EVs to play significant role in closing on record sales this year: Volvo MD

A senior official at the Swedish company Volvo Cars said today, Wednesday, that the Swedish company Volvo Cars expects electric cars to play an important role in its attempt to achieve record sales in India this year.

The company has unveiled its all-electric C40 Recharge SUV in India, which will be launched in August and deliveries will begin in September onwards.

The vehicle will be the company’s second electric offering in India after the launch of the all-electric XC40 Recharge last year.

“2023 started off on a very promising note and we think we are going to do much better this year compared to the last few years. Since the pandemic, I think the market has been a bit slow and then we had supply issues.

“The supply issue is still around us, but I think we should come back sooner than the 2018 number which was its peak,” Volvo Car India managing director Jyoti Malhotra told PTI here.

In 2018, Volvo Car India sold 2,600 units. Last year it sold about 1,800 units in the domestic market.

When asked if the company could surpass record sales this year, he said, “We want to surpass it. I’m very confident on the demand side but on the supply side there are still constraints.”

The supply chain constraints are mostly about semiconductors, he said, adding that the average wait time is currently about three months across models.

Malhotra said that electric vehicles will play a significant role in closing record sales this year.

“The way we do business, we started our first (electric) car last year with the XC40 Recharge, and now we offer the C40 Recharge. This will help us improve the market and we are very confident that this will help us add new customers to buy electric cars.”

Malhotra added, “Within our own portfolio, we are now close to 27 percent (of total sales coming from electric vehicles).”

Earlier this year in February, the company said it could go fully electric in India by around 2025, before becoming an all-electric car company by 2030.

The company has stated that it will continue to launch one electric vehicle per year in the country.

“I think we’re pretty much on the right track and we think we’re going to get there faster,” Malhotra said of the progress towards electrification.

In the C40 Recharge, he said, it was built like an electric car from scratch, offering a range of up to 530 kilometers on a single charge.

It has a 78 kWh battery, twin motors and a maximum power of 408 hp. The car can accelerate from 0-100 km / h in 4.8 seconds.

It also has a fast charging feature that allows charging from 10-80 percent in 27 minutes.

The C40 Recharge will be imported as fully disassembled units and assembled at the company’s Bengaluru plant as is the XC40 Recharge.

The current Indian Volvo range consists of the all-electric XC40 Recharge, the XC90 SUV, the XC60 and the XC40 along with the S90 sedan.