Polestar, now a full subsidiary of Volvo, has been announced to officially be the performance electric car brand for the Swedish automotive manufacturer. Volvo has announced that the performance company will be mainly be focusing on producing high-performance fully electric vehicles moving forward.
New leadership
In its most recent announcement, Volvo has revealed that it will be putting its former Vice President of Design, Thomas Ingenlath, at the helm of the new initiative. Additionally, the company's former Senior Vice President of corporate communications, Jonathan Goodman, will be assigned as Polestar's Chief Operations Officer.
With the leadership of both veteran automotive executives and Volvo's guidance, Polestar is slated to become one of the leading performance electric car brands in the world.
Performance focused
Prior to the big paradigm shift, Polestar has been the performance arm of Volvo, much like AMG is to Mercedes or the M division to BMW. The company has been in charge of transforming Volvo's seemingly pedestrian, albeit ultra safe and robust, vehicles into full track monsters boasting insane performance and abilities.
The company started out back in 1996 and has successfully transformed several vehicles into racing icons such as the V60 Polestar. The company was officially bought out by Volvo in 2015 but has remained its official performance brand.
With its experience in building track-ready and rally-ready vehicles, the company should have no problems churning out its own performance electric vehicles in the coming years.
Volvo announces upcoming new ’world beating’ performance electric vehicles under its Polestar brand https://t.co/YB9gqQbVkV
— TorontoEVAssociation (@TorontoEV) June 22, 2017
Stiff competition
As of the moment, Elon Musk's Tesla has reigned supreme in the performance electric vehicle space.
Other companies such as Faraday Future and a number of China-based startups have tried to muscle in on Tesla's territory, but all of them have so far been unsuccessful in getting their products into the mainstream. Most of the companies have suffered from teething issues, technical problems, and production roadblocks, which have so far hindered them from making any kind of dent into Tesla's bottom line.
However, Polestar may be an entirely different story given its track record and its team's impeccable engineering prowess.
The company is expected to easily transition to using electric powertrains and there shouldn't be any problems when it comes to production. If all goes well, then Tesla may be facing a truly formidable competitor in the years to come, which should also benefit consumers as well.
