Volvo to stop using leather in new cars by 2030

Cows are a fairly major producer of methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas, contributing ~20-80x more to global warming than CO2 over the next 20-100 years.

I do think it's interesting that there are different definitions / categories of "sustainable" right now - global warming sustainable, ecologically sustainable, resource sustainable - and they do seem to get conflated together.

I think that's a great question. I have always preferred a good cloth seat to leather. I suppose leather is easier to clean, but I can't think of any other meaningful advantages.

for my, I have a sensitivity to synthetic materials like pleather. it traps heat and makes me sweat 10x more from the area that is up against the material. this doesn't happen to me with real leather or cotton. most "cloth" seats in cars are also polyester based, not as bad but similar issue. to me leather is the most hygienic and easy to maintain. plus it's comfortable.

over time my sensitivity has diminished with cloths, but it's still there when I go overboard. taking a long 14h car trip from WA to CA that I do at least once a year would be a disaster for me with Pleather

It's just a status symbol / veblen good.

Animal hair is a big one. My husky’s hair literally weaves its way into any cloth seats and doesn’t come out.

Anecdote: I actually have a leather Volvo for this very reason. No problem using leather substitutes to accomplish the same though. Our home couches are pleather.

It's mostly a status signaling issue. Car buyers have historically considered leather seats to be a "luxury” feature. And that used to be mostly true, since most older cloth and synthetic materials were generally less durable, less comfortable, and more prone to stains. But now modern synthetic materials are better in every way. It will take a while for buyer preferences to shift.

Because if you eat beef, you have cow skin also. And cow bones. And cow entrails. And you have two choices of what to do with it: make leather with the skin or throw it into a landfill.

I'm 100% OK with leather for shoes, chairs, wallets, car interiors, etc. Because throwing it away is wasting it.

And I like beef. I raise steers to eat them. I'm not going to stop. I will NEVER become vegetarian, let along vegan.

Durability and cleanliness. Fabric seats do not age well and are hard to clean. Real leather ages extremely well, and is easy to wipe clean. Fake leather or semi-fake leather (e.g. bonded) are easy to clean but age extremely poorly.

I find some nicer fabrics, such as Alcantara, to be more comfortable than leather, but they soak up oils and can end up looking gross as they age.

Quality leather lasts forever, smells better, and is very comfortable. The downside is that it requires maintenance -- you do need to break it in, and it will form around your body. You also need to treat the leather every six months or so otherwise it may crack, and many don't do that. But if well maintained, it will last over a hundred years, much longer than the life of the car. And it will fit to your body like a glove and accumulate pleasing stains. The other downside is that it's not as quiet as cloth.

Most leather car seats are not made of quality leather, they are made of what can best be described as leather paste, bits of leather dust kept together by glue and pre-stained. The problem with this is that it doesn't last as long as actual full grain leather and degrades with sunlight. It is much cheaper though than full grain leather.

The modern vinyls used in the fake leather are softer than the earlier vinyls and also address the odor and cleaning problems with cloth, but they don't have the feel or durability of full grain leather. There is a real difference sitting on vinyl versus sitting on leather, even for the modern textured seats as in the latest BMWs with leatherettes (BMW has the highest quality fake leathers, but it's still the less popular option). They are also cheaper. Whether or not the leatherette seats last longer than the leather paste seats is primarily a function of the quality of the pastes/plastics/vinyls used in each. You can get expensive versions of both that should last longer but none will even begin to approach the longevity of full grain leather that is regularly cared for. You can find leather thousands of years old in museums -- there is a 5,500 year old leather shoe. Lather lasts forever and becomes softer and more pleasing with use. That is the appeal, but it's not for everyone. Like other consumer products, people want more disposable things that don't require maintenance or time to break in. The idea of buying something a bit tough and rigid that becomes more soft and supple over time is something most consumers don't want. Even when they buy leather, they want to buy the pre-stained leathers that are artificially stained rather than letting the leather naturally stain with age. Real leather is a truly old-fashioned material, made for the era when you bought one jacket and kept it for life, letting it change with your body. Or one belt for life that became more supply with time, something that you took care of and maintained.

The main thing cloth seats have going for them is that they are more quiet and cheaper to produce. In the very early days of the automobile, cloth seats were very expensive to produce relative to leather and so were the luxury option. Also the wealthy would reupholster their seats if they got stained or smelly. But that changed very quickly, and most still consider full grain leather seats to be the most luxurious option in terms of durability, odors, and feel, even if they are less practical than vynils or other materials that don't require treatment.

It might be if it changed anything for the cattle - which I doubt it does.

It's too late to guarantee the change for designs they've already started, and cars can take about 8 years to go from inception to release.

In addition to the design aspects, there's also supply chain aspects to worry about. Volvo could have long-term contracts with leather makers for x amount per year of leather for y number of years. Eliminating leather while contracts are still running mean that you'll be wasting leather or desperately trying to find a buyer until that contract runs out.