27 May 2021
Our mid-decade business ambitions
We want to be a premium fully electric car company by 2030 – so what do we need to aim for by mid-decade to keep us on track?
The new C40 Recharge is a glimpse into our future of fully electric cars sold online.
We’re ambitious and we continually challenge ourselves. The global automotive industry is changing, and we want to lead that change by being the fastest growing premium electric brand and the fastest transformer. We want to lead in safety, core computing, electrification, autonomous drive technology and direct customer relations. This way we will provide our customers with the freedom to move in a personal, sustainable and safe way.
By the middle of this decade we aim to sell 1.2 million cars globally, with at least half being fully electric cars. Of those annual sales half should also come via online channels, including volvocars.com. This way we can establish millions of direct customer relationships, together with our strong retail partners. By 2030 we aim to sell only fully electric models.
We will continue to focus on developing the next level of safety and autonomous drive standards. Our future models will benefit from core computing power and over-the-air upgrades of software, 50 per cent of which should be developed in-house by mid-decade. In addition to in-house development of technology and software, we will continue to build existing and new strategic partnerships with global technology leaders.
We also expect to improve our performance thanks to synergies from collaboration with our sister companies within Geely Holding. By jointly developing new technologies, we can deploy them faster and bring about quicker development cycles. Working together with our sister brands is also expected to generate lower procurement costs, shared development costs and other economies of scale.
All these ambitions reinforce our commitment to reduce average CO2 emissions per car by 40 per cent between 2018 and 2025, a first step towards our ambition of becoming a fully climate neutral company by 2040. We also aim to save 1 billion SEK annually by mid-decade through using circular-economy business principles, as well as cutting carbon emissions by 2.5 million tonnes.
“By the middle of this decade we aim to sell 1.2 million cars globally, with at least half being fully electric cars”
Financially, we target an annual operating margin of 8-10 per cent by mid-decade, driven by increased sales and revenues across all three global sales regions, more effective sales and distribution channels, synergies with our affiliates and a broader range of fully electric cars. We expect to further boost profitability by achieving gross margin parity between our electrified and combustion engine-powered cars by mid-decade.
