Sino-Swedish automaker Volvo Cars is not confirming just yet what its BEV plans are beyond its new EX30, EX90 and EM90 launches. But it has dropped a couple of clear hints as to where its thoughts are lying.
One is its best-selling 60 series, which currently includes the S60 four-door mid-size sedan, the XC60 five-door, five-seat mid-sized SUV and its V60 estate equivalent. “It is obviously a natural progression” for Volvo to have a BEV offering in the class, suggests the firm’s CEO Jim Rowan.
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“The 60-size class for us has been an important part of the product portfolio,” he continues. “So it would be natural that we would at some point in time announce [a BEV option when we are ready to do that.” But he admits that “we are just not quite ready to announce when we will hit the market with the new 60 class in electric”.
Estate-shaped
And it seems possible that an estate-shaped model could be a part of, or in addition to, that thinking — given both the central role of estates in Volvo’s heritage and a relatively sparse competitive landscape for all-electric estates in Europe. But Rowan is not quite ready to commit as yet.
“We take the market analysis that we do, the demand profiles that we see in different parts of the world, and make that into what we call a cycle plan, where we decide which products we will bring to market and which products we will not bring to market,” says the Volvo chief. “Those are very considered choices that we make that involve lots of smart people and lots of analysis. And once we have done that, we then inform the markets.”
However, Rowan then uses the phrase “in the meantime”, before extolling the virtues of the “fantastic” V90 and V60 PHEV options. That could be a significant signpost towards a BEV estate announcement sometime in the relatively near future.
Until then, the firm has the global rollout of its EX30 compact SUV and its EX90 seven-seat EX90, as well as its Chinese market EM90 MPV on which to concentrate. The EX30 has already seen 40,000 cars leaving the factory, Volvo says. The EM90 has also already started production, with first customer deliveries in Q1. The EX90 will start production in the first half of 2024.
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