Volvo Cars said on Monday its global vehicle sales fell 14% in July from a year earlier to 49,273 units, extending a five-month streak of declines amid softer demand for electric and plug-in hybrid models.
The drop followed a 12% year-on-year decrease in June, when the automaker sold 62,858 units, and similar contractions in May and April, with sales down 12% and 11% respectively. In March, deliveries fell 10% to 70,737 units.
Fully electric vehicle sales declined 26% last month to 10,511 units, while plug-in hybrid deliveries fell 21% to 11,461. Together, they made up 45% of total sales, down from 51% a year earlier. Mild hybrid and internal combustion engine vehicle sales slipped 8% to 27,301 units. Over the first seven months of the year, fully electric deliveries dropped 23% to 80,722 units.
“The demand remains under pressure from the macroeconomic environment, tariff-related uncertainties and tougher competition,” CEO Håkan Samuelsson said in mid-July after second-quarter results.
The XC60 was the company’s top seller in July with 16,813 units, up from 15,577 last year, followed by the XC40/EX40 with 12,087 units and the XC90 with 7,266 units.
The sales slowdown comes after Volvo posted a SEK 10.0 billion ($1.04 billion) operating loss for the second quarter — its first quarterly loss since going public in 2021 — due to restructuring charges and non-cash impairments. That compared with an operating profit of SEK 1.9 billion in the first quarter. Second-quarter deliveries rose 5.4% from the prior quarter to 181,561 units but were still down 11.6% from a year earlier.