Polestar’s halo flagship: The Polestar 5
The Sweden-based (and Geely-controlled) all-electric premium Polestar brand has officially unveiled the Polestar 5, a high-performance electric Grand Tourer designed to combine luxury, sustainability and cutting-edge technology.
Developed from the Precept concept first introduced in 2020, the Polestar 5 transforms the brand’s ‘future-focused vision’ into a production vehicle.
The Polestar 5 uses a bonded aluminium platform and an 800V electrical system. It is available in Dual Motor and Performance versions, with up to 650kW of power and 1,015Nm of torque. The 5 also includes sustainable interior materials, advanced driver assistance systems and rapid charging capabilities.
During a launch event, Frankie Youd heard from Polestar UK managing director, Matt Galvin; Henry Butt, global head of commercial product, pricing and margin; and Joakim Rydholm, head of driving dynamics, to learn more about what the new 5 means to Polestar.
Just Auto (JA): Could you discuss what the Polestar 5 means for Polestar?
Matt Galvin (MG): The Polestar 5 is our halo car, and it’s been a long time in the making. We’re six years old this year in the UK, so we’re still relatively young. We have around 60,000 cars on UK roads now, and we’re heading quickly towards 70,000. We’ve built up volume quite quickly, and in the last couple of years, we’ve more than doubled the size of our footprint in terms of retailers in the UK.
The Polestar 5 is our halo car, and it’s been a long time in the making.
We’ve got around about 16 retail spaces now, and we will be looking to push that more in the coming years. We don’t want to be the biggest and we don’t want to have a car dealership on every street corner, but we will look to strategically place those dealerships where there is most demand and most opportunity for Polestar.
Matt Butt (MB): For us the Polestar 5 is a gamechanger. It’s the first car that we’ve developed from the ground up. In 2020, when we originally showed the Polestar preset concept, that was a kind of manifesto piece for the Polestar brand and how that is embodied in a car. So, we are pushing the boundaries in terms of design, performance, sustainability, and really dialling those up to eleven.
Polestar 5 is the production manifestation of that car and Polestar 5 is incredibly close to that original concept car that we released back in 2020. To achieve that, we have had to design a platform from the ground up.
In order to deliver on the design attributes, the performance attributes, and the sustainability attributes that we that we manifested in Precept, we’ve developed the chassis across our teams here in the UK and Sweden over a period of six years.
Joakim Rydholm (JR): In 2018 we created Polestar 1 to make sure that everyone understood what our DNA stands for. Eight years later, we have the Polestar 5, and during that time we have launched five cars for a startup company. That’s pretty impressive, and a lot of hard work.
But with Polestar 5, we effectively started with a blank piece of paper. It has an active damper system, where you can adjust the damper stiffness 500 times per second. That means almost every centimetre we can adjust the dampers, and that guarantees that we will have outstanding driving performance.
Could you discuss the sustainability of the Polestar 5?
MB: We have used materials such as natural alternatives to carbon fibre that can be fully recycled and that also come with similar strength and weight benefits.
We have also used PVC-free materials and Nappa leather; you can see BCOMP on the rear seatbacks, the lower door cards. It is a sustainable, focused material made from flax, and that that reduces both weight and also improves strength in the car in those specific areas.
The Polestar 5 has bonded aluminium architecture, with 13% recycled aluminium in the body structure; some 85% of the aluminium in the car is sourced from renewable sources. That saves us 14 tonnes of CO2 equivalent in the production of this car, so there’s a massive positive element in terms of overall climate impact, and it is something that we’re really proud to have achieved.
Could you explain Polestar Charge?
MG: Something that’s not really talked about often is Polestar Charge, and quite a few conversations I’ve had over the last 48 hours have been around charging your car when you’re out and about. I think everyone’s used to the concept of charging at home, but we have a product called Polestar Charge. We have access to over a million charge points across Europe, and it’s a service that enables Polestar customers to benefit from a 30% discount on most of the major charging providers in the UK, subject to a subscription which can be stopped and started.
It’s a way of us taking the pain, a little bit of the sting, if you like; our public charging solution to make life easier. You just tap your card and go.
Could you discuss some future Polestar models customers can expect?
MG: So later this year, we are aiming to launch Polestar 4 SUV, that is a new body style for the already well-established Polestar 4 coupe that you would have seen on the roads quite commonly now since the launch around 18 months ago.
We have a successor to the car that we started with, the Polestar 2, that will be coming next year. Polestar 2 was really the foundation of our success globally; around 170,000 of those cars have been sold globally and we’ve sold around 50,000 of those in the UK.
The UK is the biggest market globally for Polestar, so the successor to the current Polestar 2 is going to be an incredibly important car for us and one that we’re really excited about.
Then a little bit further on in the future, we have Polestar 7 arriving as well. So that is a mid-sized SUV and will be the first car that we produce in Europe [at a new factory in Slovakia ].
Polestar 5
Polestar 5