Polestar will cut its global sales target for 2022 by almost 25 per cent due to prolonged COVID-19 lockdowns in China.
Previously set at 65,000 vehicles, the Swedish-Chinese electric vehicle (EV) brand now indicates it has a goal to sell a total of about 50,000 vehicles globally this year.
It’s unclear exactly how this will affect Australian orders for the Polestar 2 electric liftback, which is currently the only car the automaker produces. A Polestar Australia spokesperson says this situation is “still evolving”.
It’s expected, though, that with fewer vehicles being produced at its Chinese manufacturing plant, estimated arrival times for Australian orders will balloon out further.
Polestar 2
Before this announcement, the company had said that new vehicles ordered in April would arrive on Australian soil late in November 2022. That may no longer be accurate.
Polestar isn’t alone in feeling the effects of ongoing supply chain challenges, with its partners Volvo and Geely in the same boat, among a multitude of other brands.
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Polestar says that it’s implementing a “rapid response plan” which includes an accelerated introduction of a second production shift at the Chinese plant. This will apparently allow it to recover some of the production losses it has experienced throughout the last year.
The EV automaker also remains confident it can deliver its sales targets for 2023 through to 2025.
“Any short- to medium-term economic effects have not dented our goal of selling 290,000 cars in 2025 – 10 times more than we sold in 2021,” says Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath.
Despite the reduction in the sales target, Polestar also announced that in the first quarter of 2022 it has more than doubled vehicle sales and more than tripled orders taken compared to the same period in 2021.
The Swedish-Chinese company says that it has sold approximately 13,600 vehicles globally in the first quarter of 2022, with 208 of these sales coming from Australia according to VFACTS.
Polestar also says it has taken almost 23,000 orders over the first quarter of 2022.
At a recent press briefing, Polestar vice president of global sales operations Mike Whittington said, “Australia is the second largest right-hand drive market for Polestar, and clearly an important territory and one we think has a lot of growth potential, so we’re going to make sure our strategies going forward support that position”.
So far in 2022, the electric vehicle (EV) automaker has increased its global presence to 23 markets, up from 19 markets in 2021. This apparently puts it on track to meet its target of 30 markets by the end of 2023.
New markets in the Middle East and Europe are said to be joined by Spain and Portugal “imminently”. There are also plans to begin operations in Israel and Italy “later in 2022”.
As previously reported, Polestar intends to merge with Gores Guggenheim, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), and get listed on the Nasdaq. This deal is expected to close in the first half of 2022.
Polestar 3 prototype
In the same announcement Polestar also let it slip that it’s going to globally reveal its Polestar 3 “electric performance SUV” in October 2022.
Set to be produced in the US for the US market exclusively and China for the rest of the world (including Australia), the Polestar 3 SUV was previously previewed in prototype form wearing black-and-white camouflage.
The Polestar 3 will be a sleeker counterpart to the next-generation Volvo XC90 which shares its ‘SPA2’ architecture.
Despite Polestar saying that orders for the Polestar 3 should open at its global reveal, a Polestar Australia spokesperson said that “more information will be available closer to the reveal date”.
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