As a car enthusiast, I had absolutely no idea of any of this. They're apparently doing a good job hiding it.

They're just not making a huge fuss about it.

This is the same company that released the seat belt patent to public domain[1], just to make stuff safer for everyone.

[1]https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-patent-issue...

IMO Volvo is most hype-less car manufacturer.

Well, I still want a rebel blue polestar v60 wagon, but they brought so few to the US they're hard to get.

Hybrid cars are stop-gap, bullshit technology that we should have weaned ourselves from 5-6 years ago. Not only do they marry all the complexity of an ICE vehicle to the electric car, but in the specific case of Volvo (with their extremely high tolerance, low displacement high output motors (YES, turbo and supercharged)) involves even greater complexity.

Volvo and their inability to commit to electric (and all of the marketing and advertising to the contrary) is a master class in the reality of incumbent ICE manufacturers. It also shows how much of the volvo branding and market segment is just bullshit.

"Their goal is 50% plugin hybrid, 50% full electric by 2025"

Yes, we all saw those press releases but the reality is the actual volvo cars (V60, V90, XC90, S60, S80) will be the hybrids[1] and the space-tron eMobility iDrive ecoTrans "initiative" cars will be the electric ones.

Show me an actual volvo (not a space-tron concept car and not their little XC40 golf cart) that is electric and I will happily recant (and go purchase one).

[1] With tiny, loud, high vibration lawnmower engines mated to turbos and blowers.

Considering that most apartment and condo dwellers don't have the option of recharging their vehicles at night, and that the electrical grid would not be capable of charging that many cars simultaneously even if the charging stations were in place, switching to EV-only sales is still years into the future.

Hybrids may not be perfect, but they're better than the alternative of ICE-only vehicles, and the sale of hybrid consumer vehicles has done wonderful things for air quality in CA (wildfires notwithstanding).

World with MHEV/HEV/PHEV is far better than the world only has ICE and EV. It's not possible to ship ten million EVs, and we're not enough rich to buy EV at this time. HV uses less battery cells than EV so they can ship many efficient cars with fewer cells.