- Volvo and Polestar are publicly urging the European Union to keep the planned 2035 ban on new petrol and diesel cars, despite pressure from Germany to soften or delay it.
- Their argument: weakening the ban would slow down the transition to electric vehicles (EVs) and hand a competitive edge to Chinese automakers — “the Chinese will not pause.”
- Says Volvo’s CEO: “If they were not mandatory, we would probably have 30% of our cars without seatbelts.”
There’s a certain strain of senior automotive industry executive who simply does not want to deal with electric vehicles.
I’ve heard this mindset from a lot of leaders in recent years. You might call it a failure of imagination, or maybe just laziness. But for many people in the C-suite, the idea of overhauling their entire business around batteries and software and getting into a knife fight with BYD isn’t what they signed up for. And certainly not that close to their own retirement.
At the risk of sounding ageist, you might expect Håkan Samuelsson, 74 and in his second go-around as the CEO of Volvo Cars, to be one of those guys. But you’d be wrong. Samuelsson has emerged as one of the louder voices in the traditional auto industry who has been arguing for stricter regulations to drive electrification.
And at a time when the European Union seems poised to back away from a planned 2035 ban on gasoline- and diesel-powered new cars, Samuelsson is stressing the need to stay the course to full electrification.
Gallery: Volvo EX90 and the SPA2 Platform
In a new interview with The Guardian, Samuelsson speaks the truth about regulations in general:
Samuelsson likens the resistance mounted by the multibillion-dollar car industry to the opposition to catalytic convertors, and to seatbelts 50 years ago. “If they were not mandatory, we would probably have 30% of our cars without seatbelts and if you consider the additional cost we probably wouldn’t have any cars with catalytic converters either unless they were mandatory,” he says.
I’ve often thought the same thing: would cars today have airbags, anti-lock brakes and backup cameras if those things weren’t mandated by regulators in Europe and the United States? And the answer is probably not—when you’re a carmaker or any other sort of business, your ultimate responsibility is to your bottom line. In other words, sometimes this industry has to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing the right thing.
That’s a timely argument to make when U.S. politicians now say that increased safety requirements are making cars too expensive. The data on that is extremely unclear, but a similar case is being made for fuel economy and regulations driving electrification in the U.S. as well.
But in Europe, the big controversy is whether or not customers are “ready” to embrace an all-EV new-car market, and whether or not traditional players like BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen—all of whom employ millions of people—can deliver on an electric future without going bankrupt. The German government has loudly pushed the EU to reconsider the 2035 ban, saying the body must allow for hybrids, plug-in hybrids and alternative fuels as well.
Samuelson disagrees, and his counterpart at Polestar, Michael Lohscheller, concurs:
Volkswagen and BMW, Samuelsson says, “can do with they like”, but if they take the foot off the electrification pedal, they will just widen the gap for China.
“The Chinese will set up factories in Hungary and Slovakia, Romania … in low labour cost markets. I don’t think it’s possible to keep them out of the EU with tariffs. You just need to meet them face on and compete with them,” he says.
[…] Lohscheller is equally direct. “The Chinese will not pause. They will take over. If Brussels pauses this [target] and says: ‘Stop we will give you another five years,’ they are really putting hundreds and thousands of jobs at risk.”
It’s worth noting here that every automaker wants its own technology to succeed. This is why Toyota pushed hydrogen cars for so long and continues to bet on them long-term. Volvo and Polestar—both owned by a Chinese conglomerate, the Geely Group—have poured billions of dollars into electification. An early adopter of hybrids, Volvo has spent years planning for an all-electric future.
Polestar has always been an all-electric manufacturer (not counting the PHEV Polestar 1, of course.) They don’t want to light those investments on fire if future competitiveness isn’t built around who can make the best EVs.
Gallery: 2026 Polestar 5
Still, Volvo, in particular, could just as easily join BMW and the rest in arguing against the 2035 gas car ban. Its first forays into EVs have been dogged by all sorts of software issues, though the Swedish automaker says it’s made progress in working through them.
For now, at least, Volvo doesn’t seem inclined to take the easy way out. And Samuelson is certainly aware of the sales momentum around Chinese-made cars in Europe. If you give people a reason to break up with gasoline, they will do it—and if Volvo or Polestar can’t figure that out, somebody else will. “If Europe doesn’t take the lead in this transformation, be rest assured, other countries will do it for us,” Lohscheller added.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
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