In a bid to stay ahead of German auto majors, Swedish luxury car maker Volvo Car is keen to assemble hybrid vehicles in locally in India.
ET reported that Volvo has set up a factory last year in India and expects most of its vehicles to be locally manufactured in the next two to three years. It is expected that the auto major is also planning to include a few hybrid variants.
The company itself has set a vision of selling a million electrified vehicles by 2025 and India will be a key contributor to that target is what Charles Frump, MD of Volvo Car India told ET. The company plans to have majority of its fleet in India electrified by 2020 in line with its global transition.
To keep the competition going, Maruti and Toyota are already working on localising electric and hybrid cars and even Hyundai has announced its plans of assembling electric car in India by 2019. Volvo has been quick to bring in global models into India within six months of global launch, is also studying how the Indian arm can bring in the company’s first electric car which is slated for global launch in 2019.
The English daily also stated that Volvo has closed with a market share of 5% at the end of 2018 and Frump is confident with the new generation cars on SUVs on the new architecture, Volvo is likely to double its market share to 10% in the coming three years. Apart from expansion of portfolio, with newer generation of cars, the company will be almost doubling dealership footprint to over 40 in 2-3 years.
