Polestar Opens New Research and Development Centre in Coventry
Further increasing Polestar’s ability to independently develop future electric vehicle technologies, the brand has announced the creation of a new Research and Development facility in Coventry. Once established, the new facility will increase Polestar’s development capabilities and enhance the brand’s ability to create future electric performance vehicles.
Initially home to around 60 dedicated engineers with highly specialised skills, the new R&D facility will waste no time in pushing Polestar’s development boundaries. Allowing for a smooth integration of the new facility into Polestar, all of the engineers employed at the centre have been involved with preliminary development work for Polestar in the past.
Thanks to the new R&D centre, all of these Polestar engineers will be wholly immersed in the creation of almost all of Polestar’s future global projects; in the first instance, that’ll be Polestar 1, Polestar 2 and Polestar 3.
Hans Pehrson, responsible for Research and Development at Polestar, comments:
“Polestar’s role as a technology spearhead requires new and developing skills in low-volume, light-weight, multi-material performance car engineering, and the new UK operation will allow us to take the next steps towards our future cars.
“The team that will kick start the new UK R&D subsidiary is already well-versed in Polestar engineering philosophy, and we will expand the initial team further during the course of 2019. These engineers will be a great complement to our existing R&D team based in Sweden, and other supporting teams around the world.”
Having initially spent many years working with Volvo’s motorsport and performance car divisions, Polestar are now an electric performance car brand jointly owned by Volvo Cars and Zhejiang Geely Holding.
Launching with the Polestar 1 in 2017 – a low-volume Electric Hybrid GT car with 600hp – Polestar unveiled their first all-electric car, Polestar 2, in 2019 and will soon unveil an all-electric SUV named Polestar 3.
All technology developed by Polestar is shared with Volvo cars for use on their own hybrid cars; in turn meaning that the new R&D facility will supercharge the Volvo’s electrified vehicle range as well as Polestar’s own range.
We’re quite excited about this one. Electric car technology is not an easy thing to dive into and, with Polestar One as their first effort, Polestar seem to have hit the ground running. What will a dedicated new R&D centre mean for the brand’s rapidly developing technology? You’ll have to watch this space.
