Volvo Goes Green, Says ‘No’ to Diesel

Come 2019, and the Swedish luxury car company Volvo Car India is working on to usher in a “historic end” to building models that only have an internal combustion engine. This means that all new cars launched by Volvo from 2019 would be partially or completely battery-powered.

Volvo Cars aim at selling 1 million electrified cars by 2025. And the company hopes to accomplish this by creating two or more hybrid versions of every car it sells. Volvo’s first fully-electric car will be in the market sometime in 2019, said Charles Frump, managing director, Volvo Car India. Significantly, the latest report from the UN’s Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative, has acknowledged Volvo’s electrification strategy. As a first step towards its green initiative, the luxury car maker would stop developing any new diesel engine and the company does not see any future for diesel cars.

Volvo has so far sold a little over 100 plug-in hybrid cars in India over the last 17-18 months. With a view to double its market share in the country by 2020, the auto major is already in an expansion mode. The company, which, at present, has 22 dealers, will take the number up to 28 over the next few months. The cities, which Volvo is looking at to open its new dealership include Indore, Noida, Rajkot, Hubli, and Trivandrum. Once that expansion is complete by the end of the current year, the company will try to add one dealer per month for the next few months, said Frump.

At present, Volvo has its dealership network in cities like Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi NCR – South Delhi, West Delhi and Gurgaon, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kozhikode, Lucknow, Ludhiana, Mumbai, Pune, Raipur, Surat, Vishakhapatnam, and Vijayawada.

Frump, who was here to throw open its Kolkata dealership- SPL Volvo, Kolkata, built on a 8100 sqft showroom with a dedicated service centre of 20,000 sqft, said that last year the company had recorded a 28 percent YOY growth, capturing a 5 percent market share in the luxury car market and moves were already afoot to reach 10 percent market share by 2020.

India model line-up for Volvo includes: Sedan – S60 & S90, Cross Country – V40 Cross Country, V90 Cross Country & S60 Cross Country, SUVs – XC60, XC90 & XC90 T8 Excellence and Hatchback- V40.

Frump said that Volvo India is also working on to bring down the charging time and increase run-time. At present, Volvo plug-in hybrid cars need 4 hours of charging for a run of 40 km.