“By the end of the year we should be up to 20 to 25 percent,” Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson said during a roundtable discussion with journalists this week.
Volvo didn’t have enough batteries, electric motors and the other key components needed to make its plug-in hybrids, Samuelsson said.
“We are not happy because we could sell more [plug-in hybrids],” he said. “We underestimated the demand.”
Tripling capacity
Samuelsson said Volvo is currently “ramping up all the components” it needs to produce its plug-in hybrids -- as well as its recently added family of mild hybrid powertrains.
“We are tripling the capacity from what we had about a year ago to where we will be at the end of this year,” he said.
Volvo will introduce a range of mild hybrids this year, starting with diesel and gasoline versions on the XC90 and XC60. The mild hybrids, which will wear Volvo’s new B badge, will be equipped with Volvo’s brake-by-wire energy recovery system.
Despite the supply bottleneck Volvo sold 26,800 plug-in hybrids in Europe last year, up from 16,000 in 2017, according to figures from market analyst JATO Dynamics. By 2021 Volvo expects that a quarter of the vehicles it produces worldwide will be plug-in hybrids. The other model lines that offer the powertrain are the S90 and S60 sedans.
