Challenger to Watch: Polestar

Love him or loathe him, (I’m the latter) Elon Musk is a brilliant marketer.

Market leader in Electric Vehicles (EV) in the US, Tesla spends ZERO on advertising. Instead, Musk uses his personal brand to get people looking at Tesla. A willingness to share ideas, successes, failures and personal opinions on Twitter has seen him amass +30m followers, providing a sizeable and already engaged audience to promote Tesla.

EV competitors will need to battle with Tesla not just in terms of their product and features, but in terms of the visibility and fame-driven marketing, its enigmatic CEO gives them.

Polestar is one such competitor looking to challenge Tesla in 2020.

With transport being one of the biggest sources of global carbon emissions, growth in electric vehicles sales is forecast to rise rapidly with EVs and HEVs making up 30% of all purchases by 2025.

But challengers don't succeed by following the approach of the market leader or by imitating them. Polestar will need to carve out its own path and make clear how it's different.

It sounds like it's aware of this need.

For starters, Polestar, launched as a stand-alone brand in 2017 and focusing solely on EV, is a subsidiary of Swedish company Volvo. Volvo is known for being safe and reliable… good brand equities but it's not going to cut the mustard against Tesla’s sexy-apocalypse vibes.

Rather than attempt to compete from the parent brand, it's clearly felt that, strategically, the best bet would be to start from a clean slate, without the baggage of Volvo’s 93 years of history.

Launching a sub-brand provides an opportunity to compete without the historical baggage and perception consumers may have about the parent brand. It can start entirely from scratch, building a new brand identity for a new generation or sub-section of consumers.

Polestar’s website reads:

"The maturity of the automotive industry has become a barrier to innovation. Over time, cars have started to all look the same, feel the same, be the same. We constantly question industry ideas and thinking, challenging ourselves to be better, never accepting mediocrity. We are passionate about design, performance and precision and obsess over each and every detail. We have no legacy, no ties to the past; we are free to find the right way."

Polestar certainly speaks like a challenger. But can it live up to these words?

It offers two products, the Polestar 1 - a 2-door hybrid sports car which launched in 2019 and the Polestar 2 - an all-electric 5-door which goes into production in 2020 and will compete directly with Tesla's Model-3 - the best-selling EV in the US and UK.

Polestar takes an interesting approach to its retail experience, perhaps drawing inspiration from Apple’s ‘Genius Bars’ (or Tesla’s ‘Stores’), it’s branded its dealerships as 'Spaces' and located them in the centre of cities and shopping districts for the consumer's convenience. Its first is in Oslo.

Staff at these 'Spaces' are not incentivised to sell, nor do they work on a commission basis. The idea is to provide the best possible customer-focused experience in a modern and relaxing environment, providing visitors with the information they need for them to make up their own mind.

What's not to like there?

Another example of the brand's forward-thinking nature and its stated obsession with detail is its vegan interior. Its seat covers, steering wheel, gear shift and interior coatings are all animal-free. Polestar even received a Compassionate Business Award from PETA for the move. Jeremy Clarkson hearing this news is possibly the one time I'd quite like to watch him.

And in a sign that Polestar could set the EV agenda, not just respond to it, Tesla announced a few months later that its Model 3 would become completely vegan too through the use of a new synthetic steering wheel cover.

A small victory, perhaps.

Let’s see if Polestar can push its differences further in 2020 and beyond.