BORAS, Sweden -- The Polestar 1’s initial production run will reach the Volvo subsidiary’s first customers later this year, which explains the intense amount of fine-tuning still going at the Hallered Proving Grounds, near Gothenburg.
“When it was supposed to be finished it was still not good enough,” said Roger Wallgren, with a smile, when discussing the car on the sidelines of the facility’s handling track during the first test-drives of the Polestar 1 by people outside of the Volvo Car Group. Automotive News Europe was invited to test the car on the track and local roads.
Wallgren, fellow chassis specialist Fredrik Lundqvist and their boss, Polestar 1 lead development engineer Joakim Rydholm, have no recollection of what a typical workday is anymore, and they couldn’t be happier. They want the Polestar 1 to set the ride and handling standard for a brand that didn’t officially exist two years ago.
The engineers have spent countless hours making sure the Polestar 1, a plug-in hybrid coupe with combined power of more than 600 hp meets their high-expectations.
They, along with Polestar 1 Commercial Project Leader Sofia Björnesson, know what’s at stake with the brand’s debut model.
“It’s a halo product. If we don’t do this right …,” Björnesson said without finishing the thought because she knows the ramifications. “But I’m not worried at all. We will make it. We are making it.”
There is a reason why Polestar is confident. Rydholm, Lundqvist and Björnesson were all part of Polestar during its short-lived iteration as Volvo’s answer to BMW M and Mercedes-AMG.
In July 2015, Volvo acquired 100 percent of Polestar Performance. Prior to the purchase Polestar was an independent tuning firm that Volvo hired to jointly develop high-performance versions of its vehicles.
Fast forward to June 21, 2017. That is the day Volvo announced that instead of competing against Mercedes-AMG it would turn Polestar into a stand-alone brand that would be a rival to Tesla and BMW i subbrand. The closest competitor the Polestar 1 has is the BMW i8 plug-in hybrid.
“We can still be that competitor [to the German premium brands’ successful tuning divisions], we will just use electric performance vehicles instead,” Björnesson said. “We have been working and struggling with this [the Polestar 1] for almost four years and now it’s a reality. It’s here.”
When asked what she was happiest about as the car nears completion she pointed to the team’s relentless pursuit of performance. “They have never given up on tuning a great chassis. We are still working on that, tuning millimeters and micrometers. We want to have a car that defines what Polestar Performance is all about.”
How Volvo's Polestar is getting its debut model up to speed
Fast facts
Well balanced: Polestar says 48 percent of the Polestar 1’s weight is in the front and 52 percent is in the rear. This was possible because the turbocharged/supercharger gasoline direct-injection engine is in the front and the batteries are in the back. Since car has carbon fiber in the top hat, the center of gravity is close to the road, which results in better driving dynamics.
Torsional stiffness: Polestar was able to increase the car’s torsional stiffness by 45 percent by using carbon fiber instead of steel in the body. The added stiffness has improve handling and driving dynamics.
Torque vectoring: There are two electric motors on the rear axle that run individually. While cornering the motors are take readings from the steering wheel and accelerator, giving that data back to the motors so they, for example, speed up the outer wheel to make the car much quicker around a turn.
To create that definition the team has had its share of tough decisions to make. A couple stood out when Rydholm, Björnesson, Wallgren and Lundqvist gave me a tour of the car.
“We initially planned to have electronically controlled dampers,” Wallgren said. “It would have been quite typical,” he said of having an active damping systems that could be adjusted from inside the car by choosing a setting on a touchscreen.
“But it didn’t live up to our expectations,” Wallgren said. “What we have is the more hardcore choice.”
The Polestar 1 has a dual flow valve solution from Ohlins that make it possible for the driver to adjust the dampers by plus or minus 20 percent by turning a gold-colored knob that is under the hood of the car.
“It was not an easy decision because there was a lot of market pressure” to have a solution that could be adjusted inside the car, Wallgren said.
Added Björnesson: “We also had already communicated what we were going to use [electronically controlled dampers], but the dual flow valves fit the chassis and the car’s performance much better.”
Another challenge came when picking the tires. Rydholm worked with Pirelli on the specifications. Typically it take two rounds of work to get the compound, layers, tread, etc. to the point where the solution will work. Anything more than that gets very expensive.
Rydholm said Polestar needed four rounds to get the tires to be exactly the way he what them to be.
There was no blowback from Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath on the extra cost.
“That is the beauty of working at this price point,” he said of the 155,000 euro coupe. “If we said that is would improve the performance, we got the OK.”
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