Small is a big word with a bad reputation, too often mistaken for insignificant or less. At Volvo Cars, we believe small is a grand philosophy. Everything starts small, whether it's a small step for mankind or a small idea scribbled on a napkin. Big things have small beginnings. Let me introduce you to something huge. The EX30, our smallest SUV ever. Fully electric, as safe as you would expect from us. Powerful, big inside, designed to have a small CO2 footprint. It's everything that you would expect from Volvo Cars, giving you just what you need. For the EX30, we've distilled the very best of Volvo in a smaller package. Take this soundbar, for instance, one space-saving speaker that sounds like six, filling the whole car with sound.
These are just little things.
Yeah, small can be pretty loud! What about this interior? EX30 customers can choose between four uniquely designed rooms, each with its own personality and mix of natural or recycled materials. From wool and flax to this dark blue option, featuring upcycled denim fibers, which means old jeans like these can live to see another leg. It's a small thing to give your things a second chance. Actually, the truth is, we can have the biggest impact on sustainability by using less material altogether. Being smaller, the EX30 uses around 30% less steel and aluminum combined than our largest SUV. Taking things out isn't just an exercise in sustainability. It also allows us to imagine new, innovative ways to create space, like with this soundbar, making plenty of room for your stuff in the doors. Small things can also have a big impact on people's lives.
Thanks to 96 years of safety leadership and some new innovative tech, small can be big on safety, too. The inside also plays a big part in this. In the EX30, we have taken inspiration from Swedish nature to enhance well-being and allow you to escape. Subtly shifting interior lighting and sounds mimic the natural world to create serene moods. For us, it's the small touches that make the difference. Small is big on little details. While it doesn't exactly run on a couple of triple A's, the EX30's battery is designed to be long-lasting, and it comes in a number of sizes, depending on which range or power you need. Don't need much? Don't buy much. Need more? Go for it. We know that 1 size doesn't fit all, and this goes for batteries, and also for the motor. Want to go longer? Get the car with one motor.
Want to go faster? Well, with two motors, the EX30 is the quickest Volvo car ever. 0- 100 km/h in 3.6 seconds. Choice. You see? Small works smart, not hard. Thanks to this single screen, with Volvo's next generation user interface, with Google built in and 5G connectivity, powered by the same processor as its much larger sibling, small can get you out of a big mess. With a suite of smart features, powered by an understanding of the driver, the EX30 looks after both you and your surroundings. Thanks to Park Pilot Assist, the EX30 can handle the trickiest of spots, even without a Mini Me. Small knows exactly how big it is. What about the space? Yep, it fits. Pretty roomy, right? Because when you remove all the unnecessary excess, you leave more room for everything else.
Small can be bigger than it seems. What's more, the EX30 can go the distance, up to 480 km on a single charge. Small has stamina. Most important of all, small is kind. Kind to people, less environmental impact. Yep, you could say that small is pretty mighty. You should try it.
These are just little things. Little things. My baby and I.
Hello, everyone. Welcome. Today is a big day. It's the small things that make the difference.
This small but beautiful car right here will make a big difference. The electric EX30, a big deal. A big deal for our customers, and a big deal for Volvo Cars. It's the smallest ever SUV, but it's no less of a Volvo. If anything, it's more. It's a distillation of everything that's good with Volvo, but in a smaller package. We like to say, "Small but mighty," because it delivers on everything that you would expect from Volvo. We've been leaders in safety for a long time, and the EX30 will be just as safe as you would expect from us. It's designed to have the smallest CO2 footprint of any Volvo car to date, and it's available with powertrain options: range, power, and cost, depending on your needs. It is packed full of technology and features to create great experiences and make rooms for your things.
If you want a bit more adventure from your car, well, we'll offer this in the Cross Country variant. Of course, it embodies Scandinavian design throughout: exterior, interior, lighting, and material choices. It's a true Volvo. An outstanding product designed around you and your needs. It just comes in a smaller package, and that's important. We've never offered this type of car before, but we know there are lots of people out there for whom this car fits perfectly. People who love our dedication to safety and sustainability, and aren't willing to compromise because of a smaller package. People who want to drive an electric Volvo, but didn't want a car larger than their life needs. People that want advanced technology and intelligence in their car, but they don't want to be overwhelmed by that technology. Simply put, there are so many reasons to go EX30.
It's a car for the many. Perhaps one of the most important things is it enables even more people to become part of the Volvo family. This is why the EX30 is also an important car for us as a business. 96 years ago, Volvo started as a small idea, scribbled on a napkin between two people with very strong values that resonate with us to this very day. We are much larger now than we were back then, but we are still a small yet mighty player in a huge global industry. That means we're nimble, and we move fast, while we bring everything along with us that we learned on that long journey, constantly trying to improve with age. We have big ambitions. We are all in on our commitment to electrification.
We will be a fully electric car company by 2030, and we'll be halfway there by the mid-decade, just a few years from now. There's no ifs, there's no buts, there's no maybes. We do this because we want to be a more sustainable company, and it is an absolute necessity for the fight against climate change and towards our own goal of becoming climate neutral by 2040. It will deliver what customers want: better cars and better experiences, more choice, and with a lower CO2 footprint. The inflection point at which electric cars truly take off and become the dominant market force is coming ever closer, and that pace of change has never been faster than it is today. We believe the EX30 takes both us and our industry several steps closer to that moment. Electric cars are simply the better choice.
There's less noise, there's less vibration, there's less servicing needs and costs for our customers, and zero tailpipe emissions. They're better for people, and they're better for the environment. This is an important car, the EX30. It's been designed to drive around the city, so even more so. The Volvo EX30 plays a huge part in our ambitions for the future. It's a critical addition to our product portfolio, in a smaller size and a lower price point, without compromising on profitability, on quality, or on customer experience. In fact, with the size and the value it brings, the EX30 is priced at the equivalent of a similar internal combustion engine car. Like all Volvos, it's available the way you want it: outright purchase, lease, or subscription. We will build this car in high volume, and we will sell this across the globe, and it's here soon.
In fact, you can order it today. You can buy it today, with production starting in only a few months, and deliveries to our customers before the end of this year. Let me say once again, the EX30 may be small, but today is a big day. It's a big day for our industry, it's a big day for our company, and it is a big day for our customers. Volvo for Life, because it's the little things that mean a lot. With that, let's get on with the rest of today's show. Thank you.
So basically-
Mm-hmm.
there's millions of ants, and they're, like, tiny.
Mm-hmm.
They can carry big, big, big things like sticks, seeds, mushrooms.
Throw me a kiss from across the room. That's nice. Well. Even when I'm not. That's my hair! I'm compromising. I have to go. These are just little things. Dad, do you know this? Little things, but they mean a lot. No. I need science with friction, and, like, all the different forces. I put them in. As I cross the street, when I doubt. These are just little things, but they mean a lot. I know they're just little things. I love you, too. I need these little things. 'Cause it's the little things that mean an awful lot. -gonna eat tonight, huh?
Thank you, Jim, for that great introduction of the EX30. As you can see, we're really excited about the opportunities that this small but mighty car brings. Welcome. Welcome to Volvo Cars' Virtual Capital Markets Update. I'm Olivia, Chief Communications Officer at Volvo Cars. Today, we're broadcasting live from Milan, where yesterday we held our global reveal of the fully electric EX30. We now look forward to sharing more detailed information with you over the next few hours. During the course of our time together today, we'll go through all the details around the EX30. We'll step into a deep dive into our commercial transformation and our journey towards mid-decade profitability. We'll conclude today's update with a Q&A session starting at around 3:30, 3:45 CET.
For those of you that have asked questions and registered in advance, please use the link you have received in your inbox. Today's CMU is live streamed and will be available on demand on our website after the session today. Let's start today's program, and to kick us off, it's my absolute pleasure to introduce Akhil Krishnan, our Head of Small Car Programs, who will give you more details around this fantastic SUV.
Thank you, Olivia. Hi, I'm Akhil, and I lead the Small Car Programs at Volvo Cars, and today is a particularly special day for me, as I have the pleasure of introducing you to our smallest ever SUV, the EX30. We started with the goal to offer a fully electric SUV in this segment at a competitive price, thereby bringing new customers to the Volvo brand by being a premium alternative for those who wish to downsize or stay in this segment, all while enabling the choice to drive electric without having to pay a significantly higher price premium to do so. The key factor to achieve this was to have a car that is cost competitive while delivering fully on our product expectations. The EX30 is therefore a product of synergies between Volvo Cars and Geely Auto.
