Volvo to be all-electric by 2030

Bans on combustion engines are popping up in cities all over the world, but that should not be a concern to Volvo.

The Swedish car-maker today insisted its model line-up will be all-electric before 2030, which is when most combustion engine bans are due to kick in everywhere from London and Paris to Tokyo.

"I would be surprised if we wouldn't deliver only electric cars from 2030," Volvo CEO and president Hakan Samuelsson told today’s Financial Times Future of the Car Summit.

Achieving this ambition would make Volvo the second legacy car-maker to confirm the move, after Bentley announced the same thing last month.

Samuelsson would not set a timeline for the construction of Volvo’s last petrol or diesel combustion engine, but he insisted it would be before 2030.

Volvo has played it cute with the wording of its EV announcements before, suckering people into thinking they meant EV when the word “electrified” actually meant plug-in hybrids.

Still, Samuelsson insisted one in five of Volvo’s 2020 sales would be electrified (plug-in hybrids), and half of would be pure EVs within five years.

Volvo Australia has predicted 20 per cent of its Australian sales will be either plug-in hybrids or EVs by the end of next year, all beneath its 'Recharge' electrified vehicle umbrella.

Samuelsson also insisted cash incentives and tax breaks were the wrong way to go about pulling EV sales forward and into the mainstream. It would have to be driven by legislation, he argued.

"The way forward would be to have clear rules on when we need to exit the combustion engine," he said.

"Once you have realised that the petrol and diesel engine are really not part of the future, it’s rather easy to see you have to move fast into the new world."

"Volvo will be very careful and deliver only electric engines before anybody has legal requirements for this," he said.