Polestar is reporting a 125% increase in electric car sales during the first half of 2022. The small automaker that spun off from Volvo is becoming a quiet success in the EV space.
After relaunching Polestar as a separate and electric brand back in 2017, the company had somewhat of an awkward but interesting start as it unveiled its first vehicle, the Polestar 1.
The car turned out to be a highly expensive plug-in hybrid, which quickly sounded outdated when the automaker announced that they would bring an all-electric “Tesla Model 3 competitor” to production a year later and only deliver all-electric vehicles going forward.
That wasn’t the media calling it a Model 3 competitor, but the company itself, which is a fairly rare thing to do.
However, things didn’t play out that way. The Polestar 2 turned out to be a good electric car, but it came in late and at a more expensive price than Tesla’s Model 3.
Nonetheless, Polestar is starting to see some significant success as the electric vehicle program is hitting its stride.
Today, the company reported its Q2 2022 delivery results, and confirmed deliveries grew 125% to 21,200 units during the first half of 2022:
The Swedish company, which listed on the Nasdaq New York stock exchange in late June, delivered approximately 21,200 cars in the first six months of 2022, more than doubling deliveries from 9,510 cars in the same period in 2021 – an increase of almost 125%.
Demand is also still strong with a backlog of 50,000 orders – though it’s not clear how Polestar is accounting for the order of “up to 65,000” vehicles from Hertz that it received earlier this year.
Here’s what it wrote in a press release today:
Global order take rose to 50,000 since the start of 2022, up more than 350% year-on-year, as the company continues to see strong customer demand as well as booking the first portion of Hertz orders. With this strong performance, Polestar reaffirms its full year target of delivering 50,000 cars.
Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath commented on the results:
It is great to see that the number of enthusiastic Polestar 2 customers is growing so quickly. I am very confident that the strong momentum we have seen this year in brand awareness and sales figures will accelerate powerfully in the coming years as more ground-breaking cars are revealed.
The increase can be partly explained by Polestar expanding its retail presence from 103 to 125 stores around the globe, with about 30 more expected to open by the end of 2022. It now operates in 25 markets around the world – up from 19 at the beginning of the year.
In terms of production to catch to demand, Polestar notes that it could have done better, but the COVID-19 lockdowns in China have slowed down their production during the first half of the year.
Now Polestar’s next growth phase is going to come through the Polestar 3, an electric SUV, coming this October.
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