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Polestar, the high-performance arm of Volvo, is set to turn its attention to fast electric cars as part of a major shake up of the brand.
Polestar had once been, as with AMG at Mercedes, a private tuning and racing company that became closer and closer to Volvo, before the Swedish car maker bought the hot-car brand outright in 2015. Since when, it has been quietly tweaking and tuning production Volvos to often great effect.
The new tack for the company will be to focus on making high-performance, long-range electric cars, as Volvo looks to a future without internal combustion, not to mention competing with the likes of Tesla, Audi e-Tron, and Mercedes IQ in the meantime.
Thomas Ingenlath, Senior Vice President Design at Volvo, will assume the position of Chief Executive Officer at Polestar. Mr Ingenlath has been the inspiration behind Volvo's award winning design renaissance in recent years. "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.
Mr Ingenlath will be joined at Polestar by Jonathan Goodman, who will become Chief Operating Officer. Mr Goodman moves from his position as Senior Vice President Corporate Communication at Volvo Cars.
"With 25 years of commercial experience in the automotive industry, Jonathan is ideally placed to provide operational experience alongside Thomas's vision, building on the experienced management team that will drive the Polestar brand forwards" said Mr Samuelsson. "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."
Mr Ingenlath said: "I am really excited to take up the challenge of establishing this exciting brand, developing a fabulous portfolio of bespoke products and channelling the passion we have throughout the Polestar team. The next chapter in Polestar's history is just beginning."
The move does potentially leave a little wiggle room for Volvo to collaborate with Lotus. The sports car maker was recently bought out by Volvo's Chinese owners, Geely, and much talk was made at the time of Lotus potentially bringing its high performance and handling expertise to Volvo cars, as a potential rival to Mercedes AMG and BMW M. There's been nothing official since, but seeing as Polestar is now working on electric cars, surely that leaves space for a Lotus Carlton successor based on the S90? Well, it's a thought...