During the launch of the XC40 facelift earlier this week, Jyoti Malhotra, managing director of Volvo India, said that during the transition to fully electric by 2030, the carmaker has phased out existing plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) in India in favour of EVs.
Volvo India plans to launch one EV every year, and the first product in this initiative was the Volvo XC40 Recharge, to be followed by the upcoming C40 Recharge.
- Volvo XC90 T8 was only PHEV in the line-up
- Volvo feels it is better to move directly from ICE to EVs
Volvo has been one of the very few manufacturers in India to offer a PHEV with the XC90 T8. Malhotra mentioned that despite the good response that Volvo received for XC90 PHEV, it will focus only on bringing EVs to India, given its scale of operations here.
The Swedish manufacturer feels it is better to move directly to EVs from ICE, given the time frame it has set to go electric. Malhotra added that “going forward, we want to become a fully electric car company and currently only 30 to 50 percent of our revenue comes from electric cars, and we want that to come from full-electric cars.”
Malhotra further said that India’s policies, in terms of support from the government, are almost at the same level as Norway's. However, he feels that a “real benefit of electric cars will come when they get charged efficiently or get energy from renewable sources."
He added, "The government is talking about increasing both battery capacity and renewable capacity.”
Furthermore, Volvo will also conduct a solar panel feasibility study for all the cars they sell to provide a solar solution, but customers will have to install that at their own expense.
Volvo PHEVs sold globally
Although Volvo has discontinued its plug-in hybrid EV range in India, it continues to offer PHEV variants of all its products globally. Along with the XC90 plug-in hybrid, it also has PHEV variants of the XC40, XC60 and S90, all of which are available in India as mild-hybrid electric vehicles (MHEVs).
PHEVs available in India currently
Although India has hybrid vehicles, only Porsche and Land Rover offer plug-in hybrid options. The former offers the Cayenne E-Hybrid with up to 44km of claimed WLTP range, and Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid in India with up to a claimed 50km on WLTP range. Land Rover has the Range Rover PHEV, claimed WLTP range of up to 30km, as well as the Defender 110 PHEV, which gets a claimed range of up to 43km on the WLTP cycle.
Skoda is also likely to launch the Octavia RS iV in India as a completely built unit (CBU) in limited numbers. It has a claimed electric only range of up to 60km.
Uday Singh
Dipan Sur
Glenn Noronha
Viraaj Bhatnagar
