Volvo has a pretty ambitious set of goals for the next few years. The most well-known of those is its bid to ensure that, by 2020, no one dies in one of its cars. But it now seems that it also has serious plans for the electric car space.
According to a press release sent to Motorburn, the Swedish automaker hopes to have one-million electric and hybrid cars on the road by 2025. It hopes to achieve this by offering at least two hybrid versions of every model in its range and by releasing its first dedicated all-electric car in 2019.
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“It is a deliberately ambitious target,” says 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.”
In preparation for achieving that target, Volvo has developed two vehicle architectures for larger and smaller cars — Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) and Compact Modular Architecture (CMA) — which can incorporate either hybrid or fully-electric technology.
The larger 90- and 60-series cars are to be built on SPA, and the company will soon launch a global range of smaller 40 series cars on the CMA platform. All of these cars will be available as electrified models alongside their conventional petrol and diesel variants. The one million electrified car target is a cumulative total.
The new commitment has been christened ‘omtanke’, which is a Swedish word which means ‘consideration’ or ‘caring’.
Other 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 towards its vision that by 2020 no one will be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo
- 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,” concludes Samuelsson. “This new sustainability commitment reflects Volvo Cars’ fundamental belief that we must also grow responsibly.”
