The story
Racing team and tuning brand (1996–2017)
The company origins can be traced to the 1996 foundation of Flash Engineering, a Swedish racing team competing in Swedish Touring Car Championship (STCC). The team was sold and rebranded as Polestar Racing, which began modifying Volvos for racing in the late 2000s. In 2009, the brand became the official Volvo partner to modify existing models, under the brand Polestar Performance. Volvo eventually bought the company in July 2015 and began selling Polestar-enhanced models directly through their resellers.
Polestar has also produced prototype cars, with the first being the C30 Polestar Performance Concept Prototype (2010) with over 400 bhp (300 kW) and 510 N⋅m (380 lbf⋅ft).
The Volvo S60 Polestar Concept is the heir to the C30 Polestar, featuring 508 BHP from a modified T6 engine, launched in June 2012. The car sprints from 0–100 km/h (0–62 mph) in 3.9 seconds with a top speed of over 300 km/h (190 mph). Motor Trend tested the car at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, where it broke the lap record for four-door cars, matching the lap time of an Audi R8.
Selection of petrol and hybrid powered Volvo-based Polestar models:
Standalone brand (2017–present)
In October 2017, Volvo Cars and Geely Holding announced that Polestar would become a standalone brand focusing on electric cars. The brand introduced the Polestar 1 on 17 October 2017, a 2+2 coupé inspired by Volvo's Concept Coupé introduced in 2013, which includes influences from the Volvo P1800. The Polestar 1 was built between 2019 and 2021, and was built in a new purpose-built Polestar Production Centre in Chengdu, China, from 2019 at a rate of up to 500 per year. During its final year of production, a limited-production gold-painted version of Polestar 1 was released. Only 25 units were produced.
In 2019, Polestar announced their second car, the Polestar 2 electric car. It was unveiled on 27 February 2019, in an online unveiling which was broadcast from the Polestar headquarters in Gothenburg, Sweden. Directly after, it had its public debut at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show. It is produced at Volvo Cars's existing plant in Taizhou, China. It received a mid-life refresh for its 2024 year-model, switching to a rear-wheel drive layout for its single-motor option, and various performance and cosmetic changes for the base model and performance package, respectively. Polestar replaced the existing front grille with a body-color front-end treatment that houses new safety hardware, including a front-facing camera and a new mid-range radar, matching the Polestar 3, dubbed the "SmartZone".
In March 2022, Polestar launched a roadster concept named the Polestar O2, and later in August 2022, Polestar announced a sixth new roadster model dubbed Polestar 6 based on the O2 concept car, expected to enter production in 2026.
In 2023, Polestar announced construction of its new headquarters – a 80,000 m2 (860,000 ft2) building in central Gothenburg.
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In February 2024, Volvo (itself 79.5% owned by Geely at the time) announced that it would attempt to reduce its ownership stake in Polestar from 48% to 18%, by transferring US$921 million of stock to its shareholders. This would result in PSD Investment (Geely founder Li Shufu's personal company) becoming the largest shareholder with at least a 39% stake. In April 2024, Geely Holdings became a major new shareholder, directly owning approximately 24% of Polestar. The free float also rose to about 18% of shares at that time, signifying that Volvo's February plan had been substantially realized.
In June 2025, Polestar announced a US$200 million equity investment by PSD Investment, an entity that is controlled by Li Shufu. Polestar sold more than 190 million Class A American depositary shares (ADS) to PSD Investment - which would make Li Shufu holds 44% of Polestar. The transaction would reduce Volvo Cars' stake in Polestar from 18% to 16%, with Geely and Li Shufu's stake increased to 66% combined.
In October 2025, Polestar closed its last direct-sales store in China, while the company said its other operations in China would be unaffected by the closure.
In June 2026, Polestar announced that it would be withdrawing from the United States market after the United States Department of Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security, citing a rule banning vehicles that use connected software and hardware associated with China and Russia, denied Polestar the right to sell new vehicles after the 2027 model year. The company stated that it would continue to service existing cars in the country.
From Wikipedia’s article on Polestar, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8