to have sold a total of [one million] electrified cars by 2025. When we said it we meant it. This is how we are going to do it.”

The announcement also underlines Volvo Cars’ commitment to minimizing its environmental impact, the company added. “Volvo Cars is focused on reducing the carbon emissions of both its products as well as its operations. It aims to have climate neutral manufacturing operations by 2025.”

Volvo Car Canada Ltd. is a subsidiary of Volvo Car Group of Gothenburg, Sweden. The Canadian subsidiary provides marketing, sales, parts, service, technology and training support to the 36 Volvo automobile retailers across Canada.

Volvo has been in operation since 1927 and had sales of 503,127 vehicles in 2015 in about 100 countries. The company formed part of the Swedish Volvo Group until 1999, when the company was bought by Ford Motor Company of the United States. In 2010, Volvo Cars was acquired by Geely Holding. As of December 2014, Volvo Cars had over 25,000 employees worldwide.