Automotive News Canada | Urvaksh Karkaria | 01/27/2020
Volvo Cars’ first battery-powered vehicle, now called the XC40 Recharge P8, has generated “several thousands of firm orders” globally, even though production won’t begin until the second half of the year, the automaker said last week.
The all-wheel-drive compact crossover is expected to arrive in U.S. and Canadian stores in the second half of next year. A Volvo spokesman declined to say how many of the sales orders are from U.S. customers. The spokesperson didn’t break down orders by country.
The EV is a modified version of Volvo’s fast-selling XC40 compact crossover. Based on the Compact Modular Architecture (CMA) platform, the XC40 Recharge P8 trades the four-cylinder engine for a 75-kilowatt-hour battery.
The EV version delivers up to 408 hp and can go from 0 to 60 mph in 4.7 seconds. Volvo estimates that it will have an EPA-rated range of “more than 200 miles” — or 320 kilometres.
The XC40 P8 Recharge is the vanguard of a series of emissions-free models from Volvo, which wants battery-propelled vehicles to account for half of global sales by 2025. Over the next five years, Volvo said, it will launch a fully electric vehicle every year.
Volvo’s decision to base its first electric vehicle on the XC40 is strategic. The XC40 was Volvo’s fastest-growing model in the U.S. last year — up 42 percent to 17,654 sales. It was also the fastest growing model in Canada, where sales were up 70 per cent to 2,132.
Source: https://canada.autonews.com/cars-concepts/volvo-thousands-ev-preorders