This week, Volvo Car Company produced its last car with a diesel engine, thus completing one era and striving to move on to the next - by 2030, it plans to only produce electric cars.
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 gradually phasing out diesel engine technology at a time when global demand for electric cars is cooling. At the same time, the company will still be producing cars with petrol engines.
"We are quite confident that we have very good offerings for customers even without diesel," said Erik Severinson, executive director of Volvo Car, responsible for new cars and operational strategy, in an interview.
Other car manufacturers have not strategically defined when they will stop working with internal combustion engines, and some have backed away from goals regarding electric cars. Last month, Mercedes-Benz adjusted its forecast for transitioning exclusively to electric cars. At the end of last year, Audi announced a reduction in the production of electric cars.
In 2017, Volvo Car became the first major carmaker to commit to gradually phasing out cars running solely on fossil fuels. Since then, the company has introduced several hybrid and fully electric models.
In the brand's main market in Europe, diesel cars peaked 9 years ago, accounting for about half of new sales. Last year, this figure dropped to 14%. Demand for diesel cars fell after Volkswagen admitted in 2015 to equipping its diesel engines with software to cheat emissions tests.
Source: bloomberg
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