The Polestar 2 has single-handedly led the charge in the Swedish automaker’s quest to offer cutting-edge and premium electric cars. Despite it being a great car, it’s not quite blown up the sales charts. Its 2023 global sales were up only 4% year-over-year with just over 53,000 units sold, and Q4 2023 sales were down by 43%. To fix this, Polestar will radically reinvent the EV when it reaches the end of its lifespan by 2027. And that reinvention starts with a new name: Polestar 7.
Polestar’s naming strategy seems muddled. The 2 is a sedan on stilts, 3 is the SUV, 4 is the coupe-style SUV, and the 5—if the brand survives till then in its current form—is expected to be something like the Tesla Model S and Porsche Taycan. The 6 is a sportscar and the 7 will now circle back to the next-generation 2. Don’t worry if you have difficulty associating these numbers with the correct body style, even someone who writes about EVs daily has this issue.
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Polestar Makes A Case For Itself
CEO Thomas Ingenlath is confident that the brand is all about exclusivity, performance and cutting-edge tech. But so are several others. At a time when the EV market is realigning towards affordability, Polestar would need some solid business strategy, and maybe some stroke of luck to sustain.
“As much as we might build a very similar car, because it has a different number we won’t have this natural trap where we’re boxed into that concept of what the car had been,” Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath told Autocar. “As nice as it is to have a ‘Golf’ category of car, it’s very limiting in terms of innovative power, because you’re always back in the box of what the ‘Golf’ should be,” Ingenlath added.
The report states that Polestar 7 would likely be underpinned by parent company Geely Group’s Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA), or a new iteration of the same. The Polestar 4, Zeekr 001, and Volvo EX30 ride on this platform.
The broader EV industry is now realigning towards smaller and affordable EVs to attain profitability, but Polestar’s approach is the opposite. Ahead of the ongoing New York International Auto Show, Ingenlath chatted with InsideEVs about the Polestar 4, how the company aims to come out of its current financial and sales troubles, and its larger EV ambitions in the coming years.
“There’s only that much you can do with Polestar 2,” Ingenlath told InsideEVs. “But three cars in our range mean growing the company in terms of volume. The segments that these cars are in means revenue opportunity as well,” he added, referring to adding the Polestar 3 and 4 to its U.S. line-up this year. “You have to be clear about the nature of your company, and for us, it's the performance [focused] and premium exclusive segment.”
Dozens of new EVs will enter the market by 2027, so the Polestar 7 would have to be something truly radical to leave a mark.
