Geely-owned Volvo Cars has extended the contract of chief executive and president Hakan Samuelsson by another two years to 2022. It says the extension provides the company with 'management continuity as it continues to transform itself into a global and diversified mobility service provider'.
"I have enjoyed leading this company tremendously so far and I look forward to continuing the transformation of our company," said Hakan Samuelsson.
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Volvo said that in the coming years, Mr Samuelsson and Volvo Cars seeks to capitalise on and lead the disruption currently underway in the industry.
Under the umbrella of its new company mission 'Freedom to Move', Volvo Cars aims to offer a wide range of additional safe, personal and sustainable mobility services rather than merely selling cars to end consumers. By the middle of the next decade it expects to generate half of all annual sales from fully electric cars, while one-third of all cars are expected to be autonomous. It also aims to offer half of all cars to customers via subscription.
Volvo Cars anticipates this approach will transform its connection to its customer base and help it establish over 5 million direct consumer relationships by the middle of next decade. This, it says, will also offer the company far greater potential to develop connected and other services around the car to its customers.
"The industry is changing and so are the expectations of our customers. We need and want to answer those demands," said Samuelsson. "Our course for the coming years is to turn our disruptive ambitions into a concrete reality. Our transformation is not over and in the Volvo story there is a lot more to come."
However, Volvo Cars has also just announced that plans for an IPO have been put on ice amid automotive sector uncertainties and depressed share prices for automotive stocks.
