Volvo announced today that all of its new cars and SUVs starting in 2019 will be fitted with electric motors, thus completely ending its manufacture of vehicles powered by gasoline-only or diesel-only engines.
We’ve previously reported on Volvo’s electrification strategy, and its goal of selling one million electrified vehicles by 2025. The new announcement deepens and broadens the company’s commitment to eliminating gasoline and diesel engines from its vehicles.
“This is about the customer,” said Håkan Samuelsson, Volvo’s president and chief executive. “People increasingly demand electrified cars and we want to respond to our customers’ current and future needs.”
The company plans on introducing models powered by all-electric, mild hybrid or plug-in hybrid powertrains (the latter using the acclaimed T8 powertrain). It was already known that Volvo had plans to produce a 100% electric car before the end of the present decade, but the company upped the ante in its announcement today by declaring its intention of introducing five all-electric models between 2019 and 2021 – three Volvo models and two high-performance Polestar models.