Volvo Cars, as the Chinese-owned firm is now known, has established a new annual global sales record for 2023, with a reported 708,716 new cars and SUVs sold during the year, a remarkable increase of 15 percent over the previous year’s sales totals. In large part, Volvo is crediting an ongoing break in the pandemic-triggered supply chain bottleneck with its ability to boost sales so dramatically.
The other major contributing factor to Volvo’s recent sales performance is a marked increase in buyer appetite for its line of EVs. Last year, Volvo Cars sold 113,419 fully electric cars, an increase of 70 per cent compared to 2022, and 152,561 plug-in hybrid cars, which was a 10 per cent increase compared to 2022. Sales of fully electric cars accounted for 16 per cent of all Volvo cars sold globally during 2023. Overall sales in Europe were also up by 19 percent. China boasted a 5-percent annual sales increase. Volvo’s top-performing model through all this, we should add, was the XC60 crossover, followed closely by the XC40.
Jim Donnelly On Wheels 