Volvo Cars has one of the most aggressive EV transition plans among the legacy automakers. It plans to sell only fully electric cars worldwide by 2030. Last year, 70-year-old Volvo Cars CEO Håkan Samuelsson said, “I am totally convinced there will be no customers who really want to stay with a petrol engine.” Just 8 years away from that point, the company is far from 100% electric, but it’s going in the right direction.
The latest sales report from Volvo Cars shows that 5.7% of the company’s global auto sales were fully electric auto sales in August. Plugin vehicles overall (Volvo’s Recharge vehicles) accounted for 21.9% of sales.
In Europe, 47.8% of Volvo Cars sales were Recharge models in August, 10.6% were full electrics. In August, full electric sales were up 89.6%. In January–August, they were up 70.8%.
In the USA, those figures were 27.8% (Recharge models) and 6.3% (full electrics). Unfortunately, full electric sales were down dramatically in the USA in August (down 70.9%, from 708 to 206 sales). In the first 8 months of the year overall, they were up slightly (4.5%, from 3,935 to 4,111).
China, surprisingly, is where Volvo Cars is not doing as well in this regard. In August, 7% of the company’s sales were Recharge models, while only 1.7% were fully electric. That said, full electrics went from 52 in August 2021 to 492 in August 2022 (an increase of 846.2%), and for January–August, they went from 373 to 1,720 (an increase of 361.1%).
Almost across the board, plugin hybrid sales were down year over year. It was only looking at January–August sales in the US that they had a year-over-year increase (36%).
While the Europe, USA, and China numbers are fascinating, the “other markets” numbers were most interesting of all. In August, full electrics were up 192.3% (from 117 to 342 — small numbers, to be fair). In the first 8 months of 2022, they were up 1128.7%! That was going from 404 (almost nothing) to 4,964.
Any other thoughts on these Volvo Cars numbers?
You can see that Volvo Cars sales were down overall 4.6% in August and a whopping 21.5% in January–August.
Related: Volvo CEO: Totally Convinced No One Will Want A Gas Car In 2030
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