Henrik Fries

On the eve of Pole star’ s launch in India, we speak to their R&D boss on a fresh generation of rapid –but still safe – Volvos

‘IgOINED POLESTAR IN 2011, and since then it has been such an exciting time. We have shown two concept cars, developed and raced a V8 Touring Car in Australia, brought to market our own car (the V60 Polestar) and are now offering performance parts for all Volvo cars. Since the summer of 2015 we have been entirely owned by Volvo, with the race team remaining independent (as Polestar Cyan Racing).

‘Now we are in Touring Car racing (WTCC) again, and we are very proud that we are the only car on the grid to use our own engine. The racing engine uses many of the components from the road car Drive-E engine, because the road car engine is so advanced, such as bearings and so on. That means the race team can order parts from Volvo like any other Volvo owner.

‘We will see how the season goes but hopefully we have an advantage. We have a great history in Touring Car Racing; with the 1985 ETCC title for the “Flying Brick” 240 Turbo, the 850 Super Tourer and the 1998 BTCC title for Rickard Rydell in the S40 Super Tourer. We want to add to that success, and learn from it.

‘Polestar is a different company to BMW M, or AMG. A Polestar is a car for 365 days a year. vou can push it really hard, and it doesn’t matter whether it is snowing or raining, leaves on the road or sunshine, you can still have a lot of fun driving it. That doesn’t mean that in future we won’t do a car that has the same performance as a BMW M3, but a Polestar has a different, sophisticated kind of performance. It should always do exactly what you tell it to do: there should be no nasty surprises. These are the core values of our company.

‘Volvo is known for its approach to safety, but for me I see no contradiction with what we’re trying to do. The safest car you can have is one that handles really well and has very precise steering. We have ESP and traction control, and although you can turn them “off”, they are still working away at a much lower rate in the background.

‘Most of all, I look forward to working with the V90/S90 on the SPA platform (Scalable Product Architecture, first seen with the new XC90). We have double wishbone suspension on the front, and we can do amazing things with that car. Because we are now inside Volvo we have had access to this platform for a while. We could even do a Polestar XC90 – it would certainly be popular in some markets.

‘In fact, we have platforms now where we can change things around and do most things. If Volvo makes a coupe, then why should there not be a Polestar performance version of that car? But I don’t think there should automatically be a Polestar variant of every Volvo model.

‘As long as Polestar can bring performance, I don’t see an issue with hybrid technology or even electric cars. This is the way it is going. The XC90 T8 has huge performance. At the moment the drawback is the weight of the batteries, but they are improving all the time. In the long run I don’t see why we shouldn’t go fully electric – Tesla has proved that electric power is not boring.

‘We now have the eight-speed Aisin automatic gearbox in all our cars, but I don’t think you will see us with a twinclutch gearbox. I would personally rather have a manual gearbox as an alternative to that. There has been a revival for this sort of xmanual] gearbox recently, and if you do it well it is a very good thing.

‘In the future we will use electronically adjustable suspension. Volvo already has such a system on some of its cars, but it is not performance-orientated at the moment so we cannot set it up how we want. However, I like the idea of different driving modes, especially when we get to making electric cars: it is an advantage to have the car set up one way for city driving and then another way when you want to drive for fun.

‘Before we were part of Volvo, we’d buy a car and then start to tune it – the S60 for example. Now we are on the inside, we are in on the project from the beginning: at the simulation stage, with the test

That doesn’t mean that in future we won’t do a car that has the same performance as a BMW M3

mules, even before that when we are discussing what a future platform should be, what Polestar needs it to have. That is a huge step forward for us – I don’t have to limit myself.

‘We have access to amazing facilities: wind tunnels, test tracks, so much technology. We actually do a lot of testing in the rK. Volvo has a test centre in the north of England – I’m not allowed to say where, I’m afraid – and we are often over with the Volvo engineers and some cars.’