Polestar to develop electrified performance Volvos

Volvo plans to leverage Polestar’s performance tuning talents across its future electrified product range.

Speaking to motoring.com.au at last week's Los Angeles motor show, Volvo Cars North America president and CEO Lex Kerssemakers said he is excited about the possibilities Polestar presents.

Volvo Car Corporation completed the buyout of Sweden-based Polestar several weeks ago, and the move in-house of Polestar’s deep intellectual knowhow is an undisguised strategic move.

If you’re thinking Mercedes-AMG, BMW M or Audi Sport, Kerssemarkers agrees and sees the tuning division as an opportunity to finally give Volvo the performance the company has often played with in past.

“We’re still in the stage of realising how we can leverage Polestar as a marketing tool and what type of cycle plan will launch with it," he said.

"We know it will be about performance cars but they should reflect what we stand for from a drivetrain perspective. So, electrification will play an extremely important role in future when we talk about Polestar cars,” disclosed Kerssemakers.

“Electrification excites me because you can offer different levels of performance in different ways. Electrification gives you a lot of 'yeah', you know? The linear performance. . .”

Of course AMG and M are the benchmarks of the industry and Kerssemakers has studied them closely, but the US Volvo chief explained how Polestar will define performance for Volvo.

“In the end we are Volvo and we go our own way,” he said. “Copycat does not make any sense. We’re not going to make the ultimate racing car; we want to make performance cars that are useable day in and day out, and that’s what Polestar reflects.”

Volvo and performance have not always sat comfortably together, admitted Kerssemakers.

“Yes, I realise that. I think now we have found a very good umbrella under the Polestar brand -- that’s why we acquired it, with a lot of experience and we’re going to further develop it.”

“Believe me, there is a lot to come from Polestar.”

Others involved in the acquisition of Polestar say the buyout was very much wanted by Volvo Cars’ Chinese ownership and strongly supported by Volvo Cars North America.

But they stop there and clearly stress that Polestar is exclusively a Volvo asset that will remain based in Gothenburg, Sweden near Volvo HQ and will be a great way for Volvo to test new technologies.

According to Volvo Cars North America, a recent survey showed that half of Polestar buyers are new to Volvo, that a significant percentage of Polestar owners also own a Porsche or Aston Martin, and that wagons account for 60 per cent of sales.