Polestar — How a Swedish Racing Team Became an Electric Car Brand

Polestar at a glance

Origins: Flash Engineering and Polestar Racing

The name goes back to a Swedish racing team, Flash Engineering, founded in 1996 to compete in touring-car racing. After a change of owner it became Polestar Racing and, in the late 2000s, began preparing Volvos for racing. In 2009 Polestar became Volvo's official partner for performance versions of its road cars, sold under the Polestar Performance name, among them the Volvo V60 Polestar.

In July 2015 Volvo bought Polestar and began selling Polestar-tuned models through its dealers. The tuning business continues as Polestar Engineered, offering software upgrades for Volvo cars that keep the factory warranty. The story of the parent company is told in the history of Volvo.

Polestar 1: the hybrid halo car

In October 2017 Volvo Cars and Geely Holding announced that Polestar would become a separate brand for electric cars, with Thomas Ingenlath as chief executive and Håkan Samuelsson as chairman. The first model was revealed on 17 October 2017. The Polestar 1, based on Volvo's 2013 Concept Coupé, was a 2+2 plug-in hybrid coupé with body panels made almost entirely of carbon-fibre reinforced plastic. A 2.0-litre turbocharged and supercharged petrol engine from the Volvo XC90 T8 drove the front wheels and two electric motors the rear, for a combined 462 kW (628 PS). Its electric range of 150 km on the NEDC cycle was, according to Polestar, the longest of any plug-in hybrid at the time.

The car was built from 2019 in a new Polestar Production Centre in Chengdu, China, at up to 500 cars a year, and production ended in 2021 or 2022, depending on the article, after 1,500 cars. Only 25 cars in gold paint were made in the final year.

Polestar 2: the first electric Polestar

The Polestar 2, revealed in an online broadcast on 27 February 2019 and shown at the Geneva Motor Show the same month, was the brand's first electric car and its first mass-production model. It uses Geely and Volvo's Compact Modular Architecture (CMA) and has been built since March 2020 at the Luqiao plant in Zhejiang province. It was the first car with Google's Android Automotive operating system built in.

Early cars had front-wheel or all-wheel drive; the facelift revealed in January 2023 switched the single-motor version to rear-wheel drive. Current versions have 200–220 kW with one motor and up to 350 kW (476 PS) with two, and the Long Range Single Motor reaches 540 km on the WLTP cycle. In Europe 31,871 Polestar 2s were sold in 2022. Euro NCAP rated it at 93% for adult occupant protection in 2021, and a second generation is planned for 2027.

Polestar 3, 4 and the wider range

The Polestar 3, revealed on 12 October 2022, is a five-seat electric SUV and the first car on Volvo's SPA2 electric platform, which it shares with the Volvo EX90. It has a 111 kWh battery, 360 kW (489 PS) in standard form or 380 kW (517 PS) with the Performance Pack and up to 610 km of WLTP range. Production began in February 2024 in Chengdu and in Ridgeville, South Carolina, and moved entirely to Ridgeville in March 2026.

The Polestar 4, unveiled at Auto Shanghai in April 2023, is a coupé-SUV on Geely's SEA platform with no rear window: a roof camera replaces it. Built by Geely at Hangzhou Bay near Ningbo since November 2023, and at the Renault Korea plant in Busan since the second half of 2025, it has a 102 kWh battery and 203 kW (276 PS) with one motor or 400 kW (544 PS) with two. The Polestar 5, a mid-size electric saloon, followed in 2025. Planned models are the Polestar 6 sports car, based on the O2 roadster concept of March 2022, and the compact Polestar 7, to be built in Košice, Slovakia, from 2028.

Listing, ownership and Polestar today

Polestar Automotive Holding UK was formed in 2021 by Volvo Cars and Geely Holding, and its shares started trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol PSNY on 24 June 2022. The company reported a loss every year from 2019 to 2023; its net loss was US$1.195 billion in 2023 on revenue of US$2.379 billion. Ownership changed in 2024, when Volvo cut its stake from about 48% to 18% and Geely Holding took about 24%. In June 2025 PSD Investment, controlled by Geely founder Li Shufu, invested US$200 million in 2025 and raised its stake to 44%, while Volvo's share fell to 16%.

Michael Lohscheller replaced Thomas Ingenlath as chief executive in 2024, and Winfried Vahland became chairman in October 2024. Polestar's operational headquarters are in Torslanda, outside Gothenburg, and in 2023 it announced a new 80,000 m² head office in central Gothenburg. It sells cars in Europe, China, Canada and the United States, but in June 2026 announced that it would leave the US market after the 2027 model year because of a US Commerce Department rule. All Polestar models are listed in the Polestar catalogue; the related Volvo models are in the Volvo catalogue, and the group's founder's company in the history of Geely. Rivals are compared in the best electric cars.

Polestar timeline

Landmark Polestar models

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