Volvo Cars sold 148,239 vehicles worldwide in the three months to August, down 7.4% from 160,160 a year earlier, saying it is “prioritising protecting transaction prices over volume growth.”
Volvo, which is majority owned by the Chinese giant Geely, sold 710,042 vehicles in 2025, down 7% on 2024, and has said it aims to return to volume growth this year.
“Given the challenging market conditions in China and the US, we are prioritising protecting transaction prices over volume growth,” chief commercial officer Erik Severinson said in the release, published on Wednesday.
It is the steepest decline in four months and a reversal of the improving trend through the summer. Trade coverage notes that Volvo has recorded a year-on-year fall in every rolling window since adopting the format.
EV Sales
Fully electric deliveries rose 27% to 42,941 from 33,789, taking them to 29% of everything Volvo sold.
Plug-in hybrids fell 1% to 36,395 from 36,705, or 24.5% of sales. Together the two made 79,336 electrified vehicles, up 13%, and 53.5% of the total.
Everything else collapsed. Mild hybrids and combustion cars fell 23% to 68,903 from 89,666 — a loss of 20,763 units, which is more than the entire decline in group sales.
Put another way, Volvo sold 8,842 more electrified cars than a year earlier and 20,763 fewer of everything else. The electric business is now the only part of the range growing, and it is not growing fast enough to hold the total.
China and the US
Volvo attributes the quarter’s weakness to the continuing downturn in China, which it puts down to increased competitive pressure and a weak macro-environment.
In the United States, it says lower demand for electric and plug-in hybrid cars led to weaker sales. That is a reversal within one reporting cycle: the previous window, covering May to July, described American sales recovering for a third consecutive month with double-digit growth.
The company adds that the automotive industry, including the premium segment, remains under pressure across all regions.
Europe is the exception Severinson names. “In Europe, we are encouraged by the steady performance of our fully electric cars,” he said. “The growth in customer orders for the EX60 continues to surpass our expectations.”
The Streak
One thing is missing from the release.
Volvo has spent the year marking consecutive months of fully electric growth in each announcement — the sixth in March, the eighth in May, the ninth at the half-year, and the tenth in July, as EV reported last month.
The August release makes no such claim. It does not say the streak has ended, and fully electric volumes rose 27% across the window, so the omission is not obviously a signal.
The New Format
Volvo replaced standalone monthly reporting with rolling three-month windows early this year, and the change makes single months invisible without reconstruction.
The June-to-August total overlaps the May-to-July window by two months, so the two are not directly comparable.
August was 16,424 vehicles below May on total sales, and 8,128 below on electrified volume.
The release contains no monthly breakdown.
Weakest Month in Years
Volvo replaced standalone monthly reporting with rolling three-month windows early this year, and the release contains no monthly breakdown. The months can be recovered.
Volvo published November 2025 at 60,244 vehicles and December at 75,049 before the change, and those two figures are enough to solve everything that followed.
Subtracting both from the November-to-January window gives January; subtracting December and January from the December-to-February window gives February; and each subsequent window yields the next month in turn.
That produces a monthly series of 42,537 in January, 39,379 in February, 71,400 in March, 52,085 in April, 55,495 in May, 109,168 across June and July together, and 39,071 in August.
Every one of Volvo’s seven published windows reproduces exactly from those figures. The chain also arrives independently at two numbers it was never given: the January total of 42,537 that EV derived in February, and the April total of 52,085 that EV published in May.
August’s 39,071 is the lowest of them. It sits below January’s 42,537, which EV identified at the time as Volvo’s weakest month in 47 months, and below the 42,067 of February 2022 that the same analysis cited as the only comparable reading — a month when semiconductor shortages were constraining production rather than demand. Nothing in the 54 months since has been lower.
February 2026, at 39,379, was also a record low and went unreported at the time because the December-to-February window absorbed it.
June and July cannot be separated without the April-to-June window.