We leveraged the SEA vehicle platform with its scale advantages and established manufacturing operations, and to this, we bring key Volvo technologies, Volvo safety, our renewable and natural materials, Volvo design, and our UX capabilities. The EX30 has a clear and simple product offering. There's three equipment levels, Core, Plus, and Ultra, that can be combined with our three propulsion offers: the single motor that's available on the Core and Plus levels, the extended range that's available across all three levels, or our twin motor performance, starting with Plus and Ultra. Our customers can choose to have their EX30 in one of five exterior colors: Cloud Blue, Moss Yellow, Vapour Grey, Onyx Black, and Crystal White. We offer four exciting interior rooms that are inspired by Scandinavian nature: Mist, Indigo, Pine, and Breeze.
We've brought natural and recycled materials that have been turned into interior panels and upholstery in this car. The EX30 is focused on offering what is essential for our customers and minimizing all else. A great example of this is the single central screen that's running Volvo Cars' next generation UX, powered by Google. It positions driver information high up within the field of view, and the rest of the screen is used for navigation and applications. Another example of how we minimize is by removing electronics from the doors. The window switches are moved into the center tunnel, and the speakers, which are usually in the doors, are incorporated into a sleek soundbar, providing a premium sound experience and lowering the number of electronic units and cables overall.
Coming back to the propulsion offer, the EX30's single motor version has an LFP battery, so that's lithium and iron phosphate chemistry. The extended range and the twin motor performance have an NMC battery, with lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt in the chemistry. The LFP battery is cost-effective and less resource-intensive to produce, enabling a lower entry price point to this vehicle, and the NMC is available for those who seek more. Range for the entry position is expected around 340 km on the WLTP test cycle. If you're after maximum range, our extended range offer can achieve up to 480 km. If your priority is performance, our twin motor performance version can accelerate from 0 to 100 km/ h in 3.6 seconds, making it the fastest accelerating Volvo car ever.
All of the EX30 cars are capable of DC charging at a high power output, offering 10%- 80% charge in around 26 minutes. The car is compatible with either an 11 or 22 kW home charging unit. To us at Volvo, safety and sustainability are integral to everything that we do. The EX30 is a clear embodiment of that principle. A smaller car does not mean a compromise in our commitment to keeping people safe, both those who are inside the car and everyone else around it. We're drawing on years of pioneering research in both protective safety and our Safe Space Technology. For example, we've introduced an airbag on the side of the driver's seat to help prevent the driver and passenger from coming into contact during a collision. Our Safe Space Technology enables the EX30 to be city safe.
With a three-way combination of cameras, ultrasonics, and radar, this system is always there supporting the driver. Apart from emergency interventions, the sensors also assist the driver in other situations. Our parking support system can highlight free parking spots and can even help with braking, steering, and maneuvering the car to secure perfect parking. When you're on the road, our Pilot Assist system uses the same sensors to keep the car in lane. It can assist even by making lane changes, and in case you find yourself driving across one of these long trucks, it can offset the car in order to give our drivers a bit more breathing room to feel safe on the road. The Safe Space Technology is also working when you've stopped.
With the EX30, we introduced a door opening alert that's prepared to warn you if you're about to open your door into the path of an oncoming cyclist, a remedy to a big cause of cycling accidents around the world. We also have an interior sensing system, which watches for driver fatigue and distraction, two of the key barriers for us to overcome in our vision to achieve zero collisions. On the sustainability front, our goal is to reduce CO2 emissions by 40% per car in 2025, as compared to our status in 2018. This is part of our longer term target to be a climate neutral company by 2040. While the EX30 will be a strong contributor in increasing the EV share of our total sales, it's also our next step on the materials and operations side.
Compared to the closest vehicle in our portfolio, the fully electric XC40, the EX30 has 25% lower carbon footprint without being 25% smaller in size. How did we do this? Let's look at steel and aluminum as examples to break this down. First, we recycle. Around 25% of all the aluminum in the car is recycled, and so is 17% of the steel and plastics. Second, it's a smaller car, so we use less material overall. Third, we've streamlined the production process to minimize waste in manufacturing to a state-of-the-art level. It's not just materials, it's also all the work that we do on the operations side. The factory that the EX30 will be produced will operate on climate neutral electricity, and 95% of our direct material suppliers are committed to climate neutral renewable energy in their production operations by 2025.
We're also establishing traceability on five critical battery raw materials using blockchain technology. Overall, our smallest ever SUV is an exciting product that has a very important position in the Volvo Cars portfolio. I'll now hand over to Francesco Speciale, the commercial head for the EX30, to talk about what this car represents as a business opportunity. Thank you.
Thank you, Akhil. Yes, the EX30 is Volvo Cars' smallest SUV to date, yet it represents one of the biggest business opportunity in the coming years. Why? As Akhil mentioned earlier, with the EX30, we're entering a new segment: the small, fully electric premium SUV. We're launching a new, lower entry price point to the Volvo product portfolio, and in particular, to Volvo electric cars. In turn, this will help our brand to grow by attracting new consumer groups. Lastly, with this ambitious sales target, it will strongly contribute to our growth and profitability objectives, allowing us to reach 8%-10% EBIT margin by mid-decade, needless to say, it's also critical to our ambition to be a fully electric car maker by 2030. EX30 brings a strong value proposition.
It's paired with an attractive price that creates an opportunity to democratize electrification across our markets. We know that price is often one of the biggest barriers when considering whether to switch to an electric car. The EX30 will come with a price tag starting at EUR 35,900 in this very own country, Italy, for example, where we launched it yesterday. This means that you can get a fully electric car for the same price as an internal combustion engine car in the same segment. A car is not only bought, it's owned, used, serviced, and maintained. The total cost of ownership is a model for estimating the total cost of a car over the ownership cycle, and residual value is a major contributor, bringing the overall cost down.
External residual value sectors have deeply evaluated the EX30 offer and specifications, concluding that the EX30 comes with a segment-leading residual value, enabling then a lower cost of ownership for our consumers. Not only the EX30 comes with a new, lower entry price point to our Volvo portfolio, but also with strong profitability expectations. In fact, it will contribute to the profitability growth of our company with estimated margin between 15% and 20%. Thanks to this package, a smart city SUV with a very attractive price, we are convinced that we will be able to attract a wider group of consumers looking to buy for, to buy a new small electric SUV and also new consumers to the brand. The EX30 well resonates with the objectives of our commercial transformation to direct consumer relationship, aimed at attracting new audience to the brand.
We see this in our statistics of the subscription products we offer today, where over 70% of customers are first-time Volvo buyers. All in all, we see the EX30 as a car with huge conquest potential, attracting the new consumers for the long run. We expect the EX30 to play a significant role in the growth of the fully electric, small premium SUV segment across markets. The segment today is growing rapidly, replicating a similar trend that we experienced in the larger CSUV segment. We strongly believe that this car will replicate the strong success of its sibling, the XC40. A large portion of the EX30 global sales will be in European markets, where key markets are like Germany, U.K, Netherlands, Sweden, France, Norway, where you already from yesterday could have purchased your car, your EX30.
Based also on the product specification and dimension, we also see a great potential for this product in Latin America and Asia Pacific markets. Brazil and Japan, to name a few, are two examples of key markets where the EX30 will boost our electric sales ambitions. In Japan, additionally, we're going to offer the EX30 exclusively online, in line with our commercial transformation ambition. This car will also be a relevant contributor to the US electric sales growth, where we see the sub-compact segment to rapidly develop, especially for more environmentally conscious customers. There, we see the EX30 to capture this market opportunity.
With a price range starting from EUR 35,900 up to EUR 50,900 in this country, as I said, with different variances between markets across Europe, the EX30 is available as of yesterday in most of the European markets. In US, with a down payment of $500, it is also possible to reserve the EX30 with a starting price of $34,950. During 2023, we will gradually start sales across remaining markets. We plan to add 70 markets during 2023 and couple of more in 2024. First cars expected to be delivered by the end of this year. That was all for me, now I hand over back to Olivia for the next section.
Great. Thank you, Akhil, and thank you, Francesco. Let's move on to our next session, where we will talk about the commercial activities that we're undertaking, our strategy, and how we intend to change the relationships that we have with our valuable customers, starting with the U.K. With that, I would like to welcome to the stage our Chief Commercial Officer and Deputy CEO, Björn Annwall, who is joined by with Jovana Jovic, Head of Commercial Transformation Programs, and Kristian Elvefors, Managing Director of Volvo Car U.K.
