This week, Volvo Car produced its last diesel-powered car. This marks the end of one era and the beginning of the next – by 2030, the company plans to produce only electric vehicles.
The last Volvo car with a diesel engine was the XC90 sports utility vehicle. It rolled off the assembly line at the Torslanda plant in Sweden on Tuesday evening. Volvo is phasing out diesel engine technology at a time when global demand for electric vehicles is cooling. At the same time, the company will still produce cars with gasoline engines.
«We are quite confident that we have very good offers for customers even without diesel,» said Erik Severinson, CEO of Volvo Car, responsible for new cars and operational strategy, in an interview.
Other automakers have not strategically determined when they will stop working with internal combustion engines, and some have backed off their electric vehicle targets. Last month Mercedes-Benz has adjusted its forecast for the transition to exclusively electric vehicles. At the end of last year, Audi announced that it was reducing the production of electric vehicles.
In 2017, Volvo Car became the first major automaker to commit to gradually phasing out cars that run exclusively on fossil fuels. Since then, the company has introduced several hybrid and all-electric models.
In the brand’s main market in Europe, diesel cars reached their peak 9 years ago, accounting for about half of new sales. Last year, this figure fell to 14%. Demand for diesel cars fell after Volkswagen admitted in 2015 that it had rigged its diesel engines with software to cheat on emissions tests.
Source: bloomberg