I’m surprised that the article continually emphasizes the idea that Polestar hasn’t distinguished itself enough from Volvo. In my experience, it’s the opposite: when people ask “what is that?” and the answer is “it’s a Volvo spinoff” they get it.
The bigger issues IMHO are that: 1) that Polestar has not defined its placement in the marketplace, 2) it didn’t ramp up production of the 3 and 4 fast enough, 3) the P2 is still way too expensive for the segment (prices should be closer to $40-45k, not $66-70k), 4) they should have emphasized “Volvo’s legendary safety and refinement plus BMW M performance in an electric vehicle” or something like that.
If they’d priced the P2 at $45k for three years and directly tackled the demographics of Tesla as well as mid-performance vehicles like the GTI, Audi, etc it would have been a huge value proposition. Chasing after Porsche as the comparable (as Ingenlath did) was always risky and inaccurate.
The article says “Polestar should have provided more visual differentiation.” That’s really not the issue, as I see it. The P2/P3/P4s really look nothing like Volvos, and no one mistakes them for a Volvo (whereas it’s pretty easy to see that Lexuses are just re-skinned Toyotas).
My take is that Polestar always should have been a sub-brand of Volvo, operating financially and logistically under the umbrella of the parent company—in much the way that Lexus, Acura, and Infiniti operate. Not as a “luxury arm” but as a performance spinoff. It was a mistake to allow Polestar to detach so fully from Volvo. Polestar shouldn’t operate as the luxury arm of a more consumer-oriented brand (Volvo is already fairly luxury), but should define its performance + cool identity as distinct.
Yet it’s such a weird relationship. I still have my P2 serviced at my Volvo dealership, and they have a Polestar salesperson on staff and always have Polestars on the lot.
tsr85
Polestars biggest downfall will be its terrible dealer network work and customer interfacing model.
It tries to be Rivian/tesla but lands somewhere short of a sketchy used car dealer(no on site service) in a fancy business area, here is looking at you Beverly Hills PoleStar.
Then you find out it is still attached to a full multi mega conglomerate car dealer, like Galpin, so it basically operates with all the draw backs and ineptitudes of that dealer.
narvuntien
It was very strange prices for me that started with the P2 which wasn’t quite as good as a Model 3 but more expensive and then went up from there ?? needed to go down not up with the prices.
They also have the issue of being entangled with themselves because Geely has Volvo, Polestar, Zeekr, Lotus and Half of Smart. They are all overlapping in prices while using the same drive trains.
TheSimham
Whats the point of selling volvo and polestar in the same price range?
looktowindward
It never made sense as a stand alone. And they could help fix Volvo’s horrible software development game
mcot2222
Put the actual good tech from Zeekr in these and they would sell amazing in the U.S. The Volvo EV technology is lacking.
It’s all supposed to be Geely, I don’t get it.
flyfreeflylow
Put some cars out that stand out from Volvo. Their only current car is the Polestar 2, which is a re-purposed Volvo ICE design with some serious compromises and a fairly high price. It’s not a bad car but doesn’t stand out and is not price competitive. The Polestar 3 and 4 should help to shift their image, but seem to be taking a while to get out.
They also should have taken advantage of Volvo’s dealership network for service. Not doing that is just baffling. The nearest Polestar service center to me is 250 miles away (Columbus, OH). Back when I was looking, the nearest was over 300 miles away (Detroit). The nearest Volvo dealership is only 35 miles away. Incidentally, Chicago is closer to me than Columbus is (still too far though – over 200 miles), but Polestar doesn’t have a service center there. Seriously? No service center in CHICAGO?!? Also, no service centers in Kansas City, St.Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and many other major cities, most of which have multiple Volvo dealerships. It makes no sense.
Lazy-Joke5908
The problem is also Volvo is seen as a chinese brand.
philbui2
This is China’s chance to get entry into the US market without 100% tariffs
Conscious-Lobster60
I mean it’s basically Volvo. It’s more of an accounting thing for Geely along with an easy way to avoid tariffs.
It’s also terribly priced without a stack of incentives on the hood, and wild subsidized money factor. Backseat is trash, center console is an “abuse of space” and you have a vestigial drive tunnel 😂
Car makes sense priced lower than the base Model 3 when leased. Car makes almost no sense if purchased.