As you know, we feel really excited about where we're going as a company, and we feel really excited about being in heavy execution mode right now. I think by looking at this car, you understand that on the product side, we're really executing, and on the performance side, having a 0- 100 at 3.6 seconds, of course, that's quite impressive. What we're going to talk about now is something that I think is similarly impressive. In the U.K. now, you can buy a Volvo car from the second you write down volvocars.com until you've actually legally bought the car in 36 seconds. That is also an important statistics and important type of execution that we're focusing on right now.
I'll start a bit with talking about our commercial strategy, recapping a bit what we shared with you during the EX90 launch and the Capital Market Day in Stockholm. Jovana and Kristian will talk more specifically on how this is now being executed in the U.K. A bit of repetition then of our commercial strategy. Our strategy is to grow. It's to grow much faster than the market. Our ambition is to be at 1.2 million cars by mid-decade. Volume alone is not the important thing. We need to grow profitably, and to do so, we need to have the right pricing and the right mix of cars in the market. We also need to grow our brand.
We need to grow the coverage of the brand, meeting new customers. We need to increase the depth of our connections to customer, connecting even more emotionally with the customers. With that as a base, we can really grow. We're going to grow by leveraging the two key inflection points in the commercial arena. First one being electrification. As you know, that's the fastest-growing part of the automotive sector. We're going all in and all focus is on full electrification. We will be 50% full electric by mid-decade, fully there at the latest, 2030. No ifs, no buts, no maybe, full focus. The other thing we are focusing on is to leverage the power of online and digitization. Our strategy there is not really online. The strategy is not agent.
Our strategy is to drive a better consumer experience, divided by the total cost it takes to deliver that experience. The total cost today is roughly SEK 60,000 per car. Say, 60% of that is with the retailers, 40% of that is with us. The total cost that ultimately the Volvo customer has to pay. We need to drive efficiencies and optimize that set of resources. The way we believe we can do that is by focusing on an omni-channel experience with volvocars.com as the base. We will also focus on having a transparent online price, no haggling, no worries that your neighbor pays a lower price than yourself. You know what the car costs, it's a fair, straight price, and you can find it on volvocars.com.
We will have a very clear and simple offer that you can actually, as a consumer, understand by yourself. I think what Akhil and Francesco just went through in terms of having five colors, four interior rooms, three powertrain packages, all of those choices are very intuitive and easy for consumers to navigate, they can make their choices, but not more than they need to do. We will also continue to work with our retail network. Physical network is very important. You cannot stream a car out in the market. You need physical showrooms, you need to deliver the car physically, you need to service it physically, we are very proud to have a strong Volvo retailer network.
We're now evolving that into taking a somewhat different role, and we need to also continue to right-size that network to continue to drive efficiency and sustainability in the business model for both us and for our retail partners. One thing we need to do in order to do that is to share more things together with our retailers, the digital systems and the consumer data. If we share that, we take away a lot of administration for us and the customers. We can drive more effective marketing. We can drive much more efficiency throughout the purchasing journey for the consumer. On top of that, we are also driving the inventory model in a smarter way. When you have 2,500 retailers throughout the world, today, that implies you have 2,500 inventory points.
The risk for having the wrong car in the wrong place at the wrong time is very high. By taking control over that inventory ourselves, we can reduce the total amount of inventory and increase the number of times we have the right car at the right place at the right time. That means happier customers and lower discounts. That is our strategy, and that strategy is a global strategy that we're implementing throughout the world. The actual means of how we implement that, however, is slightly different in different regions. In Europe, in order to deliver against those objectives, we need to change the legal construct. We change from a wholesale model into an agent structure. In the U.S. and China, we're not flipping into agent structures, we'll be reaching those objectives by other means through our collaboration with our retail partners.
Now we're gonna focus on Europe. To share some more on what exactly we're doing in Europe, Jovana, who leads our European commercial transformation program, will share some highlights. Jovana, welcome.
Thank you, Björn. Good day, everyone. My name is Jovana Jovic, and I'm Head of Commercial Transformation Programs at Volvo Cars. Today, as Björn mentioned, I will be focusing on the European transformation and what we do when we say we are flipping markets. Flipping a market means fully closing the wholesale channel in that market and operating it direct to consumer in an omni-channel setup. That is a major step. With that, Volvo Cars takes on the end-to-end responsibility for consumer journey and customer experience. In today's setup, as an OEM, Volvo Cars is commercially foremost responsible for brand-building activities. On the other hand, sales and transactional activities are outsourced to our partners. Going direct and omni-channel, these are connected, so the full flow is connected between the brand building and sales and transactional activities.
While this seems as a very simple thing to do in connecting the lines in the presentation, in real life, this is a major undertaking. We are transforming almost all the aspects of our commercial operations. To give you some examples, we are transforming what we sell. Foremost, we want to simplify for the customers, so we are providing few car product variants and simplified financial product line-up. Of course, we're increasing the transparency, and we are changing how we set prices. Prices are online, set by Volvo Cars. In the funding transformation, we are optimizing the whole funding structure to enable capital, cost, but also operational efficiencies by setting up a new off-balance solution for all products. Consequently, how we are selling changes as well. It's a digital transaction between the end customer and Volvo Cars, foremost on our dot-com.
Contractually as well, it's a relationship between the end consumer and Volvo Cars. How we operate needs to change to be able to support everything else, so we are taking on the responsibility of a larger part of the order-to-delivery process, but also usage phases in consumer journey by insourcing operations. Lastly, but definitely not least, we are transforming retailer network into agent, with remuneration model in accordance. All of this is enabled by digital systems. Digital systems enable us to connect the end-to-end flows, to connect the lines fully. It's built on digitalization, but also on automation. As an example, order placement from dot-com is fully connected to the back-end system, so there are no manual interventions. Connecting the systems fully enable us and our partners to support consumer journey through the omni-channel setup.
Of course, in addition, a lot of teams are impacted, and we have a new operating model put in place to enable and support the efficient direct-to-consumer operations. As amazing as this is, it does require effort, and this is and has been a truly cross-functional collaboration with very dedicated teams to deliver on our transformation, with a supportive leadership team to take decisions when necessary, and also reallocate the resources when necessary. We do all of that because we see three key implications of doing the flip approach in Europe. We see better customer experience for the customers, long-term sound economics for the retailers, and for us, it's a competitive and future-proof platform. To showcase what customers will see. As mentioned, impact to customers is a better CX, better customer experience.
The film the screen is showing is part of the purchasing journey of an XC40 Recharge. I can very proudly say that now, for the first time, all choices are available at customers' fingertips. All new cars offers and prices are visible and available online with a simple journey. You start by choosing your car, then you choose your features, as mileage, as an example. You can choose your options or add-ons, and also all financial options are available. You can read more about them while browsing. When you choose your add-ons, you can subscribe to service package and also choose a potential down payment if you would like to put that one. Lastly, you proceed to checkout and put in personal information to place your order.
Björn already mentioned it, but I will repeat it: if EX30 goes 0- 100 in 3.6 seconds, a customer can place an order in 36 seconds online. That's our personal best. On the other hand, what this film now shows is the retailer side of this coin. If a customer chooses to start a purchasing journey at the physical store, retailer has the systems in our omni-channel setup that support in identifying the customer, and they can log the opportunity and start purchasing journey with car configuration. They also can continue by proceeding to checkout, and also placing the order, so going the full way.
If the customer would choose to finish the order placement or the journey offline, the retailer is able to send a link with the customer, so he or she can do it at home later on. With this, the whole system, we are enabling the retailers to spend time on core customer value-adding activities. Less admin, more sales. With this, of course, the cost structure is optimized, but there are other aspects of the retailer impact, such as no stock risk, which means that capital efficiency is improved. In the end, the impacts to us. As mentioned, we are building a competitive commercial operation system with future-proof go-to-market setup. All parties are better off. We are not born into the system. We are almost 100-years-old OEM that has taken major transformation steps, already mentioned by my colleagues.
In a lot of markets around the globe, now with flipping or closing the wholesale channel and everything that that entails, we will be able to operate efficient direct-to-consumer business model. That means that we have scalable and consistent consumer experience across the markets, where we can optimize marketing, sales, activities, but also the inventory and capital costs across the full system, so us and retailers. Of course, with responsibility of the digital infrastructure, we also create direct consumer relationship, and we have possibility of price setting. Now, those consumer relationship will give us the opportunity to build up loyalty, but also potential for cross and upselling. Now, when U.K. is our first market to very shortly flip fully or fully close the wholesale channel, I will hand over to Kristian to tell you more about the U.K. specifics.
