Thomas Ingenlath is perhaps having too much fun in his Polestar 3, silently pulling away from stop signs and around hairpin bends, smiling like a man much younger than his 59 years.
“This car is actually very powerful,” says Polestar’s chief executive as he cruises the roads with fellow enthusiasts near Spanish Bay, north of Pebble Beach, during Monterey Car Week. Along the way, he praises the SUV’s ability to be comfortable and smooth while offering the engaging handling that buyers of the brand’s first two cars, the hybrid Polestar 1 and electric Polestar 2, know and love.
In its neutral-coloured suit, it almost blends in with the pale interior of the full-size SUV, the yellow seatbelt across its chest the only contrast. It’s an aesthetic that matches the attitude of the car itself – a premium, minimalist feel with the precise performance typical of Polestar machines.
Safe ground for electric vehicles, shifting political sands
But the Polestar 3 marks a new path for the brand on American streets. While the car Ingenlath is speeding through Monterey traffic was built in China, the first U.S.-assembled Polestar 3 SUVs are just beginning to roll off production lines in Polestar plant in Ridgeville, South Carolina.
That same factory has long made cars for Volvo, which is owned by Chinese holding company Geely. Polestar, a Volvo subsidiary based in Sweden and also under Geely’s control, now shares the space as it races ahead in the U.S. amid headwinds from recently imposed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
In fact, while the company's Polestar 2 is built in Gothenburg, all US-market Polestar 3 SUVs will come from South Carolina.
“The Polestar 3 production is, as I call it, on safe ground,” says Ingenlath.
It may be safe ground, but it's certainly quicksand. Ingenlath believes that demand for electric vehicles in the US market is evolving and that some patience is required: “How fast will it evolve? We'll have to see,” he says, “but it's certainly not something I'm worried about in relation to the purpose of our company.”
Ingenlath says he would love to see even higher adoption rates here, of course, but would be happier if U.S. policy could be “a little more consistent.”
He is following the elections closely. “All the noise around it is disturbing,” he muses. “When you work with a premium car brand, you need consistency. You need consistency in model policy and in pricing and so on, and of course we would also like to have a much more stable basis for decision-making. And you can’t, you know, react weekly or monthly. It takes years… to make significant economic decisions.”
Cars like the Polestar 3 have been in the making for more than five years. Measures like the new tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles imported into the US – which came into effect virtually overnight – are a real threat.
Financing for electric vehicles
That’s just one of the challenges Polestar has faced of late. In early 2024, Volvo shed a significant portion of its holdings in the company. It’s a move Ingenlath downplays, noting that Volvo still owns about 18% of the company. “That’s not insignificant,” he says. “If you own 20% of a company, you’re pretty interested in how the company is doing.”
Polestar has He turned to banks to obtain a $1 billion loan To keep things in order. Ingenlath says this change in ownership hasn't made him run the business any differently. Still, he says, it's always good to focus on the fundamentals.
“It's important now to show them the ability to execute,” Ingenlath says of his obligations to the banks, “that we have these great cars on the way, that we have the markets successfully launching a car, delivering it and selling it.”
Ingenlath declines to say whether Polestar might need more funding to execute that plan, but says his goal now is to make Polestar “self-sustaining.”
A bet on SUVs
He North Star 3 is an integral part of that plan. Although the North Star 2 It's a nice-riding, clean-looking sedan that competes in an SUV-dominated market in the U.S. Ingenlath calls it “a rather compact European sedan here, which won't meet a family's needs.”
The Polestar 3 should fare better in that regard, at least for families who can afford its $73,400 starting price. The vehicle is much larger, more upright and roomier than the Polestar 2, yet still promises a display of the same character behind the wheel.
It is important to note that sales growth is necessary to pave the way for Polestar's next launches.
The iterative nomenclature continues with the North Star 4a smaller SUV that trades some of the Polestar 4's bulk (and all of its rearward visibility) for a dramatically sweeping roofline and a more affordable price, starting at $54,900.
After that comes the North Star 5a sporty, stylish sedan that ties in with the brand’s forward-thinking design approach, an attribute Ingenlath says is more important to the business than federal EV subsidies. “We should be attracting people to get behind the wheel of a Polestar and buy our products, because they are so desirable and they want to own them,” he says.
The Polestar 4 is scheduled to arrive later this year, and the Polestar 5 in 2025. That's an aggressive timeline considering the Polestar 2 has effectively been the company's only offering in the U.S. market for nearly four years.
That wasn't the plan. The Polestar 3 has suffered major delays thanks to Software problems which has also left aside its corporate brother, the Volvo EX90Still, Ingenlath says sharing technology with Volvo is a key part of Polestar's ability to iterate quickly.
“Why would we develop ADAS systems ourselves?” he asks. “Volvo obviously offers an excellent technological basis for the high-end vehicle we want to build.”
That technology sharing will continue despite Volvo's partial divestment. Volvo is not its only partner. Polestar was one of the first to adopt Android Automotiveeffectively handing over the entire car interface to Google.
“It’s one of the nicest, simplest success stories of technology implementation,” he says, a decision that was initially met with skepticism. “People were like, ‘What are you doing? Are you really going to sleep with Google? Blah, blah, blah. ’ There was a lot of hesitation about it. God, our customers love it. It’s a huge step forward in terms of ease of use.”
The real step forward for Polestar will be the long-awaited launch of the Polestar 3, which Ingenlath says will happen within “weeks.”
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