Company remaining committed to an electrified future.
Swedish luxury marque Volvo might’ve stolen headlines last year when it said that all its models would be electrified by 2019, but we’re perhaps seeing the strongest commitment yet by the marque towards an electrified future, as they have announced the yet-to-be-launched S60 compact saloon will not be offered with a diesel mill at all. The announcement was made by CEO Håkan Samuelsson ahead of the new models’ launch.
The new Volvo S60 will be built off of the company’s Scaleable Product Architecture (SPA), which already underpins the XC90 SUV, S90 saloon, V90 estate, XC60 SUV and the V60 estate. All of these cars offer diesel mills presently in D3 and D4 guises, so it wouldn’t have been of great cost or complexity to Volvo to offer oilers in the S60 range. As such, the move not to offer them at all is nothing more than a signal from the company that they will not slow down in their pursuit of fully-electrified mobility.
“Our future is electric, and we will no longer develop a new generation of diesel engines. We will phase out cars with only an internal combustion engine, with petrol-hybrid versions as a transitional option as we move towards full electrification. The new S60 represents the next step in that commitment.” — Håkan Samuelsson, President & Chief Executive, Volvo Cars
When the S60 arrives, Volvo says it’ll be launched with a range of Drive-E petrol engines (T5 and T6 4-pots, we expect) as well as two electrified powertrains (T8 TwinEngine and T5 TwinEngine, most probably). In 2019, the S60 will gain mild-hybrid powertrain options as well, before the purely-ICE options get obliterated by 2020.
Volvo is targeting an even split in sales between hybrid and fully-electric vehicles by 2025.
The Volvo S60 has been spied totally uncovered once before, looking a lot like the Volvo S90 flagship saloon, albeit with revision to help it keep in line with its “sports saloon” moniker. The S60 will be manufactured exclusively at the Charleston, South Carolina plant in the United States, and exported across the globe.
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