Thank you, Jovana. Hello, everyone. My name is Kristian Elvefors. I'm actually going to do this. A 96-year-old company with 96 hours to go until we close the wholesale channel, and we become direct for real. It's not only about going 100% from start, we actually already trade on 50%. You might ask, "How do we do that?" We started 18 months ago to negotiate with the retailers and to set up a minimum viable product for flipping the market. Meaning a minimum viable product, you need to engage the retailer network also to understand the future and where we are heading.
That's mean that you need to continue to consolidate the network, you need to build bigger, fewer, better retailers that can take care of the volume that we are going to get out of this shift into a new direct volume model. One thing of doing it is also to enhance and test new business models. It's not only about building new full-service sites, it's also about test new hub-and-spoke systems, where retailers have, for less cost, they can build delivery centers, they can do service and sell used cars, but they don't have new car sales showrooms.
That means a regional footprint, where a retailer might have four to six sites, where they today have six new car sales site, and tomorrow, if the customer are changing their behavior, still operates in a big regional area, but might have three to four new car full sites and six service points. That takes cost out of the equation and gets us more efficiency. U.K. today already has the highest output of all retailers in Europe, and to be able to cope with the growth that I'm going to talk about soon, we are also setting up two new prep and delivery service centers at our ports in Grimsby and Bristol that will help us and the retailers to get even more volumes out.
That has been a part of an ongoing discussion for 18 months, and we are continuing to do that now as we see the effects of what the transformation, the change will bring to the market. As we discussed earlier, both from Björn and Jovana, when you say you can transact in 36 seconds, you have a huge efficiency impact compared to how you deal with an order today. Even if it's two or three minutes, on average, it is so much more efficiency you build into that system. Actually, a sales consultant today needs to have a big computer to do the full sales process. Tomorrow, the sales consultant, can you do it over the phone or even the customer's phone to be able to transact quicker. That also means that you're not fenced in your showroom.
You can actually transact and do the deals wherever you are as a sales consultant. The customer itself can help and process, and transact, and finish the order or the prospect wherever they are and wherever they like. The efficiencies of the network will continue for a while, and we don't know exactly the finished state of it. In close collaboration with retailers, we are continuing to working on it, and that is also part of guaranteeing to keep the profitability in the retail network still, but taking out and being more efficient as we go into the future. You can ask yourself, why the U.K.? Why did we want to do the U.K., the third biggest market for Volvo?
It is a big risk, it's also a big, mature market who are very used to online and e-commerce, who are quite tech-savvy when it comes to buying online, where almost 31% of the customers are doing all the retail, all the grocery, all shopping online already today. We could see through COVID what happened. Not only Cazoo and Cinch were launching new offers and started to deliver cars directly, we could also see that retailer partners digitalized the systems to be able to deliver used cars or even new cars direct to the end customer. Used car direct deliverables is a big, big thing in the U.K, that actually builds confidence in the customers that they can even buy new cars in that same way.
I think the U.K. is a smart move for us because we are taking off in a really good market with a good market transaction and a good marketplace as such. Will we grow? Yes, of course, we will grow. You have seen the EX30, and I'm hugely impressed, and I know my retailers as well, and the customers, and the reviews we have seen so far. It's a fantastic product, not only for all the markets we are launching the cars in, but specifically for the U.K.
We have been waiting for this car for a long time, I'm sure that this car will be a number one car in its segment in a couple of years' time when we have full delivery of the car, as the XC40 is today, it has been for three years, the number one best-selling car in its segment, also followed by the XC60, top five since launch, and the XC90, top three since launch. We know what we are doing, we are sure that we will help this to grow our market position with a 20% year-over-year, up to our mid- midterm ambitions. That's bigger than the market as such, which we calculate to do another 9%. To caveat it, the nations are strengthening out. In May, isolated, we did 3.7%.
That's a long time since we did 3.7% market share, and that is the path and the first wave of doing this growth now. Also, you need to grow in a profitable channel because you need to take care of residual values, you need to protect the residual values of a car, and you need to have a sustainable life cycle of a car. To do that, you need to trade in retail. You need to be strong in retail. You need to have a strong retail offer in place. You earn money on the offers, on the car as such, but also on the high residual values and a big customer base. That's a big difference of trading all the car in fleet, where you have a different equation. The strongest part need to be in retail.
We are strong in retail today. We will become even stronger with this EX30. That guarantees profitability for us, market share, and a long lifetime success for the car. As an example, to finish off before I hand over to Björn Annwall again, we have been trading, as I said, 50% already direct today. We know what we are doing, and we have been trading with Care by Volvo for a couple of years now, and as you can see from the figures, it's a huge success for us. 90% conquest, the highest number in all markets. We are taking loads of customers in the U.K. from other premium manufacturers and also other brands out there that want to become a part of the Volvo family. That is so good.
You can see from an average, we trade on an average from a 48 years today, which is also a fantastic result, taking the average age of our drivers and owners down 11 years, which is really, really tough to achieve, we haven't even launched the EX30 yet. You can see, 43% of our customers are already today trading full end-to-end without any retail-assisted sales in there. That means that they might have visited a retailer for a test drive, they might have visited a retailer to have a look and feel of the car, but they have done the full transaction themselves. I need to mention one thing that we are doing in the U.K as well, as the other markets where we are launching.
We are building capabilities internally to take care of the full customer end-to-end journey. It's not only about building an agent framework and building an agent set up out there, it's also building our own capabilities to do the end-to-end solution for the customer. Stay tuned and wish us good luck because we are going to do it in the U.K. Now over to Björn.
Thank you, Kristian. I would really recommend you to go to volvocars.com in the U.K and sense the experience yourself and see if you can do it in 36 seconds. We are clear on where we want to go. If I were you, I would ask then, "Okay, what will that give us financially?" This is something that will play out over time. I mean, the baseline cost, as I said, is around 60,000 SEK per car for us and our retailers, on average, throughout the world. It's a little bit lower in the U.K, a little bit higher in some other markets. Of course, there's a cost base to work on there.
I think as important, the consumer experience can be done so much better, and that's what is going to drive our brand, and that's what is going to drive loyalty. There's lots of potential, and we are moving to implement this throughout the world. You can slice the pie in different way. You can do it by geographical market, you can do it by type of offer, subscription versus cash, you can also do it by type of car, ICE versus BEV. We have tried a different set of different angles in different countries, which means that we now have an online direct type of offer in many markets throughout the world. No market has it for the full market like U.K will have next week, but a lot of markets have started this journey.
Now it's key to do this right, so we're scaling up the capabilities, the digital system, the operating changes we and our retailer needs to do, and we will roll this out throughout Europe. First, we make really strong learnings in the U.K., then we go to Sweden, and then we move on. Online is a difficult term. What do we mean with online? For us, we have a very clear definition. When we say online, we mean, from a customer point of view, there is a buy button, there is a clear online transparent price, and there is a direct transaction with us. That's kind of the basic assumption on what is online direct sales. For that to be important for us, it also needs to be part of a structural roadmap to drive a better consumer experience divided by cost.
We can very easily put a buy button on many of our volvocars.com, and then have a lot of people and Post-it notes and people doing things between different systems. We can do that, but that will not give a better structural cost. The online sales that we are counting is only online sales, where the consumer views it in the right way, and we take steps to get structurally better. Right now, that's last quarter, that was 5% of our total sales, and that will now grow during this year, particularly towards the end of the year. The cars we're selling now in the U.K in wholesale still needs to get delivered, so you're going to see that effect towards the end of this year and beginning of next year.
You're going to see how this continues to grow towards 50% by mid-decade. With that, I think we have covered enough for commercial for today, and I hand it back to Olivia. Thank you very much.
Great. Thank you, Björn. Thank you, Jovana, and thank you, Kristian. We have heard all about the EX30 and our commercial strategy and our ambitions. Now we will shift to the road to higher profitability. With that, I would like to welcome to the stage our CFO, Johan Ekdahl, and Fredrik Hansson, Deputy CFO and Head of Global Controlling, who will walk us through the profitability roadmap that we have ahead of us. Thank you.
Thank you, Olivia. Good afternoon. Financials and mid-decade ambitions. Just as a short recap, these are our mid-decade ambitions. We aim for EBIT margin of 8%-10%, 50% full electric sales by mid-decade, which will then take us somewhat to our journey towards our fully electric 100% by the end of the decade. On sales volumes, we aim for 1.2 million cars on a run rate as of mid-decade, where, of course, the EX30 will be one important contributor to that. 40% reduction of our CO2 footprint by mid-decade, also 50% direct online sales, as Björn alluded to here previously. Those are the mid-decade ambitions. Where are we now? Well, this is 2022 compared to where we were in Q1 on a rolling 12 basis.
