Volvo announces upcoming new ’world beating’ performance electric vehicles under its Polestar brand

Volvo, a Swedish automaker owned by China’s Geely, announced a new aspect of its plans to transition the company in the new electric revolution.

The company is launching its Polestar brand as a separate entity to build and sell performance electric vehicles. 

The brand previously made parts and tuned performance cars, especially versions of Volvo’s vehicles since they acquired them in 2015, but now they could have their own vehicles built from the ground up to be electric performance cars.

Volvo wrote in a press release:

“Polestar will enjoy specific technological and engineering synergies with Volvo Cars and benefit from significant economies of scale as a result of its connection to Volvo. These synergies will allow it to design, develop and build world beating electrified high performance cars.”

It’s not clear if they are going after Tesla or something even more geared toward performance, like Rimac and the other electric supercar out there.

The company confirmed that the upcoming new vehicles, which will first be unveiled this autumn, will only have the Polestar logo – pictured above – and not Volvo’s.

In order to make this happen, Volvo had to transfer some of its leadership to the new company.

Thomas Ingenlath, Senior Vice President Design at Volvo, will assume the position of Chief Executive Officer at Polestar and Jonathan Goodman will become Chief Operating Officer. Mr Goodman moves from his position as Senior Vice President Corporate Communication at Volvo Cars.

Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive of Volvo Cars, says that those appointments show that they are serious about the new brand:

“Thomas heading up the Polestar organisation shows our commitment to establishing a truly differentiated stand-alone brand within the Volvo Car Group. […] With 25 years of commercial experience in the automotive industry, Jonathan is ideally placed to provide operational experience alongside Thomas’s vision, building on the experienced management team that will drive the Polestar brand forwards”

Samuelsson announced that Volvo’s head of interior design, Robin Page, will take over Ingenlath’s role as head of design at the Volvo brand, while David Ibison, who was Vice President Corporate Communications and Global Head of Media Relations, is promoted to Goodman’s role.

Today’s announcement is only the latest in Volvo’s electrification plans. The Swedish automaker plans to launch its first all-electric vehicle in 2019, an aggressively priced long-range electric car to start between $35,000 and $40,000 and be manufactured in China to be globally exported.

They plan to quickly ramp up and launch other EVs from that point in order to accumulate a global fleet of “up to 1 million electrified cars by 2025 globally”.