Volvo recorded a 14.2% global year-on-year sales increase in July, bucking the industry’s pandemic-induced downward trend.
The Swedish firm sold 62,291 cars worldwide last month, with growth recorded in the European, US and Chinese markets. Its 28,700 European sales were up 12.5% on July 2019.
The growth is attributed to a number of factors, including the easing of lockdown restrictions allowing dealerships to reopen and continued strong demand for the brand’s SUV models.
The Volvo XC40 crossover was the brand’s top-selling model last month, followed by the mid-sized Volvo XC60 and flagship Volvo XC90. Overall, the SUV trio accounted for 72.8% of Volvo’s July sales.
The growing popularity of Volvo’s electrified Recharge range - recently bolstered with the addition of the new XC40 plug-in hybrid - also contributed to the growth. Volvo says sales of electrified models more than doubled in the first six months of 2020 compared with the same period last year.
The brand also cites recently published data from analytics body IHS Markit, which names it as the “leading electrified premium brand in Europe during the first half of 2020, with Recharge models making up nearly a quarter of sales in the segment".
Volvo boss Håkan Samuelsson said recently that the firm's focus on electrification and connectivity will help it to achieve long-term growth in the wake of the pandemic. “The downturn we saw in the first half is a temporary one," he said. "We expect to see a strong recovery in the second half of the year, and our Recharge range of electrified cars puts us in a strong position to meet the emerging trends we're seeing.
“This pandemic has strengthened our confidence that our strategic ambitions are the right ones and that an accelerated transformation of our business will lead to long-term growth. We will continue to focus on and invest in electrification, online sales and connectivity.”
Volvo’s year-to-date sales figures show the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, with its 332,253 global sales marking a 16% drop compared with the first six months of 2019.
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Volvo
The Volvo successes are in contrast to the poor performance of JLR over the past couple of years. Job one for the new CEO is to make changes at the top?
Of course Volvo is doing well.
You cannot compare a legit company like Jaguar to Volvo, Jaguar doesn't use Chinese cheap labour or chinese muslim slave labour to build their cars for cheap.
Volvo, with the help of the chinese will surely put many OEMs out of business in the coming year or two.
WinstonAlexanderson wrote:
What a load of tripe, this has got to be the most obnoxious and most xenophobic comment ever on autocar ever. Just because Volvo is owned by a Chinese company it doesn;t automatically mean it has ties with the government. By your logic Rolls Royce and Bentley has ties to the German governmetn or that Jaguar has ties with the Indian Government.. Money does not grow on trees ( except maybe the Fed eral reserve in the USA), and I;m sure Volvo does not have an endless supply of money., and needs to make money too like any private enterprise. How is Volvo undercutting everyone ? Last time I cgecjed prices are on par or even more epxensie than BMWs, Lexus' etc..
Bollocks
You should probably do some research lad, Volvo has been slowly devouring markets all across the world creating sub par vehicles made in china.They have the best marketing and propaganda machine in the world at the moment, look at Polestar for an example:Completely ripped off Teslas business model to a T, claims extraordinary specs and when tested by the germans, failed to deliver on all fronts.Claim they are leading the world to electrification.... while they bought a model Y, shipped it to sweden, and looked to reverse engineer it to build a polestar 3.Fact or fiction? You buy Volvo, you support tyrants and help put hard working europeans out of business.Even with their care by volvo scheme, they put their own dealers out of business to gain back the revenue and send it to China. In the US it got blocked by some states due to legal action taken by their dealer networks. What a magnificent OEM right?
WinstonAlexanderson wrote:
Lying by spoutibg rubbiish.
yes Volvo is owned by Geely but is a global company like many cpmpaneis with HQ still in Sweden and R&D centres around the world.
Volvo Cars has its Head Office in Gothenburg; regional head offices in Rockleigh and Shanghai; R&D centres in Silicon Valley and Copenhagen; and Design Centres in Camarillo, Gothenburg and Shanghai.
Keep away from the trump-ade, else you'll get even more crazy with your utter rubbish,,
Jaguar
How to reinvent your company ready for electrification. Here endth the first lesson.
Why
Why do some people have to mention JLR in every article. Your use of it is kinda of ironic considering Jaguar have been making a great proper Electric car for over a year but I've still yet to see a Volvo BEV (even their converted ICE one) let alone proper ground up BEV.
because Autocar is pretty close to a JLR marketing department
plus Jaguar and Volvo have a lot of similarities, other than one knows what it's doing and the other doesn't.
They all do it, except Tesla
All car companies marketing departments have ties to magazines, it's what those departments are for.