Volvo says 20% of all XC90s sold are plug-in hybrids

Volvo seems to have done the trick when it comes to convincing customers that the plug-in hybrid version of its newest SUV is a good one to buy. Since putting the XC90 on sale last year, one in five sold worldwide have been of the plug-in variety, according to Hybrid Cars. That means Volvo is selling about 1,000 of the PHEVs a month, globally. Hybrid Cars says Volvo sold 402 of the XC90 PHEVs in the US through the end of February.

Volvo said last year that the XC90 is its first vehicle “designed from the ground up for plug-in/electrification compatibility.” The luxury three-row plug-in hybrid, which starts at about $68,000 in the US, delivers about 400 horsepower between its gas-powered and electric motors. The model has an EPA-rated fuel economy of 53 miles per gallon-equivalent and can go as far as 14 miles on electricity alone. It can also zip from 0 to 60 miles per hour in 5.7 seconds. The trade-off is that it’s been slapped with an $18,000 premium over the gas-powered version in the US.

Volvo hasn’t been broadly associated with the green-car movement for as long as companies like Toyota and Nissan, but it’s been pushing in that direction for the past couple of years, saying that it will transition all of its models to the high-efficiency Drive-E engines based on the new Volvo Engine Architecture (VEA). All of those engines are all-aluminum, turbocharged, and direct-fuel-injected. The company is planning to debut its first battery-electric vehicle in 2019. To that end, Volvo recently and publicly expressed support for the adoption of a single standardized charging infrastructure. Volvo says the Combined Charging System (CCS, also known as SAE Combo) is the best choice for a global standard because it allows for both AC and DC charging.

We’ve asked Volvo for confirmation that 20 percent of the XC90s sold are PHEVs, but have not heard back.

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