Volvo will launch its first electric car in 2019

Swedish automaker Volvo will start selling fully electric cars from 2019. Before that, the company will make a range of smaller, electrified cars that are not for sale. In the meantime, a hybrid model of all existing models will also come on the market.

Volvo writes this in a message on its site. The announcement comes after the company’s electrification strategy was made public. Part of the strategy is that there will be hybrid versions of the 90 and 60 series. The first car already available is the XC90 with a T8 Twin-Engine with an electric motor and a 2 liter petrol engine. Other 90 and 60 models will follow later. The electric motor will drive the rear wheels in these versions, while the petrol engine will drive the front wheels. The technology is based on a modular system that Volvo calls Scalable Product Architecture.

A 40-series series using Compact Modular Architecture will be added later. Only in 2019 will the company come with a fully electric car that includes SPA, which is also already in the XC90 and upcoming S90. It is suspected that the electric car has a similar size to the S60. The electric sedan must be able to cover a distance of five hundred kilometers, with which it must compete directly with the upcoming Tesla Model 3. Volvo expects ten percent of the company’s cars sold to be electric by 2020.