Volvo Makes Climate Change Pledge as It Unveils its First Fully Electric Car

Volvo has unveiled its first all-electric vehicle XC40 Recharge at a glamorous event in Los Angeles with an assortment of futuristic features, including an infotainment system built on Google’s new embedded Android Automotive software.

Volvo CEO Håkan Samuelsson who had described climate change as ‘a real threat to our future” billed the XC40 as the first vehicle in a lineup of Recharge-branded EVs that will help the Swedish automaker achieve its plan to phase out gas-powered vehicles starting this year.

The CEO said that Volvo must have the same reputation for sustainability as it does for safety.

According to Verge, the car looks similar to the combustion engine XC40, just without the front grille. The car’s fully electric all-wheel drive powertrain offers a range of over 400 kilometers on a single charge based on Europe’s WLTP standard, or 200 miles in the US though the automaker has yet to obtain an official EPA rating. It will have an output of 408 horsepower (or 402 hp in US), and the battery charges to 80 percent of its capacity in 40 minutes on a fast-charger system. The Automobile Company did not reveal the pricing at the event though preorders for $1,000 are starting today.

Still, on pricing, Volvo Car’s North American CEO Anders Gustafson has said the electric XC40 could come in at $50,000, or around $48,000 after incentives. Volvo says it expects the XC40 Recharge to go on sale in the US in the fourth quarter of 2020. And Samuelsson said the car will also appear on the automaker’s Care By Volvo subscription plan, which has come under fire from the automaker’s network of dealers.

In addition to the car, Volvo also made a bold environmental pledge: half of its cars will be electric by 2025, and that it will slash the life-cycle carbon footprint on each car by 40 percent by the same year. The XC40 Recharge is the first vehicle for which Volvo is disclosing the life-cycle carbon footprint — effectively the CO2 emissions the car will produce during its life with both manufacturing and usage taken into account.

Moreover, Volvo will reduce the carbon output of its entire operations by 25 percent, including its suppliers, also by 2025. If everything goes according to plan, the amount of recycling and reuse of materials in Volvo’s supply chain will dramatically increase. By 2025, Volvo expects every vehicle to contain 25 percent recycled material. Volvo, which is owned by China’s Geely Holding, previously said it would phase out gas-only car production altogether by 2019, at which time all new Volvos will either be fully electric or electric hybrids. At the event Wednesday, Samuelsson said, “With concrete actions, more than symbolic pledges, maybe we can bring sustainability.”

Volvo’s CTO Henrik Green said “the climate issue” cannot and will not be solved slowly and gradually by improving petrol and diesel engines. “Pure electric cars running on and built using renewable energy are the only cars that can really do it,” Green said.“Pure electric cars running on and built using renewable energy are the only cars that can really do it,”

These are the company’s first steps and its first all-electric car. And Recharge isn’t just the name of the XC40; Volvo says all of its plug-in cars from here on out will feature the Recharge brand. Volvo will use the name to push sales of electric and hybrid cars, which still only represent a tiny piece of overall car sales. The carmaker sold more than 355,000 vehicles globally in the first half of 2019, a 2.5 percent gain over last year. Over the next five years, Volvo says it will launch a fully electric car every year, as it seeks to make all-electric cars 50 percent of global sales by 2025, with the rest hybrids.

Earlier this year, Volvo said it would merge its engine operations with Geely and then spin it off into a standalone company. It was pitched as both a cost-saving move and one that will help the companies scale their electrification plans. The new unit would supply 2 million diesel and gasoline-powered engines, compared with the 600,000 Volvo produces today. Over the years, the company built up a reputation for safety and quirky designs, and today’s announcement is meant to underline that. The company’s safety engineers had to completely redesign and reinforce the frontal structure of the car to account for the lack of an internal combustion engine. Gone is the traditional grille to cool the chugging pistons found in most gas-powered Volvos. Replacing the engine under the hood is a frunk or front trunk, that can carry 30 liters of cargo.

Much like Tesla and other EVs, the XC40’s battery sits under the floor of the vehicle, where it’s protected by a “safety cage” made of a frame of extruded aluminum. This gives the car what is essentially its own crumple-zone around the battery, protecting it in the event of a crash. Volvo’s batteries are produced by LG Chem and China’s CTAL.

Volvo says it will pay for one year of free electricity for every customer who buys the XC40 Recharge, a move likely to appeal to EV-curious buyers who are concerned about how and where to charge their vehicle. The free electricity will come via “a refund for the average electricity cost during that period,” the company says — which sounds a bit like a logistical nightmare, but Volvo is nothing is not detail-oriented.