"We reduced the ambitions we had set to go 100 percent electric by 2030," Vanessa Butani, head of global sustainability at Volvo, said in an interview. "We're pushing that back a bit, not committing fully to a year right now, because we see that even though we're fully ready to do it, the market's not really with us."
Several years ago, automakers were tripping over themselves in a rush to declare their intentions to go all in on EVs. Volvo was among the most aggressive, setting the deadline of 2030 for its switch to an EV-only brand. "Instead of investing in a shrinking business, we choose to invest in the future - electric and online," then-Volvo CEO Håkan Samuelsson said in a statement.
The company is now saying that it will rely on a mix of hybrids and battery electric vehicles to reach its new goal of selling "90 to 100 percent... electrified models" by 2030. Carbon neutrality for the whole company, including its factory operations and supply chain, will be reached by 2040.
Butani calls this "adjusting our ambitions a bit." The adjustment is the result of months of declining customer interest in EVs, leading to slower growth in sales than originally predicted. Just 22 percent of new-vehicle shoppers told JD Power this past month they were "very likely" to consider an EV for their next new-vehicle purchase.
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