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In nine years only electric:
The Volvo brand is switching completely to electric drives and taking combustion engines out of its range
Photo: Uli Deck / dpa
From 2025 Jaguar only wants to sell cars with a purely electric drive, at Porsche half of all new cars sold should then be purely electric or with plug-in hybrid drives: All of these are signs that the automotive industry is now strongly accelerating the departure from the internal combustion engine.
The previous big electric announcements often came from brands whose sales figures were comparatively low - and for whom switching to battery-only electric drives should therefore be a little easier.
Now, with the Swedish-Chinese luxury car maker Volvo (vehicle sales 2020: 705,452 cars, annual profit in the Corona year: 770 million euros), a significantly larger manufacturer from the combustion engine coverage is daring.
From 2030, Volvo only wants to build and sell pure electric cars, according to a press release that manager magazin received in advance.
And unlike Porsche, for example, Volvo will not only no longer offer vehicles with internal combustion engines, but also none with hybrid drives in 9 years' time.
This means that Volvo is implementing its electrification strategy even faster than initially planned, according to the press release.
Volvo has been part of the Chinese car maker Geely since 2010, whose founder
Li Shufu
(57) holds almost 10 percent of the German car maker Daimler.
Almost four years ago, Volvo announced its goodbye to the combustion engine, but left a large back door open: The fully electrified new vehicle fleet announced for 2019 also included so-called mild hybrid engines, which only slightly reduce the consumption of an internal combustion engine.
In 2017, Volvo boss Hakan Samuelsson did not want to decide from which year the Swedes would sell more plug-in and battery-only electric drives than conventional vehicles.
Volvo: "Commercial model is facing a fundamental change"
In this regard, the current announcement leaves no doubt: It is now clear that Volvo will no longer sell conventional gasoline or diesel drives in nine years.
According to its own statements, Volvo is not only doing this in order to achieve its ambitious global climate targets.
According to Volvo, the proportion of customers who opt for electrified models is already increasing today.
Last year, almost every third Volvo customer opted for a Volvo with a battery that can be recharged from a socket, explained Volvo Germany boss Thomas Bauch at a recent event.
However, a second announcement is likely to cause high tension, especially among dealers.
Because Volvo wants to sell its electric cars exclusively online in the future.
And not in the distant future, but almost immediately - starting with the electric SUV XC40 Recharge of model year 2022. "Even if the current retail model is facing a fundamental change, the contractual partners will continue to play an important role," it says in one further press release.
They should remain the point of contact for customers and strengthen the further development of customer relationships.
"Instead of investing in a shrinking business, we prefer to invest in the future - electric and online," said Volvo boss Samuelsson in the press release.
His company wants to take "a leading position" in the rapidly growing premium electric car segment and will therefore concentrate on the development of electric cars in the future.
In order to improve online sales, Volvo plans to invest "heavily" in its online sales channels.
This should also reduce the "complexity in the product range" and work with "transparent and fixed price models".
This suggests that Volvo only offers pure electric models online.
These are supposed to be offered preconfigured, so they can no longer be "personalized" so much with extras that are subject to a surcharge.
In addition, Volvo is likely to say goodbye to the online sale of older models with internal combustion engines or plug-in hybrid engines.
With the XC40 Recharge, Volvo has so far had a single battery-only electric model in its range; another model will be presented shortly.
Customers can forget about haggling over the price of new electric cars
On the other hand, haggling for discounts is a thing of the past with Volvo's e-cars.
"The transparent price model with fixed conditions makes negotiations superfluous," it says.
The role of Volvo dealers will change in the near future: According to Volvo, they should "remain a crucial part of the customer experience" - and in Germany also the central point of contact for customers.
Dealers should therefore continue to advise customers and enable test drives.
Services such as "the sale, preparation, delivery and maintenance of the vehicles are the responsibility of the contract partners", assures Volvo in the press release.
Only one thing is likely to be difficult for dealers in the future: The press release does not reveal the extent to which dealers will participate in the margin of every car sold online.
For German car dealers, according to trade associations, the sale of new cars was no longer particularly attractive in recent years: Association representatives often cited profits of just 1.5 percent per car sold based on the price of the new car.
Volvo apparently wants to compensate for the loss of sales profit per new electric car for dealers with something else: The previous subscription model of the Swedes, called Care by Volvo ", is to be extensively expanded. The subscription fee already includes costs for service, warranty and breakdown assistance , Insurance and charging options for at home - retailers will probably also earn more from this in the future.
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