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recently, volvo officially announced its sales results for september and the first nine months. it is reported that volvo cars’ global sales in september were 62,458 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 1%. cumulative global sales in the first three quarters were 560,922 vehicles, a year-on-year increase of 10%. and this kind of performance is still remarkable in the current luxury car market.

however, in the chinese market, volvo's performance this year has continued to be sluggish. among them, in the past september, volvo's sales in the chinese market were 12,915 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 16%; the cumulative sales in the first three quarters were 113,037 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 9%. it is worth noting that this is volvo’s sixth consecutive month of year-on-year sales decline since april this year.

such performance obviously feels a bit stressful for yu kexin, president of volvo cars greater china sales company, who has just taken up his new job for nine months.

what is noteworthy is that under the general trend of new energy, volvo's new energy models in the global market increased by 33% year-on-year in the first nine months, while the domestic market fell by 10% year-on-year. you know, domestic new energy vehicle sales currently account for more than 50%, and sales growth continues to grow. the decline in volvo's current new energy model sales has also had a serious impact on its overall sales.

in fact, volvo is not late in laying out new energy products, but it seems that it only sticks to slogans, and the overall competitiveness of its products is not obvious. in march 2021, volvo cars announced that it would completely stop selling internal combustion engine vehicles in 2030, including hybrid models, and fully shift to the production of pure electric vehicles. however, this year, volvo cars has announced that it will give up its transformation into a pure electric brand in 2030. volvo cars explained that due to changes in market conditions and customer needs.

however, it is an indisputable fact that volvo’s new energy products are not competitive enough. at present, volvo's main sales models in china are still traditional fuel models and plug-in hybrid models. even though the new pure electric model ex30 was launched in may this year, the market performance since its launch has not been ideal. according to relevant data, its sales in may and june were less than 200 units, and in september volvo's total domestic sales of pure electric models were only 256 units, which shows that the ex30's performance is still unsatisfactory.

in addition, volvo is also encountering considerable challenges in the fuel vehicle market. previously, it mainly relied on significant price cuts to highlight its cost-effectiveness advantage in the domestic market. however, now first-tier luxury brands such as mercedes-benz, bmw, and audi have also joined the price war, which also makes volvo's price advantage among luxury brands of the same level not obvious. as a result, volvo's only remaining advantage is no longer there, so its sales volume it makes sense to continue to decline.

in addition, with the slow progress of new energy products, volvo has also experienced "swaying" in decision-making in terms of intelligence. at this year's chengdu auto show, yuan xiaolin publicly complained about the car's intelligent voice control function, triggering criticism from many netizens. it said: when the user issues the command "please open the sunroof", it takes about 4 seconds for the voice system to respond and open the sunroof, but the physical button only takes 1 second. what is the significance of this design? this kind of remarks has been evaluated by many netizens as: conservative views on automobile intelligence.

you must know that intelligent voice control for cars is not only about implementing relevant functions, but more importantly, it is able to prevent users from being distracted and focus on driving, making driving safer. has yuan xiaolin forgotten the original intention of car safety that the volvo brand has always focused on?

today, the industry-recognized competition in the automobile market is the competition between electrification and intelligence. in these two aspects, volvo does not have the products and technologies to take action, which has further led to its gradual marginalization in the chinese market. the strategic planning errors of volvo's senior leaders also have a certain responsibility for the cause of this crisis.

write at the end

nowadays, under the general trend of intelligence and electrification, many luxury brands are feeling even more pressure. some luxury brands have begun to accelerate the deployment of new energy products and actively cooperate with top domestic suppliers to promote the improvement of intelligent competitiveness. however, volvo obviously still has considerable room for improvement in these two aspects, but what opportunities does the market leave for volvo?