Polestar sustainability boss wants us to enjoy driving fast cars ‘within planetary boundaries’

Polestar’s head of sustainability, Fredrika Klarén, has been in Australia holidaying with family, and before heading back to Gothenburg made time to discuss the future of mobility with WhichCar.

In fact, the holiday marked the first time Fredrika had to buy petrol in a decade, telling us: "It’s very telling that I had to do that when I came to Australia, and I don’t want to talk about it… it just felt fundamentally wrong to buy gasoline, to finance this industry. I never want to do that again.”

But without getting hung up on Australia's EV infrastructure woes, that Klarén says are likely to be addressed faster than expected, we'll move onto her vision for the next seven years.

“We've tried to actually visualise what an improved society looks like, and we think it sits on four key drivers: climate neutrality, circularity, transparency and inclusion”, Klarén said.

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She also emphasised the importance of not seeing EVs as a silver bullet to climate change. There are all manner of supply chain snags, shipping and other factors that can contribute to a silent CO2 footprint in EVs – something the brand is attempting to address with its true zero-emissions car, the Polestar 0, by 2030.

“It's so dangerous for the industry if it keeps only talking about electric vehicles as being the saviour, we're going to come into new 'Dieselgates'.

“Let's instead be radically transparent, and disclose the impact of these products, while at the same time being really clear that [BEVs are] the better alternative now”, Fredrika told WhichCar.

Polestar is now exclusively an electric carmaker sitting under the Geely umbrella adjacent to Volvo. Polestar sells one vehicle Down Under currently, the 2 sedan, which was the fourth best-selling EV here last year notching up 1524 registrations. It will be joined by a larger, more luxurious 3 SUV in the first quarter of 2024.

"It's so important that we move away from sustainable solutions being considered lesser, or boring, because it's not working."

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Polestar calls out industry inaction

You might have caught Toyota boss, Akio Toyoda, saying that a silent majority of carmakers believe that BEVs alone are not the way forward – Klarén and Polestar beg to differ.

“We cannot continue using fossil fuels. Our climate strategy is based on IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), it's a top down approach – we've said that we need to be carbon neutral by 2040 as a company, and we need to have net-zero emissions by 2030. And that's not what we can do, that is what the climate scientists are telling us that we need to do as companies.

“We know that there is no place for [internal combustion engine vehicles] on a large scale after 2030. In that scenario, it just cannot be calculated to work,” Klarén said.

Polestar being a young, dynamic company, which produced one hybrid and now exclusively electric vehicles, has the luxury of being able to go its own way.

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“Manufacturers are locked into their business plans and I understand that,” Fredrika empathised. “But the thing is, the timeframe is wrong. It's not aligned with climate science.

“So what we need to do is to tear up those business plans and make new ones and ensure, again, that all of the money that we're putting into just obtaining and making the legacy technology more efficient, and all of the incentives that are supporting ICE cars and the fossil industry is being put into clean technology and electric vehicles, so we can quickly start scaling up so that we can create a closed loop for minerals and metals.”

What’s different about Polestar’s approach?

Fredrika outlined one specific way in which Polestar is going about sustainability differently. “Once we had delivered Polestar 2, we decided 'okay, so now we need a CO2 reduction program for Polestar 2'.”

“We went about this in the way the industry normally does cost reduction programs, but we did it with CO2.”

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The Polestar 2 was also the first EV to go on sale with cobalt sourced for its battery traced using Blockchain, meaning it’s as sustainable as Polestar possibly can guarantee, within reason.

“The one thing that we're really struggling with is the lack of data from the supply chains, and the locked-in opaqueness of automotive supply chains [in general]. We need to really come together and set the same types of requirements on the suppliers. And that's why we're advocating for collective action in the industry.

“I hate the word collaboration… you can talk a lot about collaboration and do nothing… collective action is what we want to take where we have measurable targets. For example, we want to deliver a fully carbon-neutral car by 2030”, Fredrika said.

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Building cars in China – the most polluting country

Polestar currently builds vehicles at its production centre in Chengdu, China, which opened in 2019. On the surface, Polestar’s sustainability credentials sit out of sorts with building cars in the most polluting country in the world. Year-on-year, China accounts for around third of global CO2 emissions – roughly twice much as the United States.

However, China’s massive population means it was ranked 48th in emissions per capita in 2019 behind the US (14th) and Germany (38th). Despite emissions dropping slightly in 2021, the country continues to build coal power plants and has only committed to carbon neutrality by 2060.

In our discussions, Fredrika was keen to point out China’s inconsistent approaches to energy generation, and how that can be a benefit when harnessed. Some regions very much rely on dirty coal power plants, but wind, biomass, geothermal, solar and hydropower contribute to energy share, too. It's all about transparency for Polestar.

“What we're finding is, for example, in China that we can move parts of the production to regions with a high share of [hydro-electric] power, and really see a great impact from that.

“That's what we've done with the latest update for Polestar 2, where we were able to resource aluminium for the rims and the battery tray from regions where they have [hydro-electric] power, that meant we save more than a tonne of CO2 in the production emissions,” Fredrika said.

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Polestar doesn’t want efficiency alone

Why not drop high performance altogether, and just make efficient cars? “It would be so much easier”, Fredrika jokes. “But it's so important that we move away from sustainable solutions being lesser, or boring, because it's not working."

Fredrika sees Polestar’s freedom to innovate not as a privilege to be squandered, but as a responsibility to champion new technologies, practices and material choices.

“[Polestar is] a premium company, that's the basis of what we do. So we want to work in an industry where there's all kinds of alternatives for the consumers. And we're seeing that's happening.” Klarén mentioned Volkswagen, Renault and new Chinese rivals such as BYD and MG/Saic Motor as players in the mass-market space.

“We really feel like we can fully dive into what it means to be a premium company in this industry. And that means that we can really seek out innovative, avant-garde solutions... we mustn't forget that it should be a thrill to live on planet Earth. And that can be a great motivator for sustainable development.”