Swedish car manufacturing company Volvo on Wednesday said all its models sold after 2019 will either be fully electric or hybrid models, The Guardian reported. This makes Volvo, owned by Zhejiang Geely Holding Group, the first major automaker to go entirely electric.
The company will continue to produce combustion-engine Volvos until 2019. “People increasingly demand electrified cars and we want to respond to our customers’ current and future needs,” Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson said, The Telegraph reported. He said that the company had earlier said it would sell one million electrified cars by 2025. “When we said it we meant it. This is how we are going to do it,” Samuelsson said.
The company said between 2019 and 2021, it will launch five new models of cars which will be fully electric. Of these five, three will be Volvos and two will be Polestar-brand. “These five cars will be supplemented by a range of petrol and diesel plug-in hybrid and mild hybrid 48-volt options on all models,” the company said in a statement.
Volvo electric cars will have to compete with Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors and Mercedes’ AMG division.
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