Volvo Cars and Geely invest €640m

Volvo Cars and its owner, Geely Holding, will jointly invest €640m to support the initial phase of Polestar’s product, brand and industrial development.

The investment highlights the financial muscle and industrial and manufacturing expertise Polestar will have access to, and establishes the fully consolidated Volvo Cars subsidiary as a stand-alone electrified performance car company as it reveals its first production model in Shanghai today.

The investment will be used, among other things, to establish a state-of-the-art Polestar manufacturing facility in Chengdu, China, marking a new chapter in the development of China as a manufacturing hub for Volvo Cars.

Polestar’s first production car, the Polestar 1, is a 600hp two-door, four-seater hybrid coupé. It has a pure electric range of 150km. The electrified performance car will go in production in Chengdu in mid-2019, and will be closely followed later in 2019 by a smaller vehicle named Polestar 2.

Around half of the technology under the skin of the Polestar 1 is based on Volvo’s in-house-developed SPA modular vehicle architecture, while the remaining half is entirely new and bespoke technology created by Polestar engineers working within Volvo’s R&D department.

The Polestar 2 will be the first fully electric car launched by Volvo Car Group, and the first of a total of five fully electric Polestar- or Volvo-branded vehicles to be launched between 2019 and 2021.