What we can see that we are on a growth journey, even more so if you look at 2023 isolated, we had a 14% volume growth in sales as of May. We are really taking off now when the easing of the supply constraints, production constraints, and semiconductors, et cetera, having a healthy growth each month this year. Even more revenue, we are growing top-line revenue more than we grow sales volumes. Also showing that we still see healthy pricing on the back of the demand. On EBIT, we see that we are more or less in line for the Volvo core part with last year, due to the fact that we, during the second half of 2022, saw elevated raw material prices, et cetera.
However, also there in Q1 this year, we saw that we were increasing our operational profitability. On cash flow, although we have had some structural investments during this year, investments in plants, in affiliated companies, et cetera, we are on track to our plan, and we still have a very healthy liquidity situation. That's sort of the situation as of here and now. Also, I think what's important, as a part of this journey, is that if you compare to 2019, where we had 705,000 cars, and then with 2022, where we had 615,000 cars, it's a drop of 90,000 cars driven by COVID, and then also the semiconductor constraints, et cetera.
Despite that, we have maintained the same profitability, both due to the fact that even with elevated raw material prices, higher costs for semiconductors, freight costs, et cetera, we have also been able to increase our variable cost efficiency and also seen a healthy growth in pricing and good car line mixes during this period, actually being able to absorb these volume drops over this period of turbulence in the last couple of years. Looking forward, I think that we see it that we will, of course, see a normalized supply and demand situation, and a somewhat normalized mix of cars, but we also see that we will have lower raw material prices.
We also see that with the issues with semiconductors, et cetera, are easing up, which we also see now on the growth this year, which means that those effects very much will balance out going forward towards the mid-decade. If we then look a little bit more into the building blocks, how to take us to the 8%-10% EBIT margin. As I said, the pricing and cost normalization will, as we see it, balance out. We will, near term, have a cost for electrification, but we will also have those positive building blocks, which then is more cost efficiencies and synergies. It is, of course, on the back of the growth that we will see up until the mid-decade, and also from the commercial transformation, as shown here earlier, where we also will have a more efficient commercial system.
On top of that, we also will have a contribution from our affiliated companies, although I think it's important to emphasize that we will have or aim for the 8%-10% range on the Volvo core operations, and the contribution from the affiliates will be on top of that. With that, I will leave over to Fredrik, who will take us through these different building blocks somewhat more in detail. Fredrik?
Thank you, Johan. Let me talk you through this, starting with the cost of electrification. As you know, as you've seen in our Q1 numbers, our BEV profitability is currently hampering our margins. We're at 7% BEV profitability Q1, and that is really with our Generation One electric vehicles. What we're trying to illustrate on this graph is the cost per kilowatt through different generations of battery technology and electric vehicles. Generation One is really BEV/ICE combined. It's the XC40, it's the C40, the cars currently out today. Generation Two, we move into born electric. EX90, we've already launched late last year. EX30, we launched today. These are Generation Two vehicles, so born electric. But it's only with Generation Three, we take a massive step, and that is when we reach BEV/ICE cost parity.
I'm going to go through a bit of the specific things we're doing to take that step in a minute. Worth mentioning is also that there's a common factor across all these generations, and that is that they are using raw materials, and they're using lithium in specific. As we've seen in the past 12, 18 months, lithium prices have done a bit of a rollercoaster. They've gone up drastically, which has naturally further hampered our margins. In the recent months, it started to come down quite drastically, and we foresee it to continue to come down. That development, of course, impacts how this develops. Let's talk about Generation Three. Here, we thought it made sense to bring three very concrete examples of what we are doing to push down cost.
Let me start with the first on the left-hand side. That is our battery packs or our cell-to-body technology. We've introduced this to you in the last Capital Markets Day, it is an in-house concept where we basically rethink how you build an electric car. Instead of having a battery cell in a box, which sits in a box, which sits in a battery pack, which sits on a floor, which sits in a car, which is the biggest box, we basically make the battery a structural component of the car. It becomes the floor of the car. That has, as you can see, a 30% cost reduction versus today, huge cost savings benefit, it also adds other values. It reduces weight by 70 kilos, meaning lower sustainability footprint or CO2 footprint.
It also means a lower energy consumption, as the car is actually lighter, it creates better opportunities to create good interior spaces also for low body cars. Hugely exciting. Second is e-drives, here we're gonna talk a bit about Generation Three, but let me mention Generation Two, which was just launched with the model year 2024 XC40 and C40. With that, which is now currently in the market, we've taken the e-motor production in-house. As we did that, we also took a big step in improving efficiency. Those are 8% more efficient than the previous generation, which you also see if you look at the range numbers of our current XC40 and C40.
With that Generation Two, we took one big step in cost as well, and that was to take the inverter and the motor and create that into one module. With Generation Three, we're further pushing costs down 40% versus the reference today, by taking the last step, if you will. We're taking the inverter, the motor, and also the transmission and building that into one combined housing. Last example is really vertical integration and mega casting. Here, the specific example is the rear floor, but there are more applications. The rear floor is for Volvo and for most OEMs, a hugely complex structure with hundreds of weld points and a lot of small pieces fitting together in a complex supply chain. What we're doing in Generation Three is really mega casting that.
Doing one big aluminum cast to replace that complex structure. That gives us design flexibility, it's more sustainable to do so, and it drastically reduces the supply chain complexity and also complexity in our plants, which are further benefits beyond the pure cost savings of the material parts. That was about high voltage and cost reductions in that area, a critical area. Beyond that, we are deploying additional measures to achieve operational leverage and enable a continuous transformation. We talk about it as our culture, competence, and cost. Starting with culture, it's really to continue the culture journey we're on, which is embracing transformation, and it's also about focusing on enabling flexibility by having a cost-conscious mindset.
Here we have clear proof points on what we're doing today, and a lot of the things said earlier today, and the products we show, are proof points that our strategy is embracing transformation. We are embracing transformation as we execute. We believe this is gonna be critical also going forward as the industry morphs. Secondly, and maybe the most obvious, is competence. It's really making sure that we make room for the critical talents that are key for the future. We have done so, we will continue to do so, as technology develops, we will make sure to attract that right competence and have that critical competence with us.
Costs may be mostly linked to the financial topic of today. We are taking further steps into optimizing our variable cost, and we are also taking steps in improving our indirect cost, where we're very publicly announced a reduction or redundancy program in Sweden a couple of weeks ago. That is really a building block to build an even more efficient and sustainable structure to stand on as we move forward. Last point on cost efficiency and synergies is really maybe the smallest car. The biggest synergy of all. It's the car we launched. It's the car we just looked at. This is, as Akhil mentioned, leveraging the SEA vehicle architecture. We've added Volvo technology, Volvo design, Volvo UX to make it a real Volvo.
It's also standing on economies of scale of a bigger footprint. That means that we have huge profit opportunities and huge profit ambitions for this car. Francesco mentioned it before, we are aiming and seeing a 15%-20% gross margin on this car. We're mentioning this, and for competitive reasons, we're not gonna disclose the gross margin of every upcoming car. We figured as you're trying to understand our journey to 8%-10% profitability, us launching a small car, which is typically for the automotive industry, a profit-wise challenging segment, we figured we'd give you that nugget of information to better understand the journey we're on. That was cost. Let's talk about growth.
Our ambition is to reach 1.2 million cars by the mid-decade, and it's really two things driving that. The first is, I would call it normalization. We're currently still supply constraints. We're seeing improvements, but the clouds are not fully gone from the horizon. If we just look at the times before the semiconductor crisis hit harshly and before, the full impact of the lockdowns in China came into place by the mid-2021, our running 12 months deliveries was almost 800,000 cars, and we ended up 2022 at 615, as Johan just showed. There is an opportunity just from the normalization. Beyond that, and maybe more excitingly, is that we are drastically expanding our addressable market.
Today, we offer large cars, medium cars, in PHEVs and hybrids. We have a limited BEV offer in the medium segment with the XC40 and the C40. We're expanding that offer, and thereby expanding the market. We talked about and introduced the first large car, the EX90, late last year. Today or yesterday, we added the EX30 as a small BEV, both expanding the addressable market in terms of car size and use case, but also introducing a new BEV in a very unexplored premium segment, which we believe gives us a huge opportunity. Beyond that, we are continuing to launching at least one new BEV per year until the mid-decade. Our BEV portfolio will drastically expand, and that means we'll be able to capture a much bigger share of the electric market, which is, as you all know, growing like crazy.
