Volvo Cars India, which sells luxury cars and SUVs, on Friday revealed two major announcements — it will follow a simple product strategy for the Indian market and it sees a stronger business case for introducing electric vehicles in the country.

Unlike German luxury car brands that launch about a dozen vehicles every year in the country, the Swedish luxury car brand that is owned by Chinese investors believes in being simpler in its offerings to the luxury car buyers.

“We have been moving to get simpler rather than giving more choice. A few clear and simpler choices, instead of 50 options, will be effective. Too many variants also lead to trust issues,” Charles Frump, Managing Director, Volvo Cars India, said here.

For example, its best selling car XC60 has just two variants (Momentum and Inscription) and two prices (₹65 lakh and ₹73 lakh-on road prices in Chennai).

However, he said the Volvo brand would be present in all major segments such as large, mid and small SUVs and medium and large sedans.

In 2019, the company sees a challenging period in 2019 and may end up recording fat volume levels due to general elections and some capacity constraints. In 2018, its volumes grew 30 per cent to 2,638 units.

Frump pointed out that the business case for launching electric vehicles were getting better in India and he felt that India would be ahead of others in deploying EVs.

He explained that recent duty cut for EVs and strong government push with a policy framework for EVs will accelerate the adoption in the Indian market.

“Instead of asking the government how to reach the targets and getting surprised over their ambitions, it is also the responsibility of auto industry to help educate and push EVs,” he said.

Globally, Volvo has already set an ambitious plan to achieve half of the car volumes to be fully electric by 2025. It has committed to putting one million electric cars on road by that year. Every new Volvo car launched from this year will have an electric motor.

Replying on upcoming launches for India, he said dollar-rupee related challenges were delaying the launch of its new sedan S60. But the company is confident of introducing the new S60 in India next year.

Launch of hybrid version

He said the company was considering the launch of PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) version of the S60 in India.

Volvo Cars believes that the lower import tax for electric vehicles could help a brand like Volvo Cars accelerate its volumes in India in the future. “Because the tax structure is much more similar to non-premium market. Perhaps, the luxury pie could grow quite big in the future,’ he said,

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