The Spaces are trash too. For my lease, the Polestar Space was so non-responsive I reached out to the dealer where the cars are actually handed over. Dealer pressed some “magic button” to have the car ready for delivery the next day at a Volvo dealer. The Space was useless, no follow up, no idea when the car would be available, even called after I took delivery trying to schedule handover 😂
bomber991
If it looks like a Volvo and it’s made by Volvo they should have just sold it as an electric Volvo S60 or S80 or whatever.
I know Tesla started out by rebuilding the Lotus Elise as an electric, but once they launched the Model S it was crystal clear that a Tesla wasn’t just a rebadged other brand with an electric motor slapped in.
eric535
If they wanted to be Volvos they should have just been Volvos. Volvo has name recognition and dealer network why try to do it all from scratch
noisenotsignal
I’m a big fan of Polestar’s vision and it really sucks that it isn’t well-received. There’s no other brand with their minimalist but elegant design, and they are also truly a joy to drive. This combination is unique among available EVs.
I do think their pricing is appropriate for what it is, otherwise I wouldn’t have bought one. The hyper-fixation on on-paper specs and features is utterly missing the point. I’m driving a car, not a computer, so Tesla-level software is not what I’m looking for. 0-60 has diminishing returns; acceleration is not the only thing that makes a car fun to drive.
Kandiruaku
Geely will just start rebranding from their other companies, like the Zeekr 001 coming to the US mady by Renault Busan as Polestar 4 to bypass China import tarriffs here in the US. Now that car sold >200k examples and owners report good, so maibe this is the future instead of half-baked beta releases degrading brand value and driving it into the ground. No matter what US losses, companies that size will just keep attacking until they get a foothold.
_Captain_Amazing_
Here’s what went through my head in my EV purchase decision when considering a Polestrar…1. Too expensive with no tax credit. 2. Very few service centers to fix your car if you are not in a major city – didn’t want to drive 6 hours away to get the car serviced. 3. Shitty CCS charging standard that is still a major handicap in the USA. 4. Chinese company for a major multi year purchase is undesirable when China is flexing for war with the US. Nope, not even close – I don’t care how nice the car is with those major undesirable elements.
Enjoy-the-sauce
You have to put an “a” before “polestar,” otherwise it just doesn’t fit the meter of the song properly.
16 Comments
I’m surprised that the article continually emphasizes the idea that Polestar hasn’t distinguished itself enough from Volvo. In my experience, it’s the opposite: when people ask “what is that?” and the answer is “it’s a Volvo spinoff” they get it.
The bigger issues IMHO are that: 1) that Polestar has not defined its placement in the marketplace, 2) it didn’t ramp up production of the 3 and 4 fast enough, 3) the P2 is still way too expensive for the segment (prices should be closer to $40-45k, not $66-70k), 4) they should have emphasized “Volvo’s legendary safety and refinement plus BMW M performance in an electric vehicle” or something like that.
If they’d priced the P2 at $45k for three years and directly tackled the demographics of Tesla as well as mid-performance vehicles like the GTI, Audi, etc it would have been a huge value proposition. Chasing after Porsche as the comparable (as Ingenlath did) was always risky and inaccurate.
The article says “Polestar should have provided more visual differentiation.” That’s really not the issue, as I see it. The P2/P3/P4s really look nothing like Volvos, and no one mistakes them for a Volvo (whereas it’s pretty easy to see that Lexuses are just re-skinned Toyotas).
My take is that Polestar always should have been a sub-brand of Volvo, operating financially and logistically under the umbrella of the parent company—in much the way that Lexus, Acura, and Infiniti operate. Not as a “luxury arm” but as a performance spinoff. It was a mistake to allow Polestar to detach so fully from Volvo. Polestar shouldn’t operate as the luxury arm of a more consumer-oriented brand (Volvo is already fairly luxury), but should define its performance + cool identity as distinct.
Yet it’s such a weird relationship. I still have my P2 serviced at my Volvo dealership, and they have a Polestar salesperson on staff and always have Polestars on the lot.
Polestars biggest downfall will be its terrible dealer network work and customer interfacing model.
It tries to be Rivian/tesla but lands somewhere short of a sketchy used car dealer(no on site service) in a fancy business area, here is looking at you Beverly Hills PoleStar.
