One has to laugh at this latest development:
Volvo has confirmed it has backtracked on its promise to sell only fully electric cars by 2030 due to a fall in demand for battery vehicles.
The Swedish company announced today it is now aiming for 90 to 100 per cent of its global sales to be either pure electric or plug-in hybrid by the end of the decade.
It comes in response to a decline in appetite for EVs across major markets, including a slowing uptake of battery cars among private buyers in the UK.
Volvo executives said the delay to its EV schedule will ‘allow for a limited number of mild hybrid models to be sold, if needed’.
Let me be the first to say that “if needed” is going to become “vital to the company’s survival”, and the “limited number” will become most if not all of the entire product line.
In marketing terms, this is known as a “soft retraction” — note the shift from “all-electric” to “okay, we meant hybrids” — thus leaving space to keep using a normal internal combustion engine (ICE) instead of Duracell-only.
Gosh… let me see. The original plan can be characterized as follows:
“We’re going to refocus our company’s entire product line into a technology that is unreliable, unsupportable and ultimately unsustainable, relying on a support system that doesn’t yet exist, all while hiding behind the twin figleaves of government mandate/coercion and feelgood eco-friendship”.
…because in cold hard business terms, that’s exactly what the “all-electric” policy came down to.
Were I a major shareholder in such a corporation, I would demand the resignation of the entire management group that initiated such stupidity.
Not for the first time, the oh-so politically-correct Swedes are getting their noses rubbed in the hard reality of their silliness (see also: liberal immigration policy).
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of well-intentioned wokist assholes.
The switch to electric has always been fantasy. The use case just isn’t there for most customers, but even if it were we would have to be build more generation and transmission (like double what we have) not to mention charging stations by the tens if millions. None of that is happening nor even contemplated.
You missed the best part: “The company, owned by China’s Geely Automobile Holdings…”
So the Chinese, who are busily flooding the market with cheap EVs are quietly tiptoeing away from the All EV Future. Hmm….
Amen brother. Now let’s start rubbing some U.S. “elite” noses real hard on the granite of reality, or at least get their craniums extracted from sphincter neckties..
not granite, gravelly sand and clay so the gravel tears the skin and the sand and grit gets buried into the wounds
Just once, wouldn’t it be nice to see a major car company announce “For the foreseeable future, our company will produce the types of vehicles that our customers want to buy. If you want us to make electric cars, then start buying electric cars. Right now, you guys are buying sports cars, trucks, and SUVs with internal combustion engines, so that’s what we’re going to make.”
They’d get a bit of bad press, and a ton of money. Well worth it.
I’m surprised Ford or Chevy doesn’t do just that. Get the masculine muscle car crowd worked up.
Upper management at both FoMoCo and GMC are Wokesters and have lost sight of the real world – Both will be lucky to survive unless they pull their heads out of their backsides.
Will anyone give me even odds that all-electric cars are what upper management at FoMoCo and GM drive to their offices?
Ford, GM and Mercedes have already said that, just not using those words. They all have backed away from previous statements and commitments to move to ” all electric”. The media is pretending none of them said that and just ignores reporting on such things. They still think that if they don.t report something happened then it never did. Other manufactures never actually made any commitments to go fully electric. They only produced one or two versions and a copul4e of prototypes.
You won’t see stories on all the charging stations missing their copper charging cables either. Sales of EV’s have plateaued. All the “Cool Kids” have them now and no one else will touch them.
So, with all the car makers running like scaulded cats from the idea of making electric cars, where are clowns going to get their cars by 2035?
Hi Kim
Here in Belgium the only reasonable use for EV would be small urban or local use véhicles, the kind that was so well represented by eg the citroen 2cv or the small peugeot 205 latter.
and even those would only be my choice if the electricity was cheap and abundant ( nuclear anyone ).
Also car that do not burst in flame if you look a them sideway would be a nice thing.
I see no reason for it to be be differnt in the States or anywhere else
If I was still living in metro Chicago, I’d maybe consider an EV — but I’d probably opt for a SmartForTwo or, nowadays, a Fiat 500 (like the one I currently own, that New Wife uses).
It’s just too bad that nobody makes a “city car” anymore, so no wonder there’s a market for EVs there.
As it happened, when we moved to the city, we sold both our cars (VW Jetta x2) as the public transport in Chicago back then was truly excellent. If we needed to get out of the city, we’d just rent a car. Saved us hundreds of dollars per month, and allowed us to rent the apartment (2,800sqft) that we did.
The last true city car available here in Europe where the Peugeot 107, Citroën C1 and Toyota Aygo. Now only the Toyota remain and even her as grow in size as the Aygo Cross.
I wonder, does this mean the same for JagOOar as Volvo?
Will anyone give me even odds that all-electric cars are what upper management at FoMoCo and GM drive to their offices?