The Swedish carmaker Volvo announced this week that it will only make electric vehicles by 2030.
Volvo is the second large car company to say it will stop making traditional internal combustion engines. In January, American carmaker General Motors said it would only make battery-powered vehicles by 2035.
Henrik Green is Volvo’s chief technology officer. He said: “there is no long-term future” for cars with traditional engines.
If you want to buy one of these Volvos in about nine years, you will have to make your order online.
You will still be able to look at cars at a Volvo store, however. The current Volvo stores, which are known as dealerships, will remain in place so customers can look at cars and have them repaired.
In making the announcement, Volvo said it also plans to show a new electric vehicle. The automobile company said it hopes that within four years, half of its sales around the world will come from electric vehicles. The other half will come from cars known as hybrids. Hybrid cars use a combination of batteries and traditional engines to move the vehicle.
Green said the move to electric vehicles will help Volvo “meet the expectations of our customers and be part of the solution when it comes to fighting climate change.”
As technology improves and governments try to reduce pollution, more carmakers like Volvo are increasing production of electric vehicles.
However, Americans continue to buy more vehicles powered by traditional engines. Only about two percent of the cars sold last year in the U.S. were electric.
Around the world, about 2-and-a-half million electric vehicles were sold last year and industry analysts expect that to increase by 70 percent in 2021.
Volvo sold about 660,000 cars worldwide last year. One-sixth of the company’s sales came in the U.S.
Volvo is known as a Swedish car maker, but it has been owned by a Chinese company since 2010.
I’m Dan Friedell.
Matt Ott wrote this story for The Associated Press. Dan Friedell adapted it for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor.
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Words in This Story
internal combustion engine –n. a type of engine that is used for most vehicles : an engine in which the fuel is burned within engine cylinders
battery –n. a device that is placed inside a machine (such as a clock, toy, or car) to supply it with electricity
expectation –n. a belief that something will happen or is likely to happen
