Volvo vows to go all-electric by 2019

Hear that, Tesla? Volvo is on board.

The Chinese-owned, Swedish car maker has announced Wednesday that "every Volvo it launches from 2019 will have an electric motor."

This doesn't necessarily mean all Volvo cars will be purely electric by then. The lineup will be a combo of "mild hybrids," plug-in hybrids and fully electric cars. Volvo already has a few hybrids in its lineup, but it hasn't yet launched a fully electric vehicle.

That car, announced in March 2017, will also come in 2019. But now Volvo has expanded those plans to launch five fully electric cars between 2019 and 2021. Three of those will be Volvos, and two will be "high performance electrified cars" from Volvo's performance brand Polestar. No details about any of those cars were given.

"This announcement marks the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car. Volvo Cars has stated that it plans to have sold a total of 1m electrified cars by 2025. (...) This is how we are going to do it,” Håkan Samuelsson, president and CEO of Volvo, said in a statement.

Volvo's claim is actually quite timid compared to the ambitions of Tesla, current leader of the electric car space. Tesla plans to ramp up production of its electric cars to half a million in 2018 and one million in 2020.

Electrification isn't the only innovation Volvo is working on. The company -- already known for high levels of autonomy in its cars -- is testing self-driving cars, with the goal to have first such car on the market in 2021.