Thomas Ingenlath, Volvo design head, confirmed that Volvo’s first foray into their fully electric line-up will be an electrified version of the XC40. The design chief also said that the next-gen XC90 will be next in line to be electrified.
He added that the XC40 would be unveiled after the Polestar 2, which is due in 2019. The electric version of the XC90 will be next in line and the cars will be built at Volvo's new factory in Charleston, South Carolina in 2021.
Volvo has targeted 50 percent of its sales volume to be electric cars by 2025. Every Volvo will eventually be offered with a mild hybrid, hybrid or battery-electric powertrain option and the company won’t be making diesel engines anymore.
“It’s not a secret any more that the first full-electric Volvo is on its way with the XC40 coming," said Ingenlath. "It will arrive very soon after the Polestar 2. That is the first to come that’s not exotic. We’ll start with XC40 and then on it will come step after step into our model range. The next car will be the next-generation XC90. That will be the master plan of how electrification will come to the Volvo product range. We will not establish products beside our hybrids, we will introduce electrification as a powertrain variant within the existing portfolio," he went on to say. “You could say that is different to a lot of the mass-production brands. But I have a hard time to understand how their plan will work in the long run. Electrification is the future of the automotive industry, so how do you handle that as soon as you come to the majority of electric cars? How do you handle it in your portfolio? I think it’s much more natural to say it’s a powertrain variant that over time will take up the majority of the sold vehicles."
"We definitely don’t want to bring something that we’ve so successfully just launched like an XC40 to an end just because combustion engines will disappear," he said. "To look at new formats, new bodystyles and non-traditional elements, we founded Polestar to take care of that end of the scope. We developed that strategy: full electrification of the Volvo range, making it a natural part of the offer, and at the same time developing new, unconventional elements in the Polestar brand."