Team-BHP - Volvo plans to bring only hybrids, EVs to India from 2019

Charles Frump, Managing Director of Volvo Auto India has revealed that the Swedish carmaker plans to bring only hybrid, mild-hybrid, plug-in hybrid or full-electric vehicles to India starting 2019. The company also plans to phase out conventional engine options in new vehicles.

Volvo plans to bring only hybrids, EVs to India from 2019-volvo-hybrid.jpg

This move is in line with the Indian government's initiative to switch to all-electric powered cars by 2030. Volvo is looking to use this opportunity to become the leader in the electric luxury car segment in India.

Volvo is aware that the lack of charging infrastructure in India will pose a challenge. It claims that it has a range of mild hybrid, plug-in hybrid, full hybrid and electric vehicles that it could sell in the country according to the prevalent situation.

Volvo aims to sell 10 lakh electric vehicles globally by 2025.

Source: The Economic Times

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This is a PR & marketing masterstroke clap:. It'll immediately portray Volvo as having the technological edge, green, eco-friendly and "with the times". Volvo can use all the branding advantages it can get as in the eyes of many car buyers, it's still incomparable to the Big 3 Germans.

And if Volvo can do this in India, they can very well do the same in other (larger) markets too.

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Originally Posted by drmohitg (Post 4332387)

What would happen to their current line up in this case? Does it mean they won't offer them in the current forms anymore?

Current line-up will continue as is for now. It's a smartly worded article, emphasis being on "bring new cars" which are hybrids / EVs.

There is some history to this, Volvo has been working with "electrification" process for their models for quite sometime, and had announced all products sold globally from 2019 onwards would have some amount of "electrification". Thus various combos of hybrid system and bringing that into India would be super easy for them, all their new age architecture has been designed while keeping this in mind and would be plug and play for them from manufacturing perspective.

Edit: Just a google search will give you more info

Good PR.

Also good to see the commitment towards Cleaner fuels, yet..

I have loved all Volvo cars brought into India in the last 3 years. I tried recommending them at times to my friends and relatives but the absence of comparable service network and the Badge glow sees them loose out each time. In fact I find Volvo to be much more VFM compared to the Big 3 and JLR etc. but for most Indians Volvo is just the best Bus and Truck manufacturer.

It will require sustained effort over time to get Volvo it's due.

‘A new small SUV EV will play well for us in emerging markets like India’: Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan.

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Volvo Cars is to unveil a new small all-electric SUV, which may make its way into emerging markets like India by 2024-25; the top-of-the-line flagship EX90 SUV is also likely to be added to the portfolio.

On infrastructure and localization:

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think in India, one of the friction factors towards BEV adoption has to be obviously the infrastructure. It will evolve quickly, starting with Mumbai and Delhi and maybe a lot of parts of the country later, and it will evolve city by city. The way in which India is governed as well that becomes a state-by-state decision in terms of budgets and so on. Therefore, it may evolve with time

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India is not a big market for us at the moment. It would be a stretch for us to have an (manufacturing) operation. There would need to be adjacency to that. We need to make sure that we can feed India and other countries, other than just India, from that location. Therefore, we need to look at the logistics and also the cost benefits versus being somewhere else in Asia. That is if we decided to do another manufacturing facility outside of China

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