Volvo Opens Largest Regional Showroom in the UAE

**Tim Elliott** (0:00)
This is Morning Drive from Mira Business FM.
This morning, we're live from Al Futtaim, Volvo's brand new flagship showroom. It's on Sheikh Zayed Road. And the topic today is kind of the future of premium mobility plus cars plus more. And our guest is Carlos Montenegro, who is the Managing Director of Trading Enterprises, Al Futtaim. Carlos, it's great to meet you.

**Carlos Montenegro** (0:24)
Good morning, good morning. And thank you for being able to host you here. It's a pleasure for us as well.

**Tim Elliott** (0:29)
It's great to be here. We're kind of sat comfortably in the middle of your new flagship showroom on Sheikh Zayed Road. Volvo is Swedish. The delivery is distinctly kind of Al Futtaim at the same time, Dubai as well.
But it feels less like, it's not really like a car showroom. It's a bit like a high-end retreat.

**Carlos Montenegro** (0:51)
Absolutely. I think you spot it correctly. So Al Futtaim has been a partner with Volvo for more than 20 years already in the country. This new showroom actually delivers the Swedish welcoming simplicity, as well as the luxury touch that always Volvo wants to give to all the customers, or personalise experience, right, let's say, when they enter the showroom.

**Tim Elliott** (1:19)
Yeah, it's how it feels. It's that kind of Swedish aesthetic, almost a Scandinavian aesthetic. What was it about now that was the right time to make this kind of investment in Dubai?

**Carlos Montenegro** (1:31)
Yes, I think Dubai we know is a vibrant city, and what we have seen is that there's a lot of spectrums of customers, right, wanted to have a different experience when it comes to mobility. Volvo has gone through a tremendous transformation worldwide on multiple points, especially on their strategy on through electrification of their models, the sustainability, circular economy, and other key points that they said they could perfectly fit to the UAE audience, right, and specifically for Dubai. So this showroom tries to showcase all those new strategies that the Volvo brand wants to make it worldwide. And Al Futtaim as a group took it perfectly as well, together with our partner.

**Tim Elliott** (2:25)
I mean, you've been a partner with Volvo for something like 40 years. What does this signal about your, I guess, your partnership and maybe the next 40 years?

**Carlos Montenegro** (2:36)
I think this is a, as you see, we are in Sheikh Zayed Road, so in a very premium space with a significant sized showroom, right, of nearly 4,000 square meter and hosting more than 20 cars here. There's a tremendous commitment from Al Futtaim group towards the Volvo brand and as well, you know, the Volvo brand towards Al Futtaim and towards the country. So we truly believe that there are those customers looking for that premiumness of the Volvo offers plus the other attributes of the brand for sure.

**Tim Elliott** (3:13)
The UE at the moment is, I think in some ways, it's a global benchmark for EV adoption. It's becoming something of a premium EV hub.
From your experience in the industry, some years in the industry, what is it about the infrastructure? And I guess the consumer appetite that convinced you, this was the perfect home for the largest Volvo showroom in the region.

**Carlos Montenegro** (3:40)
Right.
You say right. I think at the same time, we need to make some points on the electrification per se. What we have seen in the last years is that even though there was this tremendous appetite to electrify everything, it's also been clear that depending on the region, depending on the customer, the full electrification was not exactly what they wanted. So this is why companies like Volvo have gone through a strategy of definitely keeping the sustainability goals such as Volvo in 2030 to be at least 75% of CO2 reduction versus 2018
We have gone through a whole redefinition of the range of the cars where we can offer now a full electric car like EX, ES90 or EX30, but also electrified cars that we call them. So those are the plug-in hybrids that we can offer as well, because some people might not be still ready, whether it's personally or through the chargings, et cetera, might not be ready for the full electric. So we have seen that in the market as well. Today, if you combine electric and electrified, so those plug-in hybrids in the market, we're easily talking about nearly 15% of the market that are those type of power trains. If we just go on the fully electric one, we are still at around 5%, 5% to 6%. So UAE compared to other European markets where there can be at 25% fully electric, right? There is still a long way to go, yet the growth pace from the UAE and Dubai in this case, it is astonishing. So we have gone from 0% to 5% very quickly and definitely infrastructure coming from government and other private entities like Al Futtaim or Al Futtaim electric mobility companies that we have, have supported that growth.