Volvo says its cut-price electric SUV is not a ‘make or break car’ but it will target younger buyers to generate big sales
If you’re in your 20s and 30s, Volvo hopes to have your undivided attention later this year.
carsales can confirm the new 2024 Volvo EX30 is scheduled to go on sale in Australia by the end of 2023, and when the all-new small SUV arrives it will become the most affordable EV available from Volvo.
The Volvo EX30 will be significantly cheaper than the most popular battery-electric SUVs currently on sale, including the $70,000-plus Kia EV6, Hyundai IONIQ 5 and Tesla Model Y, as well as Volvo’s own XC40 Pure Electric (from $72,990) and C40 Pure Electric (from $74,990) small SUVs.
However, the EX30 won’t undercut price-leading, sub-$50,000 small electric SUVs like the MG ZS EV and BYD Atto 3.
The Swedish brand is taking a gamble on a cut-price Volvo as part of a strategy to target a younger Gen-Z audience and first-car buyers, but it insists it’s not the end of the world if the bold gambit doesn’t pay off.
Digitally rendered here by Russian website Kolesa.ru ahead of its global debut in June 2023, the Volvo EX30 is “not a make or break car at all,” declared Volvo Cars CEO, Jim Rowan.
The all-electric compact SUV will have “…a couple of different battery sizes, which helps with the cost base and makes it so much more attainable for those younger people who are coming into the market for the first time,” he said.
Despite his carefree attitude concerning the vehicle’s success, Volvo’s commander-in-chief is quietly confident the new compact EV will generate big sales for the brand, which is targeting 1.2 million global sales by 2025 – a massive increase over its 2022 sales of just over 615,000 units (down from around 700,000 sales in 2021).
Digital image: Kolesa.ru
“The reason we’re really excited about it is because it allows us to get into a segment in the market and talk to a demographic in the market that we don’t talk to right now.
“That’s the thing that makes it exciting,” Rowan told journalists via video link.
He argued young 20- and 30-something buyers had very different buying criteria to older buyers, such as millennials, generation Y and baby-boomers.
“Gen-Z are now coming up as first-time car buyers and they really care, I think they really care much more than a lot of us might thing about sustainability. They care about the brand they buy products from,” he said.
“They’re driven by the brand and something they feel ‘gets it’ and does have an honest sustainability message.”
Volvo Cars' new leather free material for its next generation cars consists of textiles made from recycled material such as PET bottles, bio-attributed material from sustainable forests in Sweden and Finland, and corks recycled from the wine industry
All future Volvo EVs will eschew leather upholstery, for example, using recycled materials or wool instead.
Furthermore, the Swedish brand plans to delete all combustion-engined vehicles from its range in Australia by 2026 – and globally by 2030 – and aims to be carbon-neutral company by 2040.
The Volvo boss said the new SUV’s small size and advanced connectivity and technology features – thanks in part to a Google-based operating system – will also find favour with younger tech-savvy buyers.
Rowan said the new Chinese-built premium SUV – the second in its new EV-only ‘EX’ series – will be a very different vehicle to its first new-generation EV, the seven-seat Volvo EX90 large SUV.
Volvo EX90
The new Volvo flagship will features advanced (and expensive) safety tech including a LiDAR sensor array, but Rown said that won’t be the case with the EX30, in order to keep costs down.
“Will we have LiDAR in that small car as standard? No we won’t,” he said.
But Rowan said the more affordable new SUV “…will be an extremely nice car to drive as well as an extremely safe car to drive.”
Volvo is yet to provide price and spec details for its new premium small SUV, but with its global reveal now just four months away we won’t have to wait much longer.
Digital image: Kolesa.ru
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Keyword: All-new Volvo EX30 confirmed for Australia this year