It’s been almost a year now since Volvo’s new electric performance brand first revealed the new Polestar 1. Even longer since the Volvo Concept Coupe on which its design is based was unveiled back in 2013. But production has now officially begun. Sorta.
The company announced today that it has completed the first 34 examples of the forthcoming new Polestar 1 on a dedicated production line in Gothenburg, Sweden.
Now if you’re thinking that Polestar was planning on building them in China, not Sweden, you’re right. Parent company Geely is constructing a new factory in Chengdu for just that purpose, and full-scale production there isn’t expected to come on line until sometime next year. These initial examples made at Volvo’s headquarters are pre-production prototypes that will be used for development and crash testing and the like. But they’re as close to the production version that we’ve seen yet.
“The assembly of the VP cars means that the Polestar 1 has taken its next step towards production,” said Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath, referring to the Verification Prototypes. “This first batch of 34 cars will enable our engineers to tune the finer details of the car, ensuring that the Polestar 1 is perfect when we start to produce customer cars in the middle of next year.”
Beyond the construction of these initial prototypes themselves, the production process has given Volvo’s engineers the chance to experiment with carbon-fiber construction – something that the Swedish automaker has never toyed with before. That it would point that out specifically in the announcement would ostensibly suggest that Volvo could use more carbon fiber in the future on its own production models.
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