Hooray! Volvo could yet make an electric estate car…

Good News! Volvo hasn’t ruled out building an electric estate car, meaning the furious appetite for crossovers and SUVs hasn’t killed off a TG favourite just yet.

Alas, there is also some Bad News: Volvo won’t divulge anything from its product plan beyond a commitment to reveal one new electric car every year for the foreseeable future on the path to being an EV-only manufacturer by 2030.

So there’s still hope. We’re big fans of the humble estate, but even we have to admit it hasn’t really set the electric age ablaze: other than that Volkswagen ID. Space Vizzion concept from 2019 (rumoured to be in the works as the ID.7) and the cheap ‘n cheerful MG5, the pickings are slim. Most slim.

Speaking after the reveal of Volvo’s new flagship EX90 seven-seater, chief operating officer and deputy CEO Javier Varela would only say that “there will be different types of models, different types of cars” to come over the remainder of the decade.

Meanwhile CEO Jim Rowan struck a slightly more reassuring note when he said: “Suffice to say that we play across all the spectrums and ranges, and we’ve customers who require different vehicles. And we will try and make sure that we can capture as much of that as we possibly can.”

However, there’s a but coming. And it’s a biggie. “But we will not become thin-sliced and have 40 different models,” he warned. “That is not our strategy. Our strategy will be tight, we’ll look after the demographics that we think make sense. We’ve teased a little bit what’s coming next year [a small electric crossover]. And then the different formats - sedans, wagons, whatever - we’ll get to that when we get to that.”

In other words, for an electric estate to justify a place in Volvo’s line-up, there’s got to be real demand for it. Luckily Rowan accepts that Volvo could “use the technology we have in one vehicle and transpose it into another”, and one look at the profile of the EX90 suggests it wouldn't take much imagination to simply lower it a bit and delete the third row of seats.

Come on folks, we can make this happen! Get a petition going, set up a crowdfunding page, write to your MP… whatever it takes. We’re slowly losing the city car and supermini segments (RIP Fiesta), we can’t let estates die out as well.