Volvo Cars posted its sixth consecutive global yearly sales record in 2019, selling more than 700,000 vehicles for the first time in the company’s 93-year history.
The Swedish company, owned by Chinese holding firm Geely, sold an impressive 705,452 vehicles around the world during 2019, up 9.8 per cent on the units it sold in 2018. Since 2014, Volvo has been resetting its own records year on year.
One of the biggest drivers to the new record was high demand for its SUVs, as well as popularity of its new hybrid variants. In fact, the total sales figure was made up of 45,933 plug-in hybrid units, up 22.9 per cent compared with the previous year in 2018.
China came across the line with the most sales for an individual market, making up 154,961 units of the total figure. That’s an increase of 18.7 per cent on the 2018 effort. USA was the second most popular market for the brand, where it sold 108,234 vehicles, up 10.1 per cent. Europe as a whole made up 340,605 units, up 7.2 per cent.
As for the best-selling model, the crown goes to the XC60 mid-size SUV. It contributed 204,965 sales, globally. This was followed by the XC40 small SUV, adding 139,847 units, and then the XC90 large SUV with 100,729 units. As you can see, it’s all about SUVs. Hakan Samuelsson, Volvo Cars CEO, said:
“I am very pleased to see that for the first time in our history we sold more than 700,000 cars, while we gained market share in all our main sales regions. We aim to build on this positive trend in 2020 as we start to roll out our Recharge range of chargeable Volvos.”
In Australia the results have been similarly impressive. According to December VFACTS figures, Volvo sold 7779 vehicles in this country. That’s up 16.2 per cent on efforts achieved in 2018. The most popular model locally was the XC60 as well, contributing 3406 sales (up 20.5 per cent), followed by the XC40 with 2858 sales (up 80 per cent), and then the XC90 with 1192 sales (up 1.9 per cent).
