BORAS, Sweden — The engineering and marketing teams at Polestar, the Volvo-affiliated luxury performance startup, know what's at stake in launching the brand's debut vehicle, Polestar 1.
"It's a halo product. If we don't do this right … ," Polestar 1 Commercial Project Leader Sofia Björnesson said, without finishing the thought because she knows the ramifications.
"But I'm not worried at all. We will make it."
The Polestar 1's initial production run of just 500 vehicles will reach the Volvo subsidiary's first customers this year. The brand's chassis and development specialists are spending large amounts of time fine-tuning the car at the Hällered Proving Grounds and on local roads near Gothenburg, Sweden.
The team has had its share of tough decisions.
"We initially planned to have electronically controlled dampers," chassis specialist Roger Wallgren said. The team wanted an active damping system that could be adjusted from inside the car by choosing a setting on a touch screen. "But it didn't live up to our expectations. What we have is the more hardcore choice."
The Polestar 1 has a dual flow valve solution from the Swedish performance supplier Öhlins Racing that enables a driver to adjust the dampers plus or minus 20 percent by turning a gold-colored knob under the hood.
"It was not an easy decision because there was a lot of market pressure" to have the ability to adjust the dampers inside the car, Wallgren said.
Another challenge came when picking the tires. Polestar 1's lead development engineer, Joakim Rydholm, worked with Pirelli on the specifications. Typically it takes two rounds of work to get a new tire's compound, layers and tread to the right point. If the development goes beyond that, it gets very expensive. Rydholm said Polestar needed four rounds to get the tires exactly the way he wanted them.
As the commercial launch draws closer, more technical information on the first model is going public.
Engine: The Polestar 1's 2.0-liter, four-cylinder turbocharged and supercharged engine combined with its 34 kilowatt-hour battery offers combined power of more than 626 hp and 738 pound-feet of torque. The model also has an electric-only range of 78 miles under the Worldwide Harmonized Light Vehicle Test Procedure.
Torsional stiffness: Polestar increased the car's torsional stiffness 45 percent by using carbon fiber instead of steel in the body. The added stiffness has improved handling and driving dynamics, the engineers said.
Torque vectoring: Two electric motors on the rear axle run individually. While cornering, the motors take readings from the steering wheel and accelerator so they can, for example, speed up the outer wheel to make the car much quicker around a turn.
Balance: 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/supercharged gasoline direct-injection engine is in the front and the batteries are in the back. Because the car has carbon fiber in the top hat, the center of gravity is close to the road, which results in better driving dynamics.
