Volvo pushes 800,000 global sales goal to 2021

Volvo Cars will not reach its goal of selling 800,000 vehicles globally in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

"There will probably be a year delay," CEO Hakan Samuelsson said. "Before the pandemic we were on track to reach that or come very close to that."

Volvo would also fail to set a global sales record in 2020 because it won't be able to top the 705,452 vehicles is sold in 2019, its seventh consecutive year of record volumes.

"In the first half we lost 21 percent, which is almost 71,000 cars," Samuelsson told Automotive News Europe. "Therefore, even if we reach what we are forecasting for the second half, which is a return to the sales volume we saw last year, the year as a whole will be less than in 2019."

He referred to 2020 as the "corona year" and he's already looking forward to next year.

"In 2021 our absolute ambition is to resume growing," he said. "But it will be a new normal with a lot more electric cars, more online sales, less traveling, more videoconferencing and more working from home. There will be positive effects that result from the pandemic."