Ready or not, another automotive brand will hit the already crowded market in February 2020. That brand is Polestar—a joint venture between Volvo and its parent company, Chinese automaker Geely—and its first product is, naturally enough, the 2021 Polestar 1. Unlike the way that Mercedes-AMG models generally are hotted-up Mercedes-Benzes, Polestar models will not be modified Volvos. They will be unique vehicles, though they will share parts, platforms, and architectures with their corporate siblings. (Polestar has its own headquarters located in Volvo City in Gothenburg, Sweden.)

HIGHS: Elegant styling, solid performance, best electric range of any PHEV.

As a high-end 2+2 grand tourer with a plug-in hybrid powertrain, think of the Polestar 1 as a Swedish take on a BMW 8-series coupe. You'll be able to buy one through Polestar dealers, which will be primarily sales showrooms located in affluent city centers or shopping malls. Each Polestar store will be owned by an existing Volvo dealer, though only a minority of Volvo outlets will get one. Maintenance and service will be handled at these associated Volvo shops, though Polestar owners won't see this, as the cars will be picked up and returned to them at their convenience.

View Photos Polestar

Limited Production, Limited Use

The 1 is built on a shortened version of Volvo's highly flexible SPA platform, which undergirds its XC90, S90, and V90 models. To produce a more closely coupled coupe, 7.9 inches were cut between the wheels of the short-wheelbase S90 and about seven inches were chopped off the rear overhang. The result is only 180.5 inches long, though it is 3.1 inches wider than an S90 and a significant 3.9 inches shorter, thanks to the sloping roofline, which has the perfect profile of a teardrop sliced in half.

The 1 exhibits a lovely, understated elegance that avoids the more pronounced flamboyance that has infected the German Luxury brands.

The bodywork is all carbon fiber, except for the bumpers in order to reduce weight and achieve sharper character lines than what can be drawn in steel. Those carbon-fiber body panels are said to be 500 pounds lighter than steel ones would have been. They're also likely cheaper, as too few 1s will be built to justify the expense of metal stamping dies. Only 500 examples will be built per year and only for three years. A mere 150 of them will make it to the United States per annum.

View Photos Car and Driver

Though Polestar describes itself as the "technology spearhead" for the Geely/Volvo group, it also could be the styling icon, as the 1 exhibits a lovely, understated elegance that avoids the more pronounced flamboyance that has infected the German luxury brands. Inside, you'll find switchgear and the tablet-like Sensus infotainment system that is familiar from current Volvos. You'll have to wait for Polestar's second model, the four-door 2, to get its trick Android-based infotainment system. However, the upholstery, carbon-fiber accents, and metallic trim that completely encircle the cockpit delivers a richness to the experience.

LOWS: Compact interior packaging, synthetic driving feel, lofty price tag.

Unfortunately, while the front seating area is comfortable and generous, rear occupants are not so lucky. Between the lack of legroom and the plunging roofline, the second row is about as roomy as the back seat of a Porsche 911. That lack of volume extends to the trunk, which at four cubic feet, also is roughly 911-sized. Part of the blame for this tightness devolves onto the Polestar CEO, Thomas Ingenlath, who is a designer and thus programmed to sacrifice practicality for style. Fellow designer Henrik Fisker's Karma model suffered similar problems, with BMW 3-series levels of interior space in a car with a 7-series footprint. But the Polestar 1's 180.5-inch length doesn't help—it's five inches shorter than a current 3-series sedan. The 1's plug-in powertrain bears the rest of the blame.

Complicated Packaging

Though a PHEV configuration provides the best of both electric and internal-combustion powerplants, the two powertrains take up more space than a single one. Up front sits a supercharged and turbocharged version of Volvo's 2.0-liter inline-four coupled to a 71-hp integrated starter-generator and an eight-speed automatic transmission. Under the trunk floor is a pair of 114-hp electric motors, one for each rear wheel.

View Photos Polestar

What's more, Polestar wanted the 1 to have more range than any other PHEV, so the engineers crammed 34 kWh of the latest LG Chem lithium-ion pouch cells into the car. That's almost twice the energy capacity of a Chevrolet Volt, and it should be enough for at least 60 miles of pure electric range. (EPA figures have yet to be certified.) But since this platform was not designed for underfloor battery storage, those cells fill the broad central tunnel in the cabin and also take up space behind the rear seat, hence the truncated trunk.

