Volvo Cars said it had “no need” to join Tesla and Ford in cutting prices for its electric models after sales tripled last year. During 2021, about 4 per cent of Volvo Cars’ sales were battery-only models. This rose to 11 per cent during 2022, and was as high as 20 per cent in December. The brand wants half of its sales to be pure battery vehicles by the middle of the decade, with the aim of only selling electric cars by 2030, one of the most ambitious targets of any major carmaker. Tesla and Ford have both cut the prices of their electric models. But Volvo Cars’ chief executive Jim Rowan said the company had increased prices in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed up the price of lithium, a key battery material.
But he added that the company did not raise prices for customers who had already ordered a car, meaning the business ended up absorbing around a third of its total cost increase over the year. Rowan said he expected lithium prices to drop this year and Volvo might cut prices in response. A significant drop in lithium prices would “[give] us the opportunity to make that decision”, he said. But “we don’t see the need” to cut prices he added, because of the volume of EV orders Volvo Cars has on its books.
