Say director. Volvo Cars Portugal wants to electrify without constraints
At Volvo Cars since 2018, Susanne Hägglund is a new manager in Portugal. The official, who says she is impressed with the Portuguese team, assumes, for this new challenge, the objective of making 00% electric vehicles available, without constraints, to the Portuguese.
After the announcement made in 2021, Susanne Hägglund now assume the role of administrator of Volvo Car Portugal. N/A Volvo cars since 2018, Susanne has replaced Edson Ishikawa, responsible for the national market for the last seven years.
Claiming to be excited to be in Portugal, the new Managing Director of the Swedish brand for the national market states at the start of this challenge, “to continue the path that brought us here” and a transformation that he deemed necessary, since “electrification requires transformation across the ecosystem”.
Hägglund’s statements are, moreover, a follow-up to Volvo Cars’ Declaration for Zero Emissions from cars, within the scope of the Climate Summit, in Glasgow, Scotland. And that brings together ambitious goalssuch as achieving a neutral environmental impact in its factories by 2025, in addition to providing a fully integrated range, as of 2030, and the necessary neutrality, by 204.
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According to the new managing director of the Swedish brand, “we need to evolve in order to give people the possibility of having a 100% electric car without constraints and that will be my main mission in the national territory”.
For such, Volvo Cars will launch one electric model per year, it will start as early as 2022. Objective that will require the construction of a new battery factory, in partnership with Northvolt, which will be ready to produce in 2025.
Volvo’s factory in Torslanda, Sweden, will also see an investment of 955 million euros, as a way of adapting to the production of the next generation of fully electric models.
Growth supported by electrification
Worldwide, there is a huge rise in interest in Volvo Cars electrified models, with plug-in hybrid models representing 27.1% of all saleswhile all-electric units accounted for 3.7% of sales.
Portugal has numbers above the global average, being that 61.1% of Volvos sold in the national territory, in 2021, had some type of electrification.
Susan explains that Hägglund can help find a tool that “is doing an excellent job, positioning Volvo as a strong brand in the market”, which may justify these numbers.
The best-selling Volvos in the Portuguese market are the XC40, V60 and XC60, with the former leading the premium compact SUV segment.