Volvo-affiliated Polestar set to take on Tesla in electric vehicle field
GENEVA Move over, Tesla. There’s a new kid in town.
Polestar, which started as a racing team and then became Volvo’s performance division, is moving out on its own. It’s still owned by the Swedish automaker, but it’s now a separately branded company that’s going electric.
Its Polestar 1, unveiled at the Geneva Motor Show, will be a low-volume, plug-in hybrid performance sedan. About 500 are slated for production annually starting in 2019, at an estimated $208,000. It will be followed by the fully electric Polestar 2 sedan, at a much lower but still premium price. Polestar 3, an electric SUV, is on the drafting table.
Polestar is its own company, but shares platforms and components with Volvo.
“I describe us as a 90-year-old startup,” says Jonathan Goodman, Polestar’s chief operations officer, referring to Volvo’s history.
“We’ve got the flexibility and speed of a startup, and we can contemplate doing things that Volvo can’t, but we’re backed up by the known platforms of Volvo cars. That puts us in a fairly unique position. All automakers are going into electrification, but they’ve got their legacy business, the petrol and diesel of today.
“I think Tesla will be a competitor for us. You have to respect what they’ve achieved, but we have our own take on the electric car market. We’ll bring out the Polestar 2 that will compete with the Tesla Model 3, but it will have its own styling and an exceptional interior.
Volvo is known for that, and we’ll see it in Polestar, along with a proven track record in terms of quality, and our ability to get the cars built and out.”
Based on Volvo’s large-vehicle platform architecture, the Polestar 1 combines a four-cylinder Volvo engine with an electric motor to produce 600 horsepower and 737 pound-feet of torque.
Plugging it in provides an allelectric range of about 150 kilometres. About half the car’s construction is unique to Polestar, including an upper body made of carbon fibre, a continuously adaptive chassis made by Öhlins Racing, and calipers by brake performance company Akebono.
The Polestar 1 is scheduled for a world tour prior to the start of production in mid-2019, in an attempt to overcome one of the company’s weakest points: brand awareness.
“We’ve got to make Polestar a known quantity, because few people know the brand,” Goodman says. “We’re in a good position, because we have a period of time before production. We’re at Geneva a year before we launch the car, and we can increase the appeal and ensure that we have customers waiting for it. There are a lot of people who have put their hand up, and next week we’ll ask people to put down a deposit.”
Most people won’t actually buy a Polestar. Instead, the company plans to offer the cars in two- or three-year all-in subscriptions.
“That’s the way people are increasingly going in all phases of their life, getting a true cost and not a variable,” Goodman says.
“Secondly, people are less obsessed with ownership. They want to have their car but know that when their subscription ends, they can take out a new one or walk away.”
“And for an electric car, there’s a certain degree of uncertainty about what my car’s worth in three years’ time. That’s now out of the equation. We’ll give you a good price, you’ll know what you pay, and I think it’s a model that’ll work.”
Goodman expects most people to order their cars online, and the company will have very small shops, rather than large dealerships, for those who want to see one in person first. The car will be delivered to home or work, and picked up and brought back when it needs service, using a digital key that users can forward to the service department via their phones.
A launch is planned in the U.S., and “we’re sitting down and talking with Canada,” Goodman says. “It has the opportunity for us to go into a few cities and cover a large proportion of the market, unlike in some other countries where you need a big geographical footprint.”
Volvo is owned by China’s Geely. Polestars will be made in Chengdu, in a new factory that’s scheduled to break ground this spring.
Polestar vehicles have no Volvo identification on them. However, as Volvo plans to add some form of electrification to all of its vehicles, Polestar will create electric performance packages for them, under the Polestar Engineered brand.
“When you talk about Volvo, I don’t think you’d start by saying it’s a driver’s car,” Goodman says. “They’re lovely to drive, but it’s not a driver’s car. Polestar will have the performance, and it’s a great way for us to be positioned. I don’t see us cutting across the Volvo brand, but expanding the appeal.”