Car review: Polestar 1

Volvo’s electric dreams fuelled by ambitious Polestar 1, says Mike Stone

23 November 2017

Look out, Tesla, we’re coming to get you. That seems to be the message from Polestar, the high-performance arm of Volvo, which became a stand-alone brand this summer.

At the launch of its first model, the Polestar 1, in Shanghai, the company declared its intention to become the world’s top high-performance electric car brand.

Polestar 1 is a sleek, four-seat hybrid coupé based loosely on Volvo’s S90 executive saloon, but shortened by half a metre and armed with three electric motors and a two-litre, four-cylinder Volvo Drive-E engine, together delivering almost 600hp and 1,000 Nm of torque. Subsequent Polestars — a Tesla Model 3 rival and a larger SUV — will be fully electric.

The cars will be built at a factory in Chengdu, China, due to be finished next year, and production will start in 2019. Cars bound for Britain will be left-hand-drive only.

Polestar’s boss Thomas Ingenlath said the models will be bought online only and paid for by monthly subscription, which will include all servicing and insurance. There will be no deposit and after a set period of two or three years the cars will be taken back, refurbished and sold on the second-hand market.

It will also be possible to swap temporarily to a larger Volvo for, say, a family holiday.

Described as an electric car with the additional boost of an internal combustion engine, the company claims Polestar 1 can travel for 150km in electric-only mode.

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I asked Ingenlath if the styling’s hint of Volvo’s P1800 coupé of the Sixties was a deliberate move. He said: “There is certainly a hint of the P1800 there. How could we ignore such a style icon?”

The Polestar 1, which like Volvo, is owned by Chinese company Geely, is expected to cost around €120,000, although official figures have yet to be released.

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