Anika Begay
Thomas Ingenlath is perhaps having a little too much fun in his Polestar 3, silently hurtling through stop signs and around increasingly tight corners, smiling like a man much younger than his 59 years.
“You can really push this car,” says Polestar’s CEO as he and fellow enthusiasts hit the roads near Spanish Bay north of Pebble Beach during Monterey Car Week. Along the way, he praises the SUV’s ability to be both comfortable and smooth while still offering the engaging handling that buyers of the brand’s first two cars, the hybrid Polestar 1 and electric Polestar 2, have come to know and love.
With its neutral-toned dress, it almost blends in with the pale interior of the full-size SUV, with the yellow seatbelt across the chest providing the only contrast. It’s an aesthetic that mirrors the attitude of the car itself: a premium, minimalist feel with the crisp performance typical of Polestar machines.
Safe Ground for Electric Vehicles, Political Sands in Shift
But the Polestar 3 marks a new path for the brand on U.S. roads. Although the car Ingenlath drives through Monterey traffic was built in China, the first American-assembled Polestar 3 SUVs are just starting to roll off the production lines at Polestar’s Ridgeville, South Carolina, plant.
That same factory has long produced cars for Volvo, owned by China’s Geely Holding. Polestar, a Swedish-based Volvo spinoff also under Geely, now shares the space as it races forward in the U.S. amid headwinds from recently imposed tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles.
In fact, while the company’s Polestar 2 is built in Gothenburg, all Polestar 3 SUVs destined for the American market will come from South Carolina.
“The production of the Polestar 3 is, in my opinion, on safe ground,” says Ingenlath.
Safe ground, perhaps, but certainly quicksand. Ingenlath sees EV demand in the U.S. market as evolving and requiring some patience: “How quickly will it develop? We’ll have to see,” he says. “But it’s certainly not something I’m concerned about for the purpose of our company.”
Ingenlath says he’d like to see adoption rates even higher here, of course, but he’d be happier if U.S. policy could be “a little more consistent.”
He’s watching the election closely. “All the noise around it is just disturbing,” he muses. “When you do a luxury car brand, you need consistency. You need consistency in model policy, pricing, and stuff like that, and of course, we’d also like to have a much more stable basis for decision-making. And you can’t, you know, react on a weekly or monthly basis. It takes years … to make meaningful economic decisions.”
Cars like the Polestar 3 take more than five years to design and develop. Moves like the new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles imported into the United States, which popped up almost overnight, are a real threat.
Electric Vehicle Financing
That’s just one of the challenges Polestar has faced lately. In early 2024, Volvo sold a significant portion of its stake in the company. It’s a move Ingenlath downplays, noting that Volvo still owns about 18 percent of the company. “It’s not insignificant,” he says. “If you own 20 percent of a company, you’re pretty interested in how the company is doing.”
Polestar has turned to banks for a $1 billion loan to keep things on track. Ingenlath says this change in ownership hasn’t led to a change in management of the business. But he says it’s always good to focus on the fundamentals.
“Now it’s important to demonstrate to them the ability to execute,” Ingenlath says of his obligations to the banks, “that we have these great cars coming out, that the markets successfully launch a car, deliver it and sell it.”
Ingenlath declines to say whether Polestar might need more funding to execute that plan, but says his goal now is to make Polestar “self-sufficient.”
A bet on SUVs
The Polestar 3 is an integral part of that plan. While the Polestar 2 is a sweet-driving, clean-looking sedan, it’s moving into a market dominated by SUVs in the U.S. Ingenlath calls it “more of a compact European sedan, which won’t meet the needs of a family.”
The Polestar 3 should do better in this regard, at least for families who can afford its $73,400 starting price. The vehicle is much larger, more upright and roomier than the Polestar 2, and still promises a taste of the same driving character.
It is important to emphasize that sales growth is necessary to prepare the ground for Polestar’s next launches.
The iterative nomenclature continues with the Polestar 4, a smaller SUV that gives up some of the Polestar 4’s volume (and all of its rearward visibility) for a significantly wider roofline and a more affordable price, starting at $54,900.
Then comes the Polestar 5, a sporty, elegant sedan that ties into the brand’s focus on design, an attribute Ingenlath says is more important to the company than federal subsidies for electric vehicles. “We should be getting people behind the wheel of a Polestar, buying our products, because they’re just so damn desirable and they want to have them,” he says.
The Polestar 4 is expected to arrive later this year, while the Polestar 5 will arrive in 2025. That’s an aggressive timeline considering the Polestar 2 has effectively been the company’s only offering in the U.S. market for nearly four years.
That wasn’t supposed to be the plan. The Polestar 3 has suffered significant delays due to software issues that also sidelined its corporate sibling, the Volvo EX90. However, Ingenlath says sharing technology with Volvo is a key part of Polestar’s ability to iterate quickly.
“Why should we develop ADAS ourselves?” he asks. “Of course, Volvo provides a technological basis here that is excellent for the luxury vehicle we want to build.”
This technology sharing will continue despite Volvo’s partial divestment. Volvo is not its only partner. Polestar was an early adopter of Android Automotive, effectively handing over its entire in-car interface to Google.
“It’s one of the most beautiful, seamless success stories of actually implementing technology,” he says, a move that was initially met with skepticism. “People were like, ‘Oh, what are you doing? Are you really going to bed with Google? Blah, blah, blah.’ There were so many raised eyebrows about it. Jesus, our customers love it. It’s such a step forward in terms of ease of use.”
The real step forward for Polestar will be the long-awaited release of the Polestar 3, which Ingenlath says will happen within “weeks.”
