By ZHOU Shuqi

Volvo Car Group, the Swedish automaker owned by Chinese auto giant Geely Holdings, is bringing the EX90, its latest luxury electric SUV, to the Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition (Auto Shanghai). The “Excellence” version is billed as “the most luxurious Volvo ever.”

The EX90 will start presales in Q3. Volvo has placed great hopes on “Excellence.” Volvo plans to be an EV-only brand by 2030, but the company has been publicly struggling to transform from an old-school ICE carmaker to an EV maker. It has six EVs on sale in China. Last year, only 12,200 were sold, about half the sales of the Tesla Model 3 in one month.

But Volvo is feeling upbeat. Before Auto Shanghai, QING Peiji, president of Volvo China, told a launch event: “Volvo spent three years adapting the tricks of Chinese EV startups, but those EV makers won’t be able to do what we are capable of, even if we give them ten years.”

The remarks are intriguingly aggressive. For a long time, premium European automakers such as Mercedes and BMW have been Volvo’s main competitors. It seems that now rising EV startups are the enemy, gnawing away market share. Last year, Volvo recorded a decline in sales for the first time in China.

CEO YUAN Xiaolin says the market shift is no different from other problems a company may face. 

“The whole auto business needs a regression to the quality of products,” he said during an interview with Jiemian News. “Once you make solid cars, all the so-called competition is just the background of your success.”