Swedish carmaker Volvo has launched its latest diesel car, and the moment is historic, as a decade ago diesel cars accounted for more than half of its production. Volvo will continue to work on gasoline, but from 2030 will produce only electric cars.

Volvo’s latest diesel was produced in Torslanda, Sweden, and is the XC90 SUV with a 2.0-liter engine.

Times have changed dramatically, and long gone are the days when diesel cars were considered environmentally friendly and taxed lower in some countries, particularly Sweden.

The first Volvo diesel entered the market in 1979: the six-cylinder 244 GL D6 based on Volkswagen.

From 1991 to 2024, Volvo sold more than 9 million diesel cars. In 2008, Volvo said that its 1.6-liter diesel cars could have a range of 1,300 km between refuels.

The best years for diesel cars at Volvo were between 2012 and 2016, when more than half of the cars sold were diesel,

The decline of these cars in the global market was heralded by the Volkswagen scandal that broke out in 2015, and Volvo was one of the first brands to announce (in 2017) that it would phase out cars with internal combustion engines.

Volvo announced seven years ago that it would no longer develop diesel engines, and now it’s time to stop production.

Sources: Automotive News, Bloomberg

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Dreamstime.com