Polestar. Electromobility and the pursuit of sustainability
Polestar is a Swedish automotive brand focused on electric vehicles. The brand name comes from the STCC Polestar racing team. The company not only develops electric vehicles, but also optimizes engine software for Volvo models through its Polestar Engineered division. Quite often, Polestar is called Volvo’s “court tuning studio”, and there is a good reason for that: for two decades it has been optimizing Volvo models and has already finalized more than 100 thousand cars. At the same time, the company has been an independent automobile brand since 2017, producing electric vehicles under its own name and logo. Thus, in June 2017, Volvo announced that Polestar would start producing high-end electric vehicles.
Founded in 1996, the company is owned by Volvo Cars and, as a result, Geely. Although the Chinese themselves claim that the brand is ‘independent’. Volvo Cars holds a 49.5% stake in Polestar, with the remaining shares held by PSD Investment, a private equity firm owned by Eric Li, chairman of Volvo Cars and Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. Polestar is headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden (right next to Volvo’s headquarters) and the vehicles are manufactured in China. Apparently, it was Geely that came up with the idea to transform Polestar into a new electric vehicle brand.
Origins
In 1996, Flash Engineering was founded, a Swedish racing team that competed in the Swedish Touring Car Championship (STCC). Later, the team was renamed Polestar Racing and began to develop their own racing Volvo cars in the late 2000s. In 2009, Polestar Performance became an official Volvo tuning partner for existing models. For example, in 2014, the company was involved in the development of the V8-powered Volvo S60 driven by Garry Rogers in the Australian V8 Supercars Championship. Volvo eventually bought the company in July 2015 and began selling improved Polestar models directly.
Models
Polestar unveiled its first car on October 17, 2017. It was a luxurious two-door coupe with a carbon fiber light and rigid body, the Polestar 1. The car was equipped with an electric hybrid transmission with a total capacity of 600 hp and a torque of 1,000 Nm. The plug-in hybrid had a battery with a capacity of 34 kWh, which provided a driving range of 150 km. The production Polestar 1 appeared in 2019.
In 2019, the company introduced the new Polestar 2, a mid-size electric sedan. The second Polestar had a very ambitious task to compete with the Tesla Model 3. Large funds were invested in the electric car. A special production enterprise was built for in China. The Polestar 2 has a 78kWh battery that sends power to two electric motors, one on each axle for all-wheel drive. The system produces a total of 408 hp and 660 Nm, ensuring instantaneous acceleration of the electric drive. The company called the new Polestar 2 a ‘vegan’ electric vehicle because its interior was made of WeaveTech, a 100% ‘vegan’ synthetic material.
Unfortunately, the path of progress is always thorny and tortuous. The pioneers bear all the risks. In October 2020, all the Polestar 2 models were recalled due to a software bug that resulted in loss of power while driving. At the same time, the most modern electric cars did not have an update function, so the wonders of modern technology had to be reprogrammed manually. A few days later there was a new recall due to faulty inverters.
‘We will innovate to minimize our environmental impact’
But the company does not stand still! On February 25, 2020, Polestar unveiled the Precept concept car. It was supposed to debut at the 2020 Geneva Motor Show, but the event was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The word Precept (meaning ‘commandment’, ‘prescription’, ‘instruction’) hints at the purpose of the concept car, namely a ‘declaration of future events’. Unlike the previous Polestar 1 and Polestar 2 models, which are nothing more than ‘rebuilt’ Volvo cars (the Polestar 1 is the 2013 Volvo Concept Coupé, the Polestar 2 is the 2016 Volvo Concept 40.2), the Polestar Precept electric prototype has its own design. The 4-door electric car developed, entirely by the company, aims to show us what Polestar electric vehicles will look like in the not-too-distant future. It features all the necessary elements for autopilot: radar, HD camera and lidar. With its concept car, the company has shown how plastic waste can be reduced: seat upholstery is made from plastic bottles, floor mats are made from fishing nets.
In June 2021, Polestar posted the first teaser of its SUV, the Polestar 3. There are no technical details about it yet, it is only known that the SUV will receive an autopilot and a new multimedia system based on Android Automotive OS. The new Polestar 3 will be the first model of the brand that will not look like a Volvo, while the forerunner of its new style is the Precept concept car, the production version of which will be put into production in China in a couple of years. According to the CEO of Polestar, Thomas Ingenlath, the novelty will compete with models such as the Tesla Model X.
