Volvo’s electric charge

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.