Then you find out it is still attached to a full multi mega conglomerate car dealer, like Galpin, so it basically operates with all the draw backs and ineptitudes of that dealer.
It was very strange prices for me that started with the P2 which wasn’t quite as good as a Model 3 but more expensive and then went up from there ?? needed to go down not up with the prices.
They also have the issue of being entangled with themselves because Geely has Volvo, Polestar, Zeekr, Lotus and Half of Smart. They are all overlapping in prices while using the same drive trains.
Whats the point of selling volvo and polestar in the same price range?
It never made sense as a stand alone. And they could help fix Volvo’s horrible software development game
Put the actual good tech from Zeekr in these and they would sell amazing in the U.S. The Volvo EV technology is lacking.
It’s all supposed to be Geely, I don’t get it.
Put some cars out that stand out from Volvo. Their only current car is the Polestar 2, which is a re-purposed Volvo ICE design with some serious compromises and a fairly high price. It’s not a bad car but doesn’t stand out and is not price competitive. The Polestar 3 and 4 should help to shift their image, but seem to be taking a while to get out.
They also should have taken advantage of Volvo’s dealership network for service. Not doing that is just baffling. The nearest Polestar service center to me is 250 miles away (Columbus, OH). Back when I was looking, the nearest was over 300 miles away (Detroit). The nearest Volvo dealership is only 35 miles away. Incidentally, Chicago is closer to me than Columbus is (still too far though – over 200 miles), but Polestar doesn’t have a service center there. Seriously? No service center in CHICAGO?!? Also, no service centers in Kansas City, St.Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and many other major cities, most of which have multiple Volvo dealerships. It makes no sense.
The problem is also Volvo is seen as a chinese brand.
This is China’s chance to get entry into the US market without 100% tariffs
I mean it’s basically Volvo. It’s more of an accounting thing for Geely along with an easy way to avoid tariffs.
It’s also terribly priced without a stack of incentives on the hood, and wild subsidized money factor. Backseat is trash, center console is an “abuse of space” and you have a vestigial drive tunnel 😂
Car makes sense priced lower than the base Model 3 when leased. Car makes almost no sense if purchased.
The Spaces are trash too. For my lease, the Polestar Space was so non-responsive I reached out to the dealer where the cars are actually handed over. Dealer pressed some “magic button” to have the car ready for delivery the next day at a Volvo dealer. The Space was useless, no follow up, no idea when the car would be available, even called after I took delivery trying to schedule handover 😂
If it looks like a Volvo and it’s made by Volvo they should have just sold it as an electric Volvo S60 or S80 or whatever.
I know Tesla started out by rebuilding the Lotus Elise as an electric, but once they launched the Model S it was crystal clear that a Tesla wasn’t just a rebadged other brand with an electric motor slapped in.
If they wanted to be Volvos they should have just been Volvos. Volvo has name recognition and dealer network why try to do it all from scratch
I’m a big fan of Polestar’s vision and it really sucks that it isn’t well-received. There’s no other brand with their minimalist but elegant design, and they are also truly a joy to drive. This combination is unique among available EVs.
I do think their pricing is appropriate for what it is, otherwise I wouldn’t have bought one. The hyper-fixation on on-paper specs and features is utterly missing the point. I’m driving a car, not a computer, so Tesla-level software is not what I’m looking for. 0-60 has diminishing returns; acceleration is not the only thing that makes a car fun to drive.
Geely will just start rebranding from their other companies, like the Zeekr 001 coming to the US mady by Renault Busan as Polestar 4 to bypass China import tarriffs here in the US. Now that car sold >200k examples and owners report good, so maibe this is the future instead of half-baked beta releases degrading brand value and driving it into the ground. No matter what US losses, companies that size will just keep attacking until they get a foothold.
Here’s what went through my head in my EV purchase decision when considering a Polestrar…1. Too expensive with no tax credit. 2. Very few service centers to fix your car if you are not in a major city – didn’t want to drive 6 hours away to get the car serviced. 3. Shitty CCS charging standard that is still a major handicap in the USA. 4. Chinese company for a major multi year purchase is undesirable when China is flexing for war with the US. Nope, not even close – I don’t care how nice the car is with those major undesirable elements.
You have to put an “a” before “polestar,” otherwise it just doesn’t fit the meter of the song properly.