Volvo Says It Will Stop Selling Gasoline-Powered Cars by 2030

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/business/volvo-electric-cars.html

by pseudolus • 5 years ago

41 34 5 years ago

arkitaip• 5 years ago

9 years is a very aggressive deadline that will force Volvo to change the entire company from top to bottom and bottom to top. But if you want to achievement very difficult goals you really need to aim for the impossible.

im3w1l• 5 years ago

You seem to assume that the process starts today, but they have likely prepared for a while already before making this announcement.

dagw• 5 years ago

Volvo has been producing 100% electric cars on and off for a few years now and basically their entire line is available as plugin hybrids, so they're not completely starting from 0. The Polestar 2 has even been getting pretty good reviews, even when compared to Teslas.

chrisseaton8• 5 years ago

9 years is a very aggressive deadline

They've got no choice - governments are banning them in Y-9. It's adapt or go out of business at this late stage.

rsj_hn3• 5 years ago

LOL, no government is going to ban them in 9 years. OK, maybe Monaco or something.

First, fuel transitions take on the order of 50-60 years. Nothing happens in 9 years. The first successful diesel locomotive engine was sold in the 1920s, they reached 50% market share in the 1950s, and the last major steam powered train engine was retired in the 1970s. And that's with massive cost savings of diesel over steam and a capital good that was allocated rationally, as it wasn't a consumer good sold to hundreds of millions of people.

This isn't like software, where everyone leaves myspace in a few years and poof it's gone. People are in for a rude awakening when they face market realities of long term durable goods, especially engines that customers expect to last 20 years.

Or is this like the promises to reduce CO2? Have they ever kept a single one of those promises? Promising to do something, especially something unrealistic and to which your administration can't be held accountable, is not a meaningful promise, but a publicity stunt, made so easy by the fact that electorates today can only view the world in short time windows, thus the short memory and attention span which makes them easy to lie to, but also the impatience which requires a constant stream of unrealistic promises be made to them. You also see this in doomsday predictions, which are repeated ad nauseam - disaster X will happen in 10 years -- and due to the same short attention span no one seems to care that the same predictions were made forty, thirty, twenty, and ten years ago. It is always Year Zero for those living in the eternal now. And each time they are believed and met with promises as fake as the predictions, similar ineffectual promises being made 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and today.

Those who manage to live outside this bubble of inattentive forgetfulness realize that things happen slowly, they happen in response to market pressure, and governments have only limited influence on these pressures.

justin66• 5 years ago

The most interesting announcement is buried at the bottom:

In another break from industry practice, Volvo’s electric models will be sold exclusively online, bypassing dealers.

easton• 5 years ago

So all Volvo dealers are done? Interesting. I wonder how they'll do after-sale support (building a network back up from scratch will take a while.)

chrisseaton8• 5 years ago

You'll still need servicing. What's the difference between a dealership and a servicing location? Don't most people configure and order online anyway and just pick up from a dealer? What does the dealer really do except help you pick and show you how to use the car when you pick it up?

jfengel• 5 years ago

Tesla does without dealers, in part because electric cars require far less service. They have many fewer moving parts (under two dozen, by some counts). They don't need oil changes; their timing belts don't wear out; they don't need tuneups.

That's why car dealers have set up rules trying to keep Tesla out of many states. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_US_dealership_disputes for the whole rigamarole.

In Volvo's case it sounds like they're planning on having a large hybrid line that would still go through conventional dealers, which can presumably be tasked to deal with the electric stuff (though I'm sure there will be a fight about who pays what).

chrisseaton8• 5 years ago

Haven't many governments already said they'll stop allowing them to be sold by 2030?

So 'car manufacturer commits to stop building cars that they won't legally be allowed to sell' - that's the news?

flyingfences• 5 years ago

Many, but nowhere near all, governments have made feel-good statements that they'll pass some sort of legislation at some point by then.

nomel• 5 years ago

The amount of electrical infrastructure work required in many countries, cities, and homes means that gasoline cars will be sold, and aggressively maintained, for decades to come.

eric_b• 5 years ago

This article is incredibly factually incorrect:

In 2019, all the models it sold were either hybrids or ran solely on batteries.

This is provably false. I have several family members who own 2019 or newer Volvos that are gas powered only. Some of the models do offer a hybrid option, though many DO NOT (the S60 in 2019 for sure did not come with anything but a gas engine). And of the ones where there is a hybrid/plug-in option, they are the most expensive and lowest volume.

I can't take anything else in here remotely seriously.

bpsh• 5 years ago

Perhaps they meant to say that Volvo's strategy has been focusing on electric designs after 2019.

But yea, guess you can't expect journalists to be too focused on the specifics and facts these days.

cwhiz3• 5 years ago

It's not even true today. The V90 does not have a hybrid version.

mbalyuzi• 5 years ago

They do, but I think not in all markets?

https://www.volvocars.com/uk/v/cars/v90-hybrid

I think also they've discontinued the V40 as they couldn't deliver a hybrid version on that platform?

Elidrake24• 5 years ago

It's a claim made by Volvo themselves(1):

All of our cars are available with plug-in hybrid technology. Introduction of mild hybrid powertrains – all newly launched Volvos will be electrified, either hybrids or fully electric.

And yes the S60 was offered as a plugin hybrid, which can be confirmed with a simple Google Search. "Pure" gas models also used their "Mild Hybrid" setup - whether that should count is up for debate, but maybe you should take a moment and fact check your assumptions?

(1) - https://www.volvocars.com/intl/why-volvo/human-innovation/el...

senkora• 5 years ago

All models having hybrid options is pretty different from all models being hybrids.

That sentence in the article is just poorly written.

cwhiz3• 5 years ago

That's neat and interesting... but the price difference between a Volvo plug-in hybrid and a Volvo gasoline vehicle are astounding.

Take the V60, a popular wagon. Gasoline model starts at $41.6k, and the hybrid model starts at $67.9k. Are these the kind of prices that Volvo is going to be aiming for?

Supersaiyan_IV• 5 years ago

They also said they'd have their first consumer electric car ready 2020. Where can I buy Volvo's electric car? Nowhere.

Since they're so committed to this transformation, I'm assuming that they've already fired most of the gasoline-competence, since (most of) those employees are too old to learn anything new (i.e. electric car tech.)

If firing gasoline-car competence is a worldwide phenomenon, then by 2030 it'll reach irreversible brain-drain levels.

Volvo Says It Will Stop Selling Gasoline-Powered Cars by 2030

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