This layout makes for an interesting powertrain that provides pure front-wheel drive when only the gas engine is running, pure rear-wheel drive on electric power alone, and all-wheel drive with various degrees of front-to-rear torque split in hybrid and max-power modes. The separate rear motors, however, do provide torque vectoring flexibility.

Impressively Capable

That arrangement pays off in the tight corners of our drive route on the undulating hillside roads between Silicon Valley and the Pacific Ocean, where the Polestar 1 demonstrates an agility and lack of understeer completely unexpected in a heavy and substantially sized vehicle. In fact, the 1 does quite well when pushed on fast, twisty roads. The constantly varying torque split is unnoticeable, the 21-inch Pirelli P Zero summer tires provide plenty of grip, the big Akebono-sourced brakes deftly dissipate speed, and the car is easy to precisely position, even on narrow two-lanes.

View Photos Polestar

With a combined peak output of 619 horsepower and 738 lb-ft of torque, you'd expect the 1 to be quick, but the car does weigh roughly 5200 pounds, so Polestar only is claiming a modest zero-to-60-time of 4.2 seconds. That's hardly slow, but far from the sub three-second times posted by quicker electric cars, such as the Tesla Model S and the Porsche Taycan (although we have yet to confirm the Taycan's acceleration for ourselves). We predict the 1's sprint to 60 mph will take 3.9 seconds; it feels every bit that quick and it does provide the instant throttle response we've come to expect from electrified powertrains.



Electric power can take you all the way to 100 mph before the motors are disengaged to prevent overheating.

We could do with a more natural feel from the Polestar's steering, which has a strong sense of self-centering that comes off as synthetic. And while its brake pedal is admirably firm, it can be touchy, especially when the B position is selected on the shifter to maximize regenerative braking. It will take more than a few hours in the driver's seat to thoroughly explore all of the driving modes—Hybrid, Pure Electric, AWD, Performance, and Individual—but Performance works best for serious motoring because the eight-speed transmission connected to the gas engine selects gears to keep the engine on boil and to minimize downshifts.



In Hybrid mode, on the other hand, the gas engine frequently turns on and off, and when you depress the accelerator the car tries to meet your need for more thrust by adding power to the electric motors, which is fine until they're maxed out and the gas engine fires to life with a noticeable bump. Running in pure electric mode cuts the available power roughly in half, but that's still plenty to keep up with normal traffic. Electric power can take you all the way to 100 mph before the motors are disengaged to prevent overheating.



A Concept Car for the Road

While the Pirelli tires deliver good grip, their low, 30-series sidewalls make for a firm ride that not even the Öhlins dampers can dispel. There's also a fair bit of road noise that is likely tire related and perhaps not entirely appropriate for a GT car intended for long-distance travel. By the way, those Öhlins dampers are adjustable but only via knobs attached to their housings, so you'll need to pop the hood and jack up the rear end to fine-tune the suspension to your liking. Somehow, we don't see many owners bothering with it.

View Photos Polestar

There are a few other odd touches to the Polestar 1, such as the lack of power adjustment for both the steering column position and the seat cushion's thigh extension. The glass top allows a huge amount of light to come through, but there is no means—mechanical or electric—to shade it. The sun visors sit in recesses in the headliner and can't fold forward to lie flat on the windshield, nor can they swivel to cover the side windows.

These are perhaps the hallmarks of a concept car brought to life and only intended for a brief production run. And these cars will cost dearly, with a sticker price of $156,500 fully loaded. Your only options will be the selection of interior trim, wheel finish, and one of five exterior colors, each available in glossy or matte finishes, with the latter costing an additional $5000.

It's hard to say that the Polestar 1 is a great car at a great price. There are plenty of excellent luxury coupes on the market at the Polestar's entry point, plus or minus $50K. What this car offers are its high-tech PHEV powertrain, genuine elegance, and the certainty that you won't see them dotting city streets, not even in New York or Los Angeles. And if you hold onto your 1 long enough, we imagine you'll surely be invited to display it at Pebble Beach one day.

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