Volvo Makes It Official: Polestar to Become a Standalone Brand

Think of it as a green brand known for producing some very blue cars. Polestar, Volvo’s performance wing, will be spun off into an electrified automaker under a new plan from the Swedish car manufacturer.

Expected to do battle with the likes of Tesla and BMW’s i sub-brand, future Polestars — like their gasoline-powered predecessors — will stake out space in the performance arena, only this time in a different niche.

Volvo made the announcement today, confirming an insider-sourced report from two weeks ago. That’s right, future Polestars will ditch the Volvo logo altogether, while remaining part of Volvo Cars.

The automaker first teamed up with Polestar Performance in 1996 to assist its motorsports ventures. Together, the two companies began cranking out Polestar-tuned variants of Volvo vehicles for regular customers, providing a Scandinavian alternative to BMW’s M-badged vehicles and Mercedes-AMG rolling stock. Volvo took full ownership of Polestar in 2015.

Heading up the new brand is Thomas Ingenlath, who will relinquish his role as senior vice president of design at Volvo to don a CEO hat.

“Thomas heading up the Polestar organisation shows our commitment to establishing a truly differentiated stand-alone brand within the Volvo Car Group,” said Håkan Samuelsson, president and chief executive of Volvo Cars, in a statement.

“Polestar will be a credible competitor in the emerging global market for high performance electrified cars. With Polestar, we are able to offer electrified cars to the world’s most demanding, progressive drivers in all market segments.”

Don’t worry, traditional Polestar lovers. The company’s engineering will still find its way into regular Volvos through performance packages offered by the Polestar Engineered brand. Vivid blue S60 and V60s currently make up the entirety of Volvo’s Polestar-badged offerings, offering mondo horsepower from a heavily worked-over 2.0-liter four-cylinder.

The automaker claims Polestar’s connection to Volvo, and the ability to share platforms and components, will allow the new brand to benefit from economies of scale. “These synergies will allow it to design, develop and build world beating electrified high performance cars,” the automaker stated.

Note the repeated use of the word “electrified.” While Polestar doesn’t plan to outline its product intentions until this fall, it would seem that gasoline propulsion might not entirely disappear from its lineup. Volvo has already found success with hybrids, with more on the way. The senior company source at the core of the earlier report claimed future Polestar models would make use of Volvo’s Compact Modular Architecture, which is versatile enough for use with conventional, hybrid and electric powertrains.

[Image: Volvo Cars]