A new era
Volvo CEO Håkan Samuelsson’s has promised that from 2019 all the cars it launches will have the option of a fully electric drive train, conventional engine/electric hybrid or “mild” hybrid that assists a conventional engine shows the industry is now taking electric seriously.
Elon Musk’s Tesla regularly grabs headlines with its all-electric cars but the company punches considerably above its weight when you consider that it produced only 76,000 cars last year. By comparison, Volvo sold seven times that amount. VW Group, which overtook Toyota as the world’s largest car company in January, sold 10.3m.
Game changers
Non-polluting electric cars - at least at the level of the exhaust pipe, if they even have them - have yet to break into the mass market.
Cars currently available to buy from Tesla start at about £60,000 and Volvo’s range is firmly at the premium end of the sector.
However, that one of the world's major manufacturers is willing to make such a bold pledge will certainly have other automotive giants sitting up and taking notice.
Edmund King, president of the AA, described Volvo’s move as a “significant moment which shows a major manufacturer is fully committed to the technology”.
“We are getting to a tipping point for electric vehicles. When we get a mass market car that’s electric and has a range of 200 miles, that’s when we will see real change,” he said. “Other manufacturers are thinking that this is going to be a game changer.”
Toyota was an early mover in the sector with its Prius hybrids. These combine conventional and electric power systems and the technology now makes up more than 10pc of the company’s global sales, but the Japanese giant has yet to embrace electric across its vast range. In fact, the company is even looking at hydrogen power as an even more environmentally friendly alternative.
Reeling from the “dieselgate” scandal, VW has pledged billions of investment into electric cars having previously focused on what it saw as the fuel economy benefits of diesel. However, it is yet to offer it in mainstream vehicles.
