Volvo’s electric charge MOTORING
Volvo has revealed the first of its new stand- alone performance cars, which, it hopes, will trump Tesla in the electric revolution. But if you want a Polestar, you can only order one online and will have to drive it using a ‘hassle-free’ subscription rather than owning it outright. The equivalent price of ownership would be around £115,000.
volvo’s owner, Geely of China, aims to turn Polestar into an all-electric, separate brand.
The first car in the range, launched globally in Shanghai, is the Polestar 1 grand tourer electric-hybrid and should be in production by mid-2019.
As new as it is, the Polestar 1 is almost indistinguishable from a volvo Coupe concept shown at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2013. That in turn was hailed Inspired: The Polestar 1 and (inset) Roger Moore driving the P1800 coupe as the 21st- century iteration of the classic Sixties volvo P1800 coupe.
It’s a name few will recall, but millions will remember it as the car of choice for Roger Moore when he played Simon Templar in The Saint. Significantly, a Briton, Jon Goodman, a veteran of volvo and Peugeot, will play a leading role as Polestar’s chief operating officer overseeing the tilt at market-leader Tesla.
The Polestar 1 is the first of three models to be made at a new factory in Chengdu, China, which opens next summer. The two-door, 2+2 seat is an electric car supported by an internal combustion engine that generates on-board electric power.
The 600 bhp hybrid has a range of 93 miles on electric power alone and new driving technologies that make it ‘a true driver’s car’, says the company.
Bosses say future models will be ‘ fully electric only’. The mid-sized battery-powered Polestar 2 will follow later in 2019 to take on the Tesla Model 3, with the larger SUv- style Polestar 3 arriving after that.
Cars will be driven on a two or three-year monthly subscription, which covers delivery, servicing and the ability to rent other volvos and Polestars. orders will be taken online, with showrooms called ‘ Polestar Spaces’ where customers can still kick tyres.