AUTOMOTIVE NEWS EUROPE TALK FROM THE TOP 'Big step' Volvo CEO outlines strategy to electrify lineup, become climate neutral V olvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson has set ambitious goals for the automaker. He wants half of Volvo's global sales to come from full-electric cars by 2025 and the other half should be hybrids. He also wants the company to become climate neutral by 2040 and to get there it must reduce its life cycle carbon footprint by 40 percent per car by the middle of the next decade. Samuelsson explained how Volvo aims to achieve these goals in an interview with Automotive News Europe Managing Editor Douglas A. Bolduc. sentially being full-electric cars already in 2020. It's a big step. should match the consumption of a diesel but without the NOx problems. Volvo still sells a lot of diesels in Europe. How will you convince customers to switch? We need to show them we have an alternative that is as good as the diesel: the mild hybrid. If you have no intention of charging then a gasoline mild hybrid How does Volvo anticipate the XC40 Recharge being used? We did some customer research and I was surprised to learn that on average people are out with the cars 15 times a day. This includes picking up and dropping off kids at school and sports, grocery shopping When will EVs account for 10 percent of your global sales? We should get close to that in about two years, assuming that the market will continue to grow. How will Volvo's margins be affected by your push to have full-electric cars account for half of your global sales by 2025? In the short term, it will put pressure on our margins, but the electric cars will be profitable from day one. They probably will not provide the same level of per unit profit as our other models at first. That will take a bit longer. However, I definitely would not want to only have cars with combustion engines in my lineup five years from now. That would be really risky. Are your plug-in hybrids profitable? Yes. How crucial are plug-in hybrids to helping Volvo meet the EU's tougher CO2 emissions target that starts to take effect in 2020? They are absolutely crucial. Years ago we concluded that we needed to sell customers what they want, which is big, heavy SUVs. You cannot do this and reduce CO2 with a conventional powertrain. You would spend billions and maybe get a 2 percent savings. You have to electrify them. What percentage of your 2020 global sales will be plug-in hybrids? Next year we want 20 percent of our sales to be plug-in hybrids. If people recharge them 50 percent of the time that corresponds to 10 percent of our cars es- 42 www.autonewseurope.com Meet the boss ❚ NAME: Hakan Samuelsson ❚ TITLE: Volvo Cars President and CEO ❚ AGE: 68 ❚ MAIN CHALLENGE: Making the company climate neutral by 2040. In Partnership with 2019http://www.autonewseurope.com