Polestar on course to double market presence and retail footprint in 2021

Polestar, the Swedish electric performance car brand, is set to continue its rapid global retail expansion to support the company’s ongoing growth. Through the course of 2021, Polestar is launching in 9 global markets, doubling the total number of markets to 18. The brand will also double its number of retail environments around the world by the end of the year.

• Retail locations set to double, with up to 100 operational Polestar locations, including new Destination concept, by year end
• Significant continued market growth expected in 2022, backed up by continued service point expansion

The brand is adding to its proven Polestar Spaces retail approach, represented typically by city centre locations, by introducing a new concept, known as Polestar Destinations. Both will offer the same experiential approach for customers to immerse themselves in the Polestar brand and take a test drive. Destinations, located at larger, easy-to-access out-of-town locations, will also perform handovers to customers who decide to purchase.

“We are expanding both within markets in which we already have a presence and into new markets extremely rapidly. As a brand that has only been fully operational for just over 12 months, this sort of footprint is unprecedented. We aim to expand at a similar rate in terms of new markets in 2022 as well. This continued pace, combined with new retail concepts, will support our goal to exceed our owners’ expectations.”

Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar CEO

This growth will take the brand’s physical presence to around 100 retail environments globally including some temporary pop-up locations.

“We focus on ensuring that customers can interact with the brand and our cars on their terms. A refined online buying environment is backed-up by physical locations to help drive awareness and sales. Our new Destination concept gives customers even more access to the brand, and fits some of our newer markets particularly well.”

says Mike Whittington, Head of Sales at Polestar

The Polestar digital sales model enables customers to explore, configure and purchase a car on their personal device whenever and wherever they choose. There is no need to visit a Space, but the brand recognises how important the opportunity to take a closer look and test drive the car can be. To that end, around 60 additional test drive locations will be in operation by the end of 2021 to provide additional access to Polestar 2 vehicles, while customer handover centres are also expanding rapidly to support that supply can smoothly meet demand alongside other formats such as home delivery.

After purchase, the physical connection to the brand continues into the service and maintenance phase. Currently, there are over 650 service points in Polestar markets that provide customers with real peace of mind – the ambition is to exceed 780 by the end of 2021.

About Polestar

Polestar is the independent Swedish premium electric performance car brand founded by Volvo Cars and Geely Holding. Established in 2017, Polestar enjoys specific technological and engineering synergies with Volvo Cars and benefits from significant economies of scale as a result. The company is headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, and its vehicles are available and on the road in thirteen global markets across Europe, North America and China. In 2021, Polestar is expanding into five new markets in the Asia Pacific region.

Polestar produces two electric performance cars. The Polestar 1 is a low-volume electric performance hybrid GT with a carbon fibre body, 609 hp, 1,000 Nm and an electric-only range of 124 km (WLTP) – the longest of any hybrid car in the world. The Polestar 2 electric performance fastback is the company’s first fully electric, high volume car. The Polestar 2 model range includes three variants with a combination of long- and standard range batteries as large as 78 kWh, and dual- and single motor powertrains with as much as 300 kW / 408 hp and 660 Nm.

In the future, the Polestar 3 electric performance SUV will join the portfolio, as well as the Precept – a design study vehicle released in 2020 that is slated for future production. Precept showcases the brand’s future vision in terms of sustainability, digital technology and design. In April 2021, Polestar announced a moonshot goal of creating a truly climate-neutral car by 2030 without carbon offsetting through tree-planting.