It doesn't stop there. If we look at the mid-decade, the PHEVs and hybrids are also developing. We will maintain our current product portfolio, but we will refresh it. We will have updated infotainment systems, we will have added smartifications, we will do some exterior updates, meaning that these cars will be relevant for consumers also in the years to come. That means that our combined portfolio is really expanding what we can grow into. Moving to the last point of our path to 8%-10% profitability, or the building blocks, if you will. That's really coming back to what Björn and Jovana and Kristian talked about, our commercial transformation. This has some key benefits. We are offering a scalable and consistent consumer experience, and that is really, in other words, enabling growth.
We need to have a seamless omni-channel experience, starting in the customer funnel all the way through the transaction, to make sure that customers want to buy a Volvo car. From a financial point of view, the second point raised here is maybe the most interesting. When we do a full flip and go into an agent model, that gives us the opportunity to optimize the entire system. We're able to optimize marketing, we're able to optimize sales, the inventory we have, and the distribution costs and how we distribute across the entire system. Third point, also important, we're taking on the responsibility for the digital infrastructure. All consumers will eventually buy a car online or through an omni-channel experience.
As we're taking on the responsibility on behalf of our dealers in some of this market, that means that there is no need for them to reinvent the wheel. If the consumer wants it needs to be provided, we're able to leverage our national scale, our regional scale, and even our global scale, to build great solutions that we can apply, rather than our dealers building the same type of solutions, trying to reinvent the wheel. That means ultimately less cost in the combined Volvo dealer system, which ultimately means more profit in that system, and as we are the orchestrators of that system, we can make sure that there's a fair allocation of that profit.
The last point, which I just mentioned, and it's actually not part of my next slide, where I'm going into some of the financials of it, but that is really the fact that we are establishing very tight direct customer relationships. This means potential for upselling, it means potential for cross-selling, it means potential for us to go into adjacent businesses with zero marketing or transaction costs to reach that customer with an offer. Let's go into some of the financials of it. This is showing the EBIT impact of a flip, U.K. in specific. We will have two things which is contributing to EBIT. One is that we move to national pricing, transparent, unified pricing, optimized by us.
Second, most importantly, is we're replacing the current dealer margin with a fixed dealer remuneration. That dealer remuneration is lower than today. It is lower. We're also taking away risk and activities from the dealers and optimizing that centrally. That's really what's weighing us down here in the third bucket. We're really insourcing part of what the dealer is doing. When it comes to tactical marketing, when it comes to call center services, when it comes to a lot of the administration, we're taking that on and doing it more efficiently. Another thing we are taking on is stock. That's the fourth bucket. We will actually grow our inventory. Today, the majority of inventory sits with the dealers and some sit with us. When we flip a market, we take on that entire inventory.
That might sound scary, but ultimately, that gives us the opportunity and freedom to optimize that inventory across the market. We're able to allocate it where it needs to be, it will give a shorter time to deliver it to a customer, and it will ultimately reduce the need for overall inventory in the market. As we talked about before, if we're taking out cost from the system, that will benefit all participants in the system, and we're the orchestrators. We see one, two years in, this is the type of economics you will see in the market. That said, we're flipping markets. Yes, U.K is flipped in 96 hours, as Kristian said. This is not something which is big bang. We're doing this gradually in many places of the world already today.
Björn talked about it a bit, but with different offers, with different products. If you take the APAC and China countries, we direct agent with our BEVs. We're setting up new interfaces and ways to market with downtown stores to meet the customers where they are. This is happening as we speak. To summarize a bit, we talked about cost of electrification and how we will, generation by generation, take that cost down, reaching BEV ICE parity. We talked about efficiencies and synergies with the EX30. We talked about growth, how normalizing the supply situation and how we're expanding our addressable market to be able to aim towards our 1.2 million ambition.
We talked about the commercial transformation as one of the three main building blocks, to reach our 8-10% EBIT margin. With that, let me say thank you, and hand back to Olivia.
That's okay. Great. Thank you so much, Fredrik, Johan, and all my very talented colleagues today for your valuable contributions and also for your insights. Let's now start to move into the Q&A session. As a recap, so far, we've heard about the EX30 becoming one of our most significant opportunities in the coming years and a building block for our strategic transformation. It's important for our customers, for the industry, and for Volvo Cars. We also stepped into our commercial transformation and the importance of creating end-to-end online experiences that are relevant and meaningful for our customers. Importantly, we looked into our mid-decade ambitions, our electrification journey, and improved profitability. Let's move to the practicalities for the Q&A. For those of you who registered to ask questions, please do send them in now using the chat function on your screen.
For those of you that dialed in and would like to share your question via audio, then please follow the instructions from the operator, and we'll bring you right into the session live. With that, I'm glad to welcome all of our speakers back onto the stage. One final point. We'd just like to make sure that everyone has the opportunity to ask their questions today. As you're thinking about your question, please make sure that you try to keep it tight so we have time to make sure that everybody has an opportunity. With that, I'll kick off with one topic area that we've had some questions on in advance, and that's related to our EX90.
We recently announced that we will adjust production going from the end of 2023 to the first half of 2024, and that's to allow additional time to ensure that customers have a great first experience of the car and the software inside it. I'd like to throw this question to you, Jim. How confident do you feel that with this adjusted timeline, that we will have everything that we need to be able to meet the deadline that we've set ourselves now for the first half of 2024?
Yeah, obviously, we're confident that we'll hit those deadlines. I mean, we made the decision very, very consciously because this is the first car that will come out on a brand-new platform. It's stacked full of technologies, you know, and part of that technology is a very complex software stack, a software stack that predominantly we're building ourselves. We want to make sure that it is wrinkle-free and that the customers, as you say, Olivia, have a fantastic experience. We pushed it deliberately, and we've pushed it roughly about five months or so. That gives us, we think, ample time to make sure that when we get this car launched, it's going to be a fantastic experience for our customers.
At the same time, we got on with everything else that we've got on, obviously, launching the EX30, which we're talking about today as well. Conscious choice, it's a small push forward for us, the benefits of that is that we'll end up with a car which is fit for purpose and where our customers get a great experience.
Okay, great. Thank you so much. Now, I'm going to go to the audio. We're going to hear from our first question. Our first guest today will be Hampus from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead with your question, Hampus.
Thank you very much. Three questions from me. What, what risk do you see in the EX30 and the cannibalization risk with XC40 Recharge? Second question is linked to that. .ill there be an updated phase list of the EX40 Recharge to called EX40? The last question is how much capacity annually do you have for the EX30, just to get a sense? Thanks.
Okay, great. I'm going to break those up. I'm going to let Björn take the first one regarding cannibalization, and then maybe you can repeat your second question as we move after Björn.
Okay. Yeah. Interesting, we get that question sometimes. When we launched XC40 here in Milan in 2017, we got exactly the same question: Shouldn't the XC40 cannibalize the XC60? What happens is the other way around. You get a stronger portfolio, you attract more consumers to Volvo. Yes, there might be a consumer who thought they're going to buy an XC60, ending up an XC40, or vice versa, but we firmly believe this strengthen the Volvo portfolio, and the EX30 is a size class smaller than the XC40. They serve different purposes, and that strengthens our overall portfolio. I can answer the next question as well. We're not going to talk about any upgrades to the XC40 BEVs today. You will not get any news on that.
In terms of production capacity, what we can say is that the EX30, it really has the opportunity to become our best-selling, car and be up there competing with the XC60 and the XC40.
Thank you.
Good. Thank you. Does that answer all your questions, Hampus?
Yeah.
Okay, thank you. Second question's coming in-
Yeah
from Pushkar, from HSBC. Please go ahead with your question.
Yeah, so I have three questions. The first one would be around your volume targets, if you are willing to share something in terms of what kind of volumes or growth that you would expect for the EX30. The second one is around China. We haven't really heard you referred to a few regions when you talked about the EX30, but China was not mentioned. I'm just wondering, because that's a region where you have a pretty low BEV penetration, how are you going to address that? The third one is on the profitability of the EX30, the 15%-20% margin. The slide that you show with the generations, I don't think that applies to the EX30, because this is made on a Geely platform.
Just wanted to understand, how do you get to that 15%-20% margin from, let's say, 5%-7% today with what you have for your BEVs? Thank you.
Okay, thank you. I'm gonna let Francesco start off.
I can take, the first two-.
Yeah. Great.
... and then maybe Fredrik can jump as well on the profitability. When it comes to volumes, we cannot disclose exact targets, but of course, we aim to attract new consumer to the brand. This is new, lower entry price point, so obviously, we expose our portfolio to a wider range of consumers. We have high volume ambitions with this car, and we aim to, as Björn mentioned before, to be one of the bestseller. The second question was?
