The jury is back in. China? Good!
Volvo cars have presented their 2019 results. And they are good. Not good by Volvo standards, but good by any standard. At the end of 2019, the beleaguered Swedish marque had moved 705,452 cars. That’s a 9.8% jump over 2018, and increasing their sales for the 6th consecutive year.
Isolated numbers, however, do not really paint a picture. Especially when you compare them to, say, Toyota with over 203,000 cars sold in the US alone. In December. Just one month. For a total of over 10.6 million cars worldwide.
Now, that seems an unfair comparison, but that’s only because it is unfair. Toyota sales include Lexus, for starters, but also because they are hardly competitors on a segment to segment basis.
Nevertheless, we perhaps could look at other premium manufacturers to see how Volvo has not only recovered but flourished since Chinese money came in the picture.
Quick look at the field…
BMW, for example, moves close to 2.5 million cars per year. And they manufacture seventy-twelve models. Covering every possible segment in the premium category, and even having cars with no segment at all, such as the 4-Series. Yes, I am truly sorry but the 4-Series is a non-entity. Same size as the 3-Series, in 2 & 4 doors, with M, just like the 3, but with a slightly different… what? Glimmer? Philosophy? Clientele? I don’t know. Oh, but with no Estate version.
Mercedes is slightly smaller, at 2.3 million, and with the exact same business model as BMW. Audi clocked 1.8 million with more SUV’s than you know what to do with them. Good numbers but, the general result among these is an upward sales trend of less than 2%.
Volvo, on the other hand, makes 6 models with a year-on-year growth of 9.8%. And they do it out of 2 modular platforms. That is hitting the mark of what the people want! At IN we do like our Volvo’s. From the ideal XC60 to the compact XC40, to the grand XC90, the only car in production with a standard mounted supercharger and turbo.
If there was a but to them it would be their price tag. The new generation of Volvo cars is quite more expensive than the outgoing one was, and we felt they kinda out-priced their customer base to a certain extent but, clearly, their market research was quite on point.
They are not done…
Further, and we have referenced this before, Volvo is on a quest to electrification, expecting 50% of their cars to be electric by 2025, and carbon neutrality, which they expect to achieve by 2040. I want to say that’s far fetched, but I have been wrong before.
Welcome to 2020. We eagerly await the chance to try the electric Polestar, of which we are quite certain won’t disappoint.