Volvo's Polestar Might Become Separate Performance Brand for EVs

by Matt Posky

June 12th, 2017 5:51 PM

Despite being Volvo Cars’ official performance arm since 2015, Polestar has always felt like a separate entity. Its current offerings for the North American market are limited to amped up versions of the S60 and V60 — distinctive in personality and produced in extremely limited quantities. However, Volvo’s parent company Geely wants to make a change, converting Polestar into its own global performance brand focusing on, get this, electric cars.

Apparently, Geely wants Polestar’s future role to mimic Mercedes’ AMG by having it continue to produce modified Volvos while also honing in on exclusive models singularly fixated on performance. However, if many of those are intended to be EVs, questions must be raised as to how things might change at Volvo.

Spilling the beans to AutoExpress, a senior source inside Geely specified that an electrified Polestar should break cover using Volvo Cars’ Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) this year. Future performance models are supposed to employ the company’s Compact Modular Architecture (CMA) as a base, opening speculation for a hot little hatchback. Not that there’s any guarantee of North America ever seeing it. Currently, Volvo’s smallest offering is the S60 — which will persist using the SPA platform and an internal combustion engine.

Volvo will launch its first electric car in the Chinese market in 2019. The brand has also hinted it wants to produce SPA-based electric models and eventually evolve the entire lineup into hybrids. Polestar, however, is poised to beat it to the punch.

However, there is zero confirmation as to whether the upcoming Polestars will be silent running BEVs or use hybridized powertrains. While rumors of the Polestar Cyan Racing joining Formula E suggests the former is a distinct possibility, that level of commitment to pure electrics would place the performance brand in a league of its own.

[Image: Volvo]

#CompactModularArchitecture #ElectricCars #ElectricVehicles #EVs #FormulaE #Geely #Hybrids #Polestar #ScalableProductArchitecture #VolvoCars

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Big Al from Oz on Jun 12, 2017

I do like that Volvo blue. Ford blue is nice, but its comes in second.

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Dukeisduke on Jun 13, 2017

I get it - Double-Pole-Double-Throw-Star.

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