Volvo Cars’ global sales grew by 5.6% to 698,693 cars in the full year of 2021, demonstrating ‘resilience in the face of persistent supply constraints’. The results also highlighted the continued popularity of Volvo Cars’ Recharge line-up of cars with a fully electric or plug-in hybrid powertrain; sales of Recharge models grew by 63.9% in 2021 (compared with 2020) and made up 27% of the company’s total sales volume.

The company recorded 64,436 retail deliveries in December, a decline of 18.1% compared to December 2020. The result was significantly influenced by continued component supply shortages, which affected production and consequently deliveries to customers.

Almost 40% of all new Volvo cars sold in December were Recharge models, with fully electric cars making up 7.4%. In Europe, the share of Recharge cars was almost 60%, while in the USA it was close to 30% of overall sales volumes.

In the USA, the company sold 122,173 cars last year, an increase of 10.9% compared with 2020, and 10,793 in December alone. Sales in China amounted to 171,676 cars, up 3.0% compared with 2020.

During December, Volvo Cars sold 14,642 cars in China. In Europe, sales increased by 1.8% to 293,471 cars, as strong demand for the company’s Recharge cars supported the sales performance. In December, Volvo Cars sold 28,561 cars in Europe.

Globally, the XC60 continued to be the best-selling Volvo model in 2021, with 215,635 cars sold during the year (2020: 191,696). The XC40 was second with total sales of 201,037 cars (2020: 185,406), while the XC90 was the third best-selling model with 108,231 cars (2020: 92,458).