UK's 'world-class' talent critical for Polestar EV development

It’s at MIRA that the close proximity between design-engineering and those developing the cars has allowed for rapid iterating. 

Just how rapid becomes clear when you consider that the project is barely four years old, Swift then pointing out that one of the pre-prods is already a true validation prototype and was even built at Polestar’s new Chongqing plant in China. This is skunkworks-grade tightness and focus. 

Today, Swift is joined in the workshop by Pete Allen, who heads this incipient but already 500-strong UK R&D team. Both men came over to Polestar from Coventry-based Emerald Engineering – another company owned by the Geely group. 

It was here that they helped deliver the aluminium chassis that underpins the new generation of electrified TX black cabs for LEVC, with a good portion of engineers who have transferred with them.

Chunky taxis to bleeding-edge electric GTs? Not an obvious segue. But when Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath (also on site today) tells Autocar that the “engineering competence” needed to deliver a ground-up car like the 5 pre-existed within Geely, this is what he means. 

So distinct is the rakish 5 from every other, higher-volume Polestar model that no Volvo platform would have been adequate. The remaining options were either to contract the project out or raid Emerald Engineering and others for the talent to establish a proper UK R&D division.

“If you want to build the safest car in the world, you’ll find that sort of engineering competence around Gothenburg,” says Ingenlath. “But if you want to design and build a low, sporty, exclusive, luxury GT car, then probably the engineering competence [is best found] in the UK. It’s world class for this kind of project.”

Allen, a quietly spoken but authoritative Scot, adds: “We’ve constructed a team according to the DNA we need in the product. We have people from F1, specialists from motorsport and a lot of premium niche manufacturers.”

He omits the fact that he himself was the