Polestar 3 will hit U.S. market in Q1 2023

Polestar's U.S. operations will shift into higher gear when the Swedish electric automaker delivers new models and doubles its retail footprint here.

The Volvo affiliate will bring the Polestar 3, a Porsche Cayenne-sized crossover, to the U.S. in the first quarter of 2023. The midsize vehicle is key for the young brand's ambitions to grow its global sales ten-fold to 290,000 units by 2025.

For this launch, Polestar is keen to avoid the delays it suffered with the U.S. rollout of its first volume vehicle — the Polestar 2 sedan.

Reservations for the fastback began in February 2019, but the first customer deliveries didn't start until November 2020, Polestar USA CEO Gregor Hembrough told Automotive News.

"A lot of [reservation holders] simply couldn't wait for the car," Hembrough said. "So we lost a lot of customers along the way."

Unlike the China-made sedan, the new crossover will be built at Volvo's U.S. factory near Charleston, S.C. Hembrough expects Polestar 3 pre-orders to be fulfilled within "seven to eight months."

And for reservation-holders who might need a vehicle sooner, Polestar is planning a "bridge program."

"We want to be able to say to them, 'While you wait for your Polestar 3, we'll put you into a Polestar 2,'" Hembrough said.

The company has laid the groundwork for the Polestar 3.

"When we launched Polestar 2, we had no [U.S. stores]," Hembrough said. "We had very little infrastructure with regards to logistics. Our parts and service system wasn't set up."

Since then, Polestar has beefed up distribution, increased port capacity, and now has an existing customer base.

"We have a good number of people driving Polestar 2 now," Hembrough said. "We know that the majority of them have an SUV in their driveway. So we [can] solicit them on the Polestar 3."

This summer, U.S. dealers will learn more about Polestar 3 configurations and pricing, and "when we'll have cars for customers to see, touch and feel," the executive said.

The Polestar 3 is based on a new all-electric platform developed by Volvo for its next-generation vehicles, designed with dual motors and expected to go more than 300 miles on a single charge. The new platform will also offer eyes-off, hands-off autonomous driving capability, once that technology is approved.

The Polestar 3 will launch in a more competitive market than the Polestar 2 did. Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Porsche are bringing battery-powered crossovers in the next few years.

But that can be a good thing, Hembrough said.

"More entries into the marketplace mean more eyes are going to be looking at EVs."

Polestar believes it will be easier to convince petrol heads to ditch their V6 engines than to coax EV die-hards to trade in their Teslas.

"If we're only going to target electric vehicles, we're going to be fishing in the same pond," Hembrough said.

By the time the first Polestar 3 rolls off the assembly line in South Carolina, the automaker expects to have nearly 40 stores operating across the continental U.S.

Polestar's digital-first retail model avoids high-dollar dealership investments in favor of small, low-cost "Spaces" in malls and mixed-use urban developments. Those stores are 2,000- to 2,500-square-foot information centers run by franchised dealers selected from Volvo's retail network. Polestar vehicles are serviced at the dealers' Volvo stores.

But as the brand looks beyond America's more EV-receptive coastal metros, it will debut a new store format called Destination for suburban markets.

The standalone stores, located in easy-to-access sites, will perform vehicle hand-overs to customers and could include service departments.

Late last year, Polestar opened a more than 4,000-square-foot Destination store at Gothenburg Landvetter Airport in Sweden. In mid-summer, the first U.S. Destination will open in Princeton, N.J. — one of five such stores planned by year-end.