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Volvo has already put its reputation behind its autonomous car program final week, and now it'due south laying down its electric vehicle plans besides. Volvo appear that information technology will build its first fully electric car and sell information technology past 2022 as part of an eventual full range of pocket-size cars. It'southward planning for ten pct of its sales to be EVs in the start years afterward.

"We believe that the time has come for electrified cars to cease existence a niche applied science and enter the mainstream," Volvo Cars president and CEO Hakan Samuelsson said in a statement. "We are confident that by 2022, 10 per centum of Volvo'southward global sales volition exist electrified cars."

Today the automaker sells plug-in hybrid versions of its larger XC90 (pictured above) and V60, but that's information technology. Then this would exist a pretty big spring for Volvo, both to fully electrical drivetrains and to smaller cars.

Volvo

"We have learned a lot about how people use cars with electrification thanks to our current production offer," said Dr Peter Mertens, Senior Vice President for Research and Evolution. "Our enquiry has shown that people are driving our Twin Engine cars in electric manner around fifty per cent of the time, meaning our plug-in hybrids already offer a real alternative to conventional powertrain systems." That's probably pushing it a fleck.

Yet, the XC90 has plenty of safety tech to begin with, and some of it is a cutting above what you get from competitors. It can striking the brakes in case a motorcar in front stops short or if a pedestrian walking out into the street without looking, for example. The plug-in hybrid powertrain in the XC90 T8 consists of a 9.two kWh lithium-ion battery pack, an 87 hp motor in the back, a smaller 46 hp electric motor in the front, and the primary turbocharged and supercharged four-cylinder gas engine in the forepart putting out 318 horsepower. Information technology'due south as well the simply three-row plug-in hybrid SUV on the market.

It's interesting to see how much Volvo is looking to reestablish itself. The automaker'southward stagnation in contempo years has been lamentable and more often than not cocky-inflicted, thank you mostly to an aging production line. Every bit someone that grew upward in the 1980s, this author remember full well how Volvo dominated the automotive advertising market with its promises of the safest cars on the road. Seeing blocky 740 Turbo Wagons and stoic 240s on the road was commonplace. Information technology would be skillful to see that again with a full-blown range of cutting-range electric cars; the question is whether the visitor tin pull off such a turnaround.

Terminal yr, Volvo unveiled a neodymium magnetic road system design that could greatly simplify the design and operation of time to come self-driving cars.