Volvo Reaches 44% Plugin Vehicles – CleanTechnica

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Full battery-powered electric vehicles (BEVs) accounted for just 7.2% of the US auto market last year, compared to 16% in Europe, 25% in China, and 11% globally. Just statistically speaking, the US is not pulling the EV market forward. So, sometimes it’s hard to see how much a car company is doing abroad or globally to electrify if it isn’t a leader in the market here. Case in point: Stellantis. Case in point #2: Volvo Cars.

Just about 1% of Volvo’s car sales in the US in 2023 were full electrics. The figure was 0.2% in the 4th quarter of 2023. However, in February, that figure globally shot to a record-high 22% — 22% of Volvo Cars sales were full electric car. Looking more broadly, 44% of Volvo Cars sales were plugin vehicle sales last month.

Naturally, these figures are indeed on the back of strong EV sales in Europe and China. “Sales in Europe remained strong and grew 26 per cent compared to February 2023, reaching 26, 773 cars. Sales of cars with a fully electric or plug-in hybrid powertrain increased with 18 per cent, while sales of fully electric cars increased by 31 per cent, compared to February last year,” Volvo Cars writes. “In China, sales reached 7,911 cars, a decrease of 39 per cent compared to February 2023. The reason for the decline was due to the timing of the Lunar New Year, which mainly took place during the month of February.

“Our sales in the US reached 7,920 cars, a decrease of 7 per cent compared to last year. Sales of cars with a fully electric or plug-in hybrid powertrain grew by 6 per cent compared to February 2023, and accounted for 32 per cent of all cars sold in the US.”

Here’s a full table looking at Volvo’s sales trends year over year in February and January–February, broken out by region and globally:

There’s a lot of room for improvement, but Volvo is clearly already one of the auto industry leaders for its transition to EVs — and that’s even evident in what the auto group chooses to report!