China.
China.
China. China, yes, it will be part of markets coming in 2024.
Maybe linked to profitability.
Mm.
First, the graph showed was an illustrative chart, don't read it with a millimeter paper. How we achieve profitability is really by having economies of scale. And you also have a good offer range. We have an LFP battery, for instance, which is cost efficient as a base. It's really about finding those opportunities as we build a small car on a pure BEV platform, which the XC40 is not.
Yeah. Let me just pivot on that a little bit.
Mm-hmm.
When you're building a brand-new car from the get-go on a full BEV platform, you can take massive economies of scale. As we said in the EX30, we took a lot of time and attention to how are we gonna design this car, the stuff that we're gonna remove. I mean, the cheapest part you can buy is the part that you remove completely.
Mm
... if that makes sense. We stripped a lot of this stuff out, as we see a lot of the stuff from the doors. Normally, you have the switches and so on, and the doors all gone...
Mm-hmm
... put into the center console. We build it from the base up. We're using LFP technology as a battery platform, gives us a really nice, low entry point, and we looked at every single part of the bill of materials in this with a fine-tooth comb, and we ended up building. Because a large part of the car obviously comes from the bill of material, and that's what. Then in addition to that, of course, we use the SEA platform, which allows us to spread that cost much more effectively. Basically, you add that up, and that's how you get to those price points.
Mm-hmm. Great. Björn?
I would say also, interestingly enough, I mean, from the get-go, it was a big sustainability focus on this car. It turns out what's good for sustainability is typically good for cost. It's about taking out waste, reducing material, taking out complexity. Obviously, the example would be the soundbar. You have one soundbar instead of four or six loudspeakers. Less cost, less complexity, a great consumer experience.
That's right.
There's a lot of small things we've done much better in this car.
Exactly. Very good. Does that answer all of your questions, Pushkar? Did you have a third?
Yes. Yes, just if I may ask a follow-up, though. Just to Jim, based on the pricing of the vehicle, EUR 36,000, how does that aggressive pricing fit in with Volvo's image of a premium carmaker? Just how do you reconcile the two?
I don't think there's any conflict there whatsoever. I mean, you can have a, in my opinion, you can definitely have a premium experience, you can have a premium product, and you can also have a premium product which is pretty price competitive. I mean, that's really where the alchemy happens. I think with this car, that's exactly what you start to see. You start to see a real premium package at a very affordable price. As we said, as Francesco said earlier, the aim here is that we democratize electrification.
Mm.
I think we're front runners in that, and we're gonna keep pushing.
Thank you.
Good. Does that answer all your questions, Pushkar? Good. Okay, next we will move to George from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead with your question.
Good afternoon, thank you very much for the very informative presentations. The first one I just wanted to mention is you gave good detail on some of the cost-saving approaches you're taking going forward, including cell-to-body, gigacasting, and the third generation of eDrive. Can you just give us some insight into the timing of the introduction of those initiatives? When do we expect them to come? Will they be on products that form part of the mid-decade objectives? The second question I had was around cash flow. Obviously, you reiterated the margin targets. Historically, I don't believe you have had cash flow targets, would you expect to be free cash flow positive each year between now and achieving the mid-decade targets? Finally-...
mid-decade obviously is quite vague, given we're only 18 months away from 2025. Financial markets are time sensitive. Your U.K. market CAGR would seem to suggest 2026 might be mid-decade, unless the U.K. market is going to achieve record sales that it has never achieved in the past. Is 2026 a fair assumption for what you're classifying as mid-decade internally today?
Thank you, George. I'm going to suggest that we start, Fredrik, with you.
Yep.
taking the three generations, and then pivot to you, Johan, to take the second two on cash flow and mid-decade.
Yes. No, and the examples we showed there are really Generation Three BEV examples. We will have Generation Three BEVs within the mid-decade.
Okay.
Yes, on the cash flow, we don't specifically guide on cash flow targets. We will on the back of the growth, have a healthy cash flow. We will also have a lot of investments we need to do in the next coming years, but we will be able to fund those through our own growth and profitability. The third question was?
Mid-decade.
Mid-decade. Yeah, I mean, mid-decade as we have said, it's not a specific point in time, but it's of course, during the period of 2025-2027 somewhere. Then those different ambitions might come at slightly different points in time, but of course, it's in that range of time.
We wanted to give... The reason we said mid-decade was in order to give us some of those bookends. You know, it's very difficult to pinpoint a specific amount or even a specific year when the industry...
Mm
... is going through this amount of transition. Mid-decade, we wanted to give some guidance. I think mid-decade gives that, provides that guidance.
Mm-hmm
... for us, so.
Perfect.
Remember, when we talk about the 1.2 million, just to bring that up, is when we talk about the 1.2 million run rate, 1.2 million, that's a 1.2 million run rate.
Mm.
Effectively, you do the math on that, you get to 100,000 cars per month.
Mm-hmm.
That's what we expect to hit within that mid-decade ambition.
Mm-hmm.
EX30 will be a big part of taking us in that direction.
Makes sense. Björn?
I think you can also add that in this mid-decade, that is a bit kind of a range of time. My sense is that the more sustainability part of it, getting to 40%.
Mm
reduction of CO2 per car, getting to the 50% electric, comes early-
Mm
... in that range, whereas maybe the full volumes comes a little bit later.
Mm-hmm.
All what I would still consider mid-decade.
Okay. Makes sense. Does that answer your questions, George?
remember.
Yeah. No, that's helpful. Thank you.
Remember, as well, just to pivot on that last point.
Mm-hmm
... remember, we're going into an industry transformation. An industry transformation that's probably going to last for the next 10-1 5 years.
Mm.
That's how profound this change is. We're early to that. We're moving into that. The mid-decade piece, to Björn's point, that's a small period of time when you relate that to the large transition that's going to happen, that we're going to have to live with for the next decades or so.
Okay. Very good and clear. Do we have any more questions online?
Yes.
Yes, we do. Here we are. Okay, Eric, let's hear from you. Eric, SEB.
Thank you. I have two question. First one is a follow-up on the gross margin indication there of 15%-20% on the EX30. The low versus the high end of that range, is that sort of specification mix dependent or more a factor of the lithium component you indicated? The second question is about sort of speed to market in sort of new products, bringing new products to the market, given the slight delay of the EX90. If I look internally towards siblings in the Geely sphere, there are some companies who've been able to bring quite a few vehicles to market within a period where you really haven't brought any new BEVs into production, at least.
How do you think about sort of the speed that you're running at in terms of bringing out new products and putting them into production if we look ahead? Thank you.
Thank you, Eric. I propose we start with you, Johan, on the margin question for EX30, and then Jim, we go to you on the speed.
Yes, yes. On the margins, the 15%-20%, of course, there will be variations between specifications and also between jurisdictions, but it's also based on what we see currently on lithium prices, which is, of course, a factor that could change over time. It should be seen as indicative range on the current circumstances.
Yeah.
Just quickly following up there, should we think about a level slightly above that for the EX90?
We've not given any guidance on the 90. That was one of the points that Johan made earlier. We don't want to get into the situation we're starting to guide margins on every single model. We felt, I think it was maybe Fredrik that said, we felt it was important at this particular point in time, 'cause we know that you're looking to say: "Okay, what does this mean for the current BEV margins?" I think we're still probably one of the few companies that split out BEV margins versus total margins or ICE margins. We wanted to give a bit more granularity on this car. It's our first fully designed, fully electric car.
As Fredrik says, sometimes that's perceived as a smaller car, we'll have smaller margins, so we wanted to be clear on that, to say it will be margin beneficial to our BEV structure. We're not going to get into the situation where we start to give margin guidance on every single model that we bring out. I'm sure you understand that. In terms of the pace of change, the new EX90 platform, it is a complex platform. Of course, it takes us much, much closer to a core compute platform. As I said earlier, it's got lots of new technologies. There's five radars, there's eight cameras, there's 16 ultrasonic sensors, and there's a lidar system, which is a brand-new technology for us.
We are building the software stack from the silicon all the way up through to the lidar layer, which means we're building the perception software, we're building everything to do with the sensor fusion software. All of that's getting done in-house. That's a lot more complicated than maybe some of the other platforms that you mentioned, and it's really a software delay. Most of this is related to software, and that's the reason why we've pushed this out. I don't think it's a fair comparison to say, this platform has come out earlier, and the new platform for the EX90 is later. I think there's good rationale and good reason as to why the complexity, as well as the benefits that that new platform will bring.
