Swedish luxury carmaker Volvo Car India will start assembling two models and introduce petrol variants for three more models from its Hosakote plant soon, said MD Charles Frump.
“Right now, Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) XC40 and Sedan S60 are being imported. We will start assembling them at our plant near Bengaluru,” Mr. Frump said. “Currently, we are already making diesel variants of XC60, XC90 and S90 there.
The petrol variants will be introduced much before its full transition to electric vehicles. Very soon, all our models will be made in India,” he added. Asked for the rationale behind going in for a petrol variant when fuel prices were on the rise, he said those purchasing luxury vehicles were not concerned about the price rise, but were eager to utilise less polluting vehicles.
Asserting that their sales in the domestic market had picked up due to pent-up demand and were on a par with pre-Covid levels, he said that booking for Sedan S60 had begun and deliveries would commence from March.
He said that XC40 Recharge, its first fully built electric compact SUV, will be launched during the second half of 2021.
Automobile majors are facing two issues — global shortage of semiconductor chips and rise in raw material prices. Mr. Frump said as far as the shortage of semiconductors chip was concerned they could manage the situation for some more weeks.
“Volvo Car effected a price hike during 2018 and there wouldn’t be another hike for the near term,” he added.
On Tuesday, Mr. Frump inaugurated a big showroom in Hyderabad to be followed by another one in Coimbatore soon.
