Volvo turns Polestar into a brand of its own

From a racing badge to a car brand

On 17 October 2017, Polestar presented itself in Shanghai as a new standalone electric performance brand, together with its first car, the Polestar 1.¹ Until then the name had stood for something much smaller. It had been a racing team, then a tuning label on fast Volvos. The reveal turned that label into a carmaker with its own products, its own way of selling them and its own sign on the bonnet.

The name had a long run-up. Flash Engineering, a Swedish touring car team, was founded in 1996 by the driver Jan "Flash" Nilsson.² Christian Dahl later took over the team and renamed it Polestar Racing in 2005.² Polestar and Volvo had worked together in motorsport since 1996.³ On 14 July 2015 Volvo Cars bought 100 per cent of Polestar, including the brand, its performance software and aftermarket parts business, and the company that owned the Polestar trademarks.⁴ The racing team stayed with Dahl and was renamed; it continued as Cyan Racing.^4,2 At that point Volvo planned to use "Polestar" as the name for its special high performance models.⁴

The June announcement

That plan lasted two years. On 21 June 2017 Volvo Cars announced that Polestar would become a separately branded, electrified global high performance car company.³ Thomas Ingenlath, until then Senior Vice President Design at Volvo Cars, was named chief executive, with Jonathan Goodman, previously head of corporate communication, as chief operating officer.³ Future Polestar cars would no longer carry a Volvo logo, while Polestar would continue its "Polestar Engineered" optimisation packages for Volvo models.³

Håkan Samuelsson, President and Chief Executive of Volvo Cars, framed the move as a market entry: "Polestar will be a credible competitor in the emerging global market for high performance electrified cars."³ Placing a design chief at the top was itself a statement: the brand was to be led from the drawing board, not from the race track.

What Shanghai showed

The October reveal filled in the plan. The Polestar 1 was a two door 2+2 grand tourer with a carbon fibre body, a hybrid drivetrain of 600 hp and 1,000 Nm, and 150 km of electric range.¹ It was built on Volvo's SPA platform with about half of its parts new, and production was set to start in mid 2019 at a new Polestar Production Centre in Chengdu, China.¹ Ingenlath stated the brand's direction alongside it: "All future cars from Polestar will feature a fully electric drivetrain".¹ A mid sized battery electric Polestar 2 and a larger SUV, Polestar 3, were announced to complete the first line up.¹

Just as much attention went to how the cars would reach customers. Polestar cars were to be ordered entirely online, through an app or a web portal, and offered on a subscription of two or three years with one monthly payment, no deposit, pick-up and delivery servicing and access to other Polestar and Volvo cars.¹ Physical contact would happen in Polestar Spaces, standalone locations separate from Volvo dealer showrooms.¹ Funding came through a joint venture between Volvo Cars and two companies of its parent, Zhejiang Geely Holding, with RMB 5 billion of equity.¹ Fortune read the launch as a shot across the bows of Tesla and BMW.⁵

Ingenlath summed up the symbolism of the first car in one line: "Polestar 1 is the first car to carry the Polestar on the bonnet."¹ On a Volvo, the star had been a small badge next to the maker's own name. On a Polestar there would be no Volvo logo at all.³

A star without its square

The visual identity was developed by Stockholm Design Lab, which dates the launch of the new brand experience to the Shanghai reveal on 17 October 2017.⁶ Polestar later explained the logic in its own Journal. The name refers to the North Star, the traditional guiding star of navigation.⁷ On Volvo cars the star had sat on a cyan square badge; the new design removed the square so that the star stood alone.⁷ "Polestar is the Guiding Star," Ingenlath wrote.⁷

The same Journal set out three design principles behind all Polestar products: Pure, for product minimalism; Progressive, for scientific innovation; and Performance, for an uncompromised and athletic character.⁷ Polestar described itself as set up to move away from the conventions of the car industry, to lead Volvo Car Group in innovation and to reach customers who might not choose a Volvo.⁷ In 2020 the brand received three Red Dot awards, among them Brand of the Year.⁶

What the separation made possible

Making Polestar a brand rather than a trim level gave Volvo room to move. As a separate brand, Polestar could address customers Volvo did not reach, test a sales model Volvo dealers did not use and carry a design language reduced further than Volvo's own, while drawing on the group's engineering and Geely's industrial base.^1,7

The heritage was kept in the name and in the Polestar Engineered packages, but the racing story was no longer the brand story.³ The car that carried the star first was a limited grand tourer, built from 2019 in a run of 1,500.⁸ The first Polestar Spaces opened in Oslo and Beijing that same year.⁹ Polestar's own timeline still begins with a single entry for 2017: "Brand launch and Polestar 1 reveal".⁹