‘Volvo death knell for petrol cars' reads the front page of the Daily Mail today. 'Volvo signals end of road for petrol and diesel cars' proclaims the Times. The Telegraph's Business section front page goes further, with 'End of the road for fuel as Volvo goes all-electric'.
None of which are accurate, of course. These headlines make it read as if Volvo's announcement is the single biggest story to come out of the industry in a generation.
All Volvo models to become electrified from 2019
It's not. It's more the latest manufacturer to say a broadly similar thing and confirm the direction of travel in which the whole industry is heading. Volvo has simply just done the best PR job on the announcement, and credit to them for that. Watching the wider reaction has been quite remarkable.
It would be bigger news if Volvo actually declared the opposite. The very nature of the upcoming emissions regulations in 2021 and beyond in 2025 make electrifying cars - a key difference between only making electric cars and being the end of the internal combustion engine, for the internal combustion engine will play a big role in the mild-hybrid and plug-in hybrid powertrains that will power the majority Volvo’s cars anyway - the only viable option.
Of course, this doesn't make Volvo's announcement yesterday not news. It's significant and exciting that the firm has committed to making five electric cars by 2021, but it’s more significant to the firm itself than the wider industry.
Autocar research recently discovered there are more than 100 electric vehicles coming from mainstream manufacturers in the next few years, not least with one eye on the Chinese market, and this is Chinese-owned Volvo’s contribution to that. All manufacturers are in the same boat, each creating these cutting-edge cars and technology.
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I guessed that it was a very inaccurate news.
Jim Royale
I hope we're not forgetting that Volvo prommoted their deisel cars as being environmentally friendly, indeed most of their cars in Europe anyway, are deisel powered.
I used to buy Volvos, (petrols I may add, always found their deisels to be a tad rough), all 2.4L 5 cylinder engines... very environmentally unfriendly! When changing my last car I was invited along to a 4x4 day Volvo ran up near Kirknewton on the outskirts of Edinburgh - they were trying to tempt me away from my V70 in to XC90. They had me spinning around doing doughnuts in a field, then we tackled the 4x4 course driving thru rivers, up hills the car at all manner of angles - it was all very impressive. However I failed to see the point of me paying £50k for a car that I'd never dare do any of that with!
Anyway at the end of the day Volvo presented me with a tree - yes a TREE! (about 2ft tall) They said they were an environmentally friendly company and this was supposed to produce more oxygen in to the world. There I was driving around in a 2.4 D5 Geartronic monster, ploughing up fields, messing up the countryside, polluting the hell out of the countryside and returning less than 10mpg not to mention all those deisel fumes (the Volvo D5 was very poor on g/km CO2 back in 2005) and to balance that, they gave me a TREE !!!
As Jim Royale would say, Hybrid my AR** - Volvo couldn't give a toss about the environment. Does anyone seiously believe they are going to give up on Diesel XC's? Not a chance.
I don't know when the events
Diesel
Daily Fail