Polestar to steer away from Volvo's image

Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath said his company is more than just a Volvo EV sub-brand and will continue to suit a range of different requirements after the parent company is fully electrified.

Speaking from Gothenburg, Sweden, during a briefing with Australian media, Ingenlath (below) said it was very clear from the beginning that electrification on its own wasn’t Polestar’s brand differentiator and that it would exist in its own right.

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Ingenlath said while Volvo's ethos was based on producing cozy, warm and welcoming family cars where everything is very inclusive, Polestar was about attracting and expressing much more tech and innovation with an emphasis on performance and a sporty drive.

“That is not of course the most comfortable for the two kids in the back when you go over speed bumps,” he conceded. "[But] it is much more tuned to an engaging drive. All of that gives the brand a character."

The former chief designer at Skoda said Polestar and Volvo will also continue to go their separate ways with styling, saying there is plenty of scope to do that within the broad ‘bandwidth’ of Scandinavian design.

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“In the past, there was a brand like SAAB being very Scandinavian, but still very different to Volvo, that is how I see Polestar and Volvo in 10 years…with Polestar clearly being much more about the avant-garde and with an exclusive look that is not trying to please everybody.

"It’s much more of a challenger.”

With the Polestar brand’s racing roots, performance was always going to be a key point of difference from Volvo and, to that end, it has confirmed it will not follow the parent company’s decision to limit its vehicles' speed to 180km/h.

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However, Ingenlath was keen to downplay the significance of top speeds as a key measurement for performance EVs, adding it is not the company’s principal to dramatically increase the top speed of its cars.

“We don’t limit the speed we have, but on the other hand, we have no intention of making a big announcement of how fast our cars are."

He pointed out that the most thrilling aspect of an electric vehicle's dynamics is how it accelerates and that all happens below 200km/h.

“I’ve been on our test track with Joakim [Rydholm], our test driver, showing me the length of developments when he’s fine-tuning the suspension and the steering.

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"It is kind of scary driving with him because he drives of course very well, but is pushing the boundaries to an extent, which makes it quite uncomfortable mentally for me – that is all happening below even 100 kilometres (per hour) so that’s where these cars are really amazing to drive.”

Even so, Polestar aims to develop bespoke performance motors separate from Volvo, which he said won’t require them.

“We will, with the Polestar 2, go into performance turning with software and offer that to our customers, but indeed, in the next product, we will then go into the hardware and have our own electric drivetrain.”

So does that mean Polestar could go back to its motor racing roots?

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“Could well be,” Ingenlath said.

“We don’t have a dogma against it, it’s really about concentrating on what we need to do and keep the resources focused on that.

“I very much would enjoy in a couple of years having that opportunity to join something meaningful and compete, but unfortunately at the moment it would be reckless to risk everything by adding that to our list,” he said.