The plan includes seven new cars for the Western world and six new cars for China, as Volvo focuses more on targeting its models at different markets. Chinese people have different preferences than Europeans, and in the US people want large cars.
And we need low cars, says Samuelsson.
Is that where the trend is heading?
We should have both.
Transitional solutions
The new cars, starting next year, will come as both fully electric and plug-in hybrids. Because even there, the markets look different. In the US, electrification is moving more slowly.
So we need transitional solutions, says Samuelsson, who has been forced to acknowledge that electrification is going a little slower than he and perhaps others thought a few years ago.
Earlier this week, Volvo Cars also announced new hybrid models in the older XC60 and XC90 series with longer ranges than previous models. They will be sold primarily in Europe and the US.
Investing in troubled times
Volvo management likes to boast that it is investing when many other car companies in the West are forced to make major cuts. Sales manager Erik Severinson explains that Volvo can afford what management calls the largest new model programme in the company's history in this difficult situation for the car industry by saying that Volvo has already incurred the large investment costs in, among other things, new technical solutions.
The idea is that future models will thus be cheaper to produce than before.
In parallel, Volvo, like many of its competitors, has cut many billions in costs, most recently when the entire Stockholm office with over 400 employees was moved to Gothenburg.
Financially, the goal is to reach a profit of 8 percent of revenue. The road to that is quite long, and the latest quarterly result was a margin of a few percent. More profitable electric cars are on the way and the market share in the electric segment is to be doubled, is the message from Volvo management.
Volvo Cars shares have fallen by around 40 percent on the Stockholm Stock Exchange so far this year.