Maybe not fully comparable, then?
Yep.
Okay, Eric, does that answer your question or anything more you'd like to share?
Thank you.
Okay, great. Next, I'd like to go to Matthias from DNB. Matthias, please start with your question.
Thank you. You mentioned the EX30 and the small car segment as a new market opportunity, but, in fact, you've already had a 30 series car, and I'm thinking in particular about the C30, which, never really became the success that you seem to believe that the EX30 has the opportunity to become. I would be interested to hear what learnings you made with the C30, and what you're doing differently this time around, in order to penetrate the small car market.
I can take that one. I work with the Small Car Programs. When we did the C30, that was pretty much of an experimental shot into this particular segment. It wasn't built up from the scratch as an EV, and it was also rather early in terms of the industry sort of evolution and the infrastructure and things like that growing up. With the EX30, like Jim mentioned and Francesco said, too, we're democratizing electrification.
Mm.
We're giving customers, the choice to drive electric in a segment that's predominantly combustion engine-driven. That's why we believe that the EX30 will be a very strong, volume contributor.
You learn a lot from things of the past, as you mentioned.
Yeah.
I mean, you take it to the other industry. If you look at the success of the Macintosh, what was the second product? First product was actually called Lisa, and it never worked.
Mm.
They learned a lot from that. They came in and they hit a home run on Mac. I think there's a lot of learnings when you try these things. We're, you know, we're an innovative, experimental company, and we've learned a lot from the C, and now we're gonna apply a lot of those learnings to the EX30.
Perfect. Johan?
I also think the industry has evolved.
Mm.
It used to be a little bit dogmatic. A big car is a premium car, a small car is not a premium car.
Mm.
I think the consumers have evolved and understand you can buy premium in different sizes. I also think the consumers are much more receptive for a premium car in a smaller size these days.
Particularly when it's electric. Fantastic. Any more questions from you, Matthias?
That's all. Thank you.
Okay, thank you. Next, I'd like to go to Dorothee from Exane BNP. Please proceed with your question.
Hi there, thank you for taking my question. I have three, if I may. The first is around the EX30. Could you talk a little bit about who you regard as the key competitor products for that vehicle? Maybe also the key brands that you see yourself competing with. With regards to the EX90 and the launch delays that suffered, I wondered whether that means that then that is the only car or new BEV that comes in 2024, because you obviously said one new BEV per year. In other words, are there knock-on effects for other products on that platform?
Lastly, with regards to your waterfall chart, in terms of how you get from the current profitability to the 8%-10% target range, I noticed that the price mix headwind was relatively minor, and given the macro pressures that are already on consumers and obviously a sort of pretty aggressive competitive environment now, can you just elaborate a little bit on your thinking behind that slightly small headwind, if I may say? Thank you.
Okay. We're going to start with Francesco.
Yep.
... then Jim, then Johan.
I can start with competitors. With the EX30, we have a huge market opportunity. We are going to be, in most of the markets, the first car in the segment. There is not a true small premium SUV segment, fully electric segment. Across many markets, we will be the first one to hit the segment and to capture the market opportunity. Competitors varies, as Akin mentioned before, between combustion engine, phase out products most of the time, and also new non-premium electric cars. We are going to be the first one. It's a huge opportunity for us.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. For me, I think Francesco says it all. This white space that we're gonna, pardon the pun, drive into-
Mm
... will allow customers to get a premium experience. They're allowed to get three different choices in terms of powertrain, you get two different battery chemistries, two different sizes, two different options on your powertrain, five different choices of color, four different interior choices. All of that's gonna be combined at a price point of around $36,000.
Mm-hmm.
It's pretty compelling, and we think we'll actually expand that part of the market.
Mm-hmm.
Second point. Sorry, I forget.
It was a knock-on effect on EX90 on any other changes.
Yeah. No, we'll stay true to our promise in that. The EX90 we already launched, so we count that as a launch. We launched that last year. We'll be launching another car in that same space, the same year, next year.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, you can expect one brand-new launch, as we had said previously, every year for the next, four or five years.
Mm-hmm. No change to that plan?
No change to that plan.
Okay, great. Johan?
Yeah, on the question on the margins, I think it's important to remember we are coming out now of a quite turbulent couple of years, where we now see improved situation when it comes to supply chain, semiconductors, et cetera. We see raw material prices coming down, then, of course, we will also see, over time, a more balanced situation when it comes to supply and demand and mixes of cars. The illustration that you refer to more to show that we see that those effects will balance out over time, which means that we might see an. So that's pretty much the answer to why that is not a bigger effect in the growth.
Okay, Dorothee, does that answer your question?
Yeah, that's perfect. Thank you so much.
Okay, great. Thank you. We'd like to move to the next question, which is from Agnieszka from Nordea. Please go ahead.
Thank you so much. I have just one question, and it's about your strategy for China. Looking at your BEV volumes in China, we can see that you're a bit underpenetrated in that segment. Could you please tell us what hopes do you have for the EX30 when it comes to the Chinese market, and maybe also refer to your ambitions for EX90? Thank you.
Björn?
Yeah. No, it's a, it's a very good question. I think the whole evolution of the electrified market in China, the dynamics is quite different towards the Western world. First one, the consumer perception. In the Western world, an old car is a combustion car, a contemporary car is a fully electric car. That's the demarcation line between traditional and contemporary. In China, the demarcation line is not if you're fully electric, it is if you're fully smartified, meaning good infotainment, voice steering, ADAS functions, those type of features are extremely important for the Chinese consumers for many different reasons.
You have, over the last few years, seen an onslaught of a lot of new players that are Tesla, but Chinese in different forms or fashion, either funded by internet guys with good equity funding, or all these big OEMs have launched one or two more separate brands to go after this opportunity. Right now, you have a lot of quite good cars, very smartified cars, that are all fighting to get volumes, because without volume, they will not be sustainable. The pricing is quite tough. You have, the BEVs are selling at a discount versus comparable ICE cars in that market right now, as that goes on. We, as Volvo, we have a long-term play to be fully electric, to be premium.
What we're doing now, we're not going as aggressively on volumes as quickly as we are in Europe and the U.S., but we're, of course, using EX30 and EX90 to position Volvo as a smartified premium electric brand. I think it's more important to position us right as contemporary premium than to go after volumes aggressively. That will hurt margins, and it's not the right path forward. I think this China discussion is something we will come back to, but we have a good plan for how we win in China, but it's slightly longer time frame.
China is a big market, so there's certainly enough customers for us that really care about the Volvo brand. They've been maybe Volvo customers. They care about Scandinavian design, which differentiates us in that market. They care about our true authenticity towards sustainability, which again, I think to some extent, differentiates us in that market.
Mm-hmm.
It's a build-up towards.
Safety as well. Exactly.
No, it's really important to say, actually, 'cause we don't need to change our brand-
Mm
in China. We just need to make sure it comes across in China.
Exactly.
A lot of those new startups are actually trying to come close to some of the values that Volvo really is. Nothing wrong with our brand.
Just more Volvo. Okay, Agnieszka, did that answer your question, or did you have a follow-up?
No. Thank you. That's clear. Thank you.
With that being said, I think it's good time now for us to wrap up. No more questions online that I can see. Thank you so much to everybody for joining us today. Your participation means a lot to us. Thank you also to my colleagues and speakers. Thank you so much for your insights. I'd now like to hand over to Jim to share with us some closing final remarks.
First of all, thank you. Thanks for everyone for taking the time to join us here today and for the people who have been on stage to help bring alive and tell the story that is the small but mighty EX30. I'd also like to thank our partners with whom this car simply would not have been possible. I would like to thank our employees, not only the employees who worked tirelessly in this car to bring it alive over the last few years, but I would like to take this opportunity publicly to thank everybody within Volvo Cars, all of our employees. All of us share in this collective success today and this achievement. I'm proud to be part of such a fantastic team at Volvo Cars, and I'm inspired by what we're doing for the future and where we're taking our company together.
The EX30 is a big deal. It is a big deal for our industry, it is a big deal for our company, and it's a big deal for our customers. A small SUV thing doing big Volvo stuff, connected directly with our core values of safety, of sustainability, and of human-centric technology. This allows us to continue our collective efforts to be a pioneer in the protection of people and planet. With that, I'll hand back to Olivia to close us out.
Thank you. Fantastic. Thank you so much for participating again today. If you have any further questions at all, please don't hesitate to contact our investor relations team, or alternatively, visit our website for more details or access for today's presentations online. Thank you so much, and have a great day.