Volvo Promises Moving Forward All New Models Will Be Hybrid or Full Electric

Volvo has decided to move forward and go all in on the electric car, promising that moving forward all new created models will either have hybrid capabilities or run on full electric. Volvo, which is a Chinese owned Swedish auto manufacturer decided to make the move in response to the growing demand for electric vehicles. With auto manufacturers like Tesla alone, there is a backup on preorders for their new model 3, until 2019. Countries, especially Scandinavian ones, are offering tax benefits for owning electric vehicles and many are taking advantage to buy a new car.

Countries like Sweden, where Volvo’s corporate is based out of, already have a large amount of their energy being generated by sustainable means with hydro, nuclear and wind energy. The jump to electric cars with the current infrastructure isn’t actually very hard. In fact the price of gas in these countries is very expensive because they try and incentivize people to use other means for generating power. This is why electric car companies like Tesla have done extremely well in these markets. If you visit any main city there you will see many driving around.

Personally I believe that moving most consumer power operated machinery, to a sustainable source is a much needed step. Even if we take global warming out of the equation, it is still beneficial to have clean air, which raises quality of life. In countries that run almost entirely off of coal fuel, for example China, we see the devastating effects that it can have on the people. People under 20 getting lung cancer is now relatively common in China compared to the rest of the world primarily because of the pollution in the air. Now China is stuck with a problem where they still need to burn coal to industrialize, but they also are killing their population in the mean time while doing it. They have taken measures to help cut down pollution in the last couple of years, but it is still not enough.

Having new companies enter the market producing only electric cars will do two very important things for newly developing countries. It will make the cost of running electric cars and the cost of owning them much cheaper as more competition and innovation enters the market. In addition more competition will most likely end up creating the infrastructure, such as charging stations, for electric cars and other fully electric machines. With the cost of sustainable solutions getting lower, we may potentially see a day where industrializing countries might have another option rather than coal fuel.

I suspect in the future more car companies will be pushing completely electric models and investing more in order to create them. Countries that prosper by having the new electric only industries are going to incentivize citizens to buy electric cars and save themselves money on negative externalities in the future. Having more car companies enter the electric space is a good thing for us, the consumer and hopefully it will make it so we are able to purchase electric cars at a fraction of the price they are today and with a much higher level of infrastructure supporting them.

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