Nick Conner, Volvo’s Head of APEC, talks to CarBuyer Singapore about the brand’s image and potential of its new car here during the 2024 Singapore Motorshow

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SINGAPORE

First announced to the world in June 2023, the EX30 is the kind of car that Volvo hopes will put more young owners back into its seats. An all-electric crossover SUV design that has quite a lot of software architecture in common with the larger Volvo C40 and even the XC40 Recharge, it’s nevertheless an all-new car.

The launch edition EX30 Ultra has a single-motor electric drivetrain with a power output of 272hp and quoted range of up to 475km.

It was previewed at the recently-concluded 2024 Singapore Motorshow, expected to go on sale here in a few months, and Nick Connor, the brand’s Head of APEC and based in Volvo’s Singaporean office, has high hopes for it.

“In 2023 Volvo did pretty well in Singapore, considering how volatile the COE was, amongst other things. Across the range, we sold nearly 20% more cars than in 2022,” Connor revealed.

The brand’s top-selling product was the XC40 across various powertrain options, and with a smaller, more affordable baby brother arriving in a few months in the form of the EX30 you can see why he is buoyant about the brand’s performance in 2024.

“The Volvo EX30 has the potential to be a real volume generator because of its positioning. It’s a smallish, stylish, modern all-electric SUV for the younger demographic, with all the internet connectivity you would demand of any new product. However I also won’t dare to make any predictions on sales numbers because the market in Singapore is very dynamic and things change around quite a bit over the course of a year.”

One interesting thing about sales and marketing dynamics is that things don’t always go according to plan, though not always in a bad way. Connor relates the story of how the Volvo C30 three-door hatchback, launched in 2006, was marketed as a car for the under-30s. Yet when he was working at Volvo as a sales director in the UK at the time, retirees were the ones buying the car.

“I’ve learned that the demographic chooses what it wants, sometimes independent of what the brand’s marketing has decided for the product. The important thing is that the cars we sell here are successful and have an audience,” adds Connor.

So how does Volvo select models to import and sell in Singapore?

Connor explains that with every new product, the product manager will discuss with the dealership on options and configurations that would be suitable for where it would be sold.

Selling cars that are premium, but not super-luxury, in Singapore is further complicated by the COE bidding system and its two categories. The high prices of cars here also mean that customers demand a lot for their money, and the product manager has the unenviable task of keeping everything balanced and still feature a car that will appeal to drivers shopping within a certain price bracket.

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“The COE system complicates things as it categorises cars based on power outputs,” says Connor, “With new products, we look at the configurations available for sale as soon as they are known, and decide what will work for Singapore. The factory doesn’t develop single variants for different countries because that would be very inefficient in economic terms. As such, there are Volvos that are simply not sold in Singapore because their powertrain configurations would have made them prohibitively expensive.”

Volvo’s brand image has also changed over the last couple of years. In the late 1990s the brand was very active in motorsport, with plenty of touring and rally cars racing in Europe. But all this has gone quiet, with the lifestyle component taking over.

“It’s really just the shape of things as they come,” Connor further explains. “The BTCC (British Touring Car Championship) racing cars were great in their day, but in the present age of electrified motoring, motorsport isn’tt really relevant to what the brand now represents. Building safe cars remains our top priority, but people use cars as an active lifestyle accessory and tool now so the brand made an active decision to withdraw from motorsport activities for now.”

In a sales market that is as small and as unique as Singapore, keeping one step ahead sometimes isn’t enough. Dealerships need to anticipate regulation changes that could spring up quickly and have ways to still stay successful without breaking the flow of sales and buyer interest. As for the Volvo EX30, we’ll wait until we drive the car to see if it can live up to the expectations set out for it, but it's looking good so far.

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