Polestar's Very Bad Month
Although sales rose 6% in 2023, Polestar failed to meet its delivery expectations — even after those exceptions were lowered in November — by over 5,000 cars, delivering only 54,600 cars last year.
Plus a 64% sales drop in the fourth-quarter, a margin forecast that was cut from 4% to 2% and a pause from Hertz in it’s plan to buy tens of thousands of Polestars, it seemed things couldn’t get much worse.
That is until this past Thursday when Volvo announced they will stop funding Polestar and hand over all funding to parent company Geely.
The Geely/Volvo/Polestar relationship is interesting. Geely owns about 79% of Volvo while Polestar has split ownership between Geely (50.5%) and Volvo (49.5%). But now it seems Volvo will be relinquishing its share of Polestar to Geely…which also owns Volvo.
From some automotive news headlines, you’d think this spells doom for Polestar. But I think (hope), in reality, that this is just a shuffling of papers to help boost Volvo by releasing the burden of building a new EV brand from scratch off of Volvo’s books and 100% onto Geely’s.
2024 is seemingly shaping up to be a better year for Polestar. After being stuck with only a single vehicle to sell since 2019, the Polestar 2, this year we’ll finally see the Polestar 3 and 4 joining the lineup.
Like the Polestar 2, the Polestar 4 small crossover will also be built in China and is already on sale in Europe and Australia, with sales expected to start in the U.S., Canada and Mexico by mid-year. The Polestar 3 SUV will be built here in the U.S. and is already available for pre-sale. Expected to start deliveries by mid-year as well.
Personally, I think the Polestar 4, as well as the prototypes for the Polestar 5 and 6, truly show the design direction Polestar needs to separate itself from Volvo.
I love my Polestar 2, and it’s great the Polestar 3 SUV will be made here in the U.S., but the shared Volvo design language is obvious. The Polestar 4, 5 and 6 really help to distinguish Polestar as a separate brand that will hopefully be able to stand on its own moving forward.