Volvo’s objective to promote 800,000 automobiles globally by 2020 was derailed by the pandemic, however the automaker’s fast restoration over the past 12 months has put the goal inside attain once more.

“Proper now we’re on a run fee of 770,000,” Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson instructed Automotive Information Europe. “I believe we are going to end 2021 slightly near the goal we set 10 years in the past.”

The quantity Samuelsson references is derived by including Volvo’s sales from the second half of 2020 with its volume from the first half of 2021, each data for the corporate, leading to a complete of 772,508.

That might simply exceed its all-time excessive of 705,452 set in 2019.

To get to 800,000, Volvo would want to promote 419,243 automobiles within the last six months of 2021.

To place that into perspective, Volvo would want to prime its document end result from the second half of 2020 by 7 p.c, or 27,492 automobiles.

‘Nice development’

When requested whether or not lacking the 800,000 goal in 2020 was disappointing or motivating, Samulesson stated he offered wiggle room when he initially made the prediction, saying it may come a yr earlier or a yr later.

“Now it seems like it’ll occur a yr later, however we’ve cause for this given the impression of the pandemic,” Samuelsson stated. “So, I am not very upset. To be trustworthy, it is nice development.”

The most important potential roadblock to reaching the goal that the CEO sees is the chip scarcity.

“It might be that we have to lower our packages as a result of we’re roughly in the identical state of affairs as everyone else,” he stated.

BMW, as an illustration, warned on July 2 that the chip shortage might result in additional misplaced manufacturing as a result of the disaster reveals no indicators of abating and provide will stay tight within the second half.

Manufacturing was being halted at varied websites, both each day or particular person shifts, Milan Nedeljkovic, BMW’s manufacturing boss, stated, including that misplaced output was about 30,000 items thus far this yr.