A Fast, Fun, All-Electric Polestar Would Be The Biggest Automotive Surprise Since Tesla

Polestar has, until now, been a curious Swedish also-ran when it comes to comparing the performance arms of major European car makers. Sure, it has plenty of racing experience, exploitable heritage on track and has even spread plenty of speed like butter all over the S60 and V60’s crackers. We like what it’s done so far, despite the scale of its consumer action being on the atomic level against the behemoths of BMW M and Mercedes-AMG.

Polestar is shifting gears, though. Instead of being a small-volume Volvo fettler, it’s expanding its business model to include its own machines, crowned with Polestar badges and not a Volvo symbol in sight (on the outside, at least).

The big news, as we reported this week, is that from minute one Polestar performance cars will be rely on electrified drivetrains, split across hybrids and all-electrics. Wow. Tesla aside, no one volume-sells fast electric cars. Apart from Elon Musk and his team, no one has built a good enough one, yet. We’ve obviously excluding the likes of the Nio EP9 and Rimac Concept One, here, because they’re never going to be built in numbers.

When you think about it, the task facing Volvo and Polestar, a pair that we’ll soon have to start referring to as sister companies, is gargantuan. Look at the EV market today. Of the mass-produced stuff you actually might want to buy for entertainment value, there’s the Model S, Model X and all-electric BMW i3. And that’s it. Polestar has no template for most of the all-electric models it could make; no existing metal to try to beat. It will have to blaze the trail itself.

That’s massive, if they do take the challenge. It’s like Henry Ford in his mission to make the Model T a reality. Back then engines existed, chassis were numerous and tyres were black and round, but to actually bring it all together for the first time as a (relatively) affordable mass-produced vehicle that people wanted was something historic. Giants like Volkswagen, Renault and Nissan have dabbled with trying to produce an electric car that people want to buy, but sales have been dismal outside of those countries whose tax law basically forces (or bribes) people into EVs.

It doesn’t take Stephen Hawking to figure out that the reason people aren’t buying these cars is because they don’t want them. The e-Golf is a good car; a likeable car, but it’s completely devoid of the desirability splashed all over the hybrid – and more performance-oriented – Golf GTE. The Nissan Leaf is another technically really good electric car, but with the best will in the world it’s still a bit weird-looking and it’s impossible to market it as truly exciting, because it isn’t. It’s effective at its job, but it’s not a thriller.

Tesla, on the other hand, did things differently. It went straight after straight-line speed and wide-eyed marvel, with world-beating technology another news hook that the company can fall back on time and again. It’s not the greatest sports car in the world, but it sells in the thousands; the tens of thousands in North America. All because from the get-go it was an exciting thing. Other EVs… aren’t. They never have been. A superfast Polestar would be.

Volvo has been free with its praise of Elon Musk and Tesla, even going as far as to position the three-model minnow as the shining example that they – in the shape of Polestar – want to follow. Could the small, mischievous subsidiary of a sensible, bantamweight Swedish safety enthusiast really show the rest of Europe how to make fast, exciting electric cars that people actually want to buy? It would be the greatest automotive coup since, well, Tesla.