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In May and June when the petrol prices were at peak, Volvo Car India Managing Director, Charles Frump did not fill up a single litre of petrol in his car – the Volvo T8 XC90 Excellence – which is a plug-in hybrid. He drove it on electric mode.
This is how India should do and not directly jump into the electric car mode, he told BusinessLine in an interview. “Since the government is focussed on 2030 being a key milestone on electrification, we would like to see some kind of bridge to 2030 and a roadmap to get there. For us, we feel that that bridge would be plug-in hybrids,” Frump said.
He said the company is already selling plug-in hybrids here — T8 XC90 Excellence and T8 XC90 seven-seater, but there is no tax advantage despite the impressive emission numbers because of the tax structure in this country.
“So we need more benefits for plug-in hybrids,” he said.
Frump said the Indian luxury car market is very small compared to other countries, and the company is specifically looking to the government to lay out a roadmap to electrification.
“Our big bet as a company is electrification. By 2025, we are going to have a million electrified cars on the roads. We are going to roll out electric cars from 2019 and India would have a good share of them,” he said.
Volvo is not the only company that is asking for “bridge the gap” first between internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles and electric cars before 2030.
The country’s largest passenger car manufacturer, Maruti Suzuki India, which offers mild hybrid and CNG options, has also been saying the same.
Meanwhile, Frump added that Volvo is also working towards autonomous cars and are offering similar experiences in someway or the other in its cars.
For instance, auto braking or auto-pilot assist in many of its vehicles now.
The company has launched XC40, the compact sports utility vehicle, priced at ₹39.90 lakh (ex-showroom, India).
It will compete with the likes of Audi Q3, BMW X1 and Mercedes-Benz GLA.
The XC40 is available in the R-Design trim with 2L four-cylinder twin-turbo D4 diesel variant producing 190bhp and 400Nm of peak torque.
Volvo Car India had sold a total of 2,029 units last year against 1,585 units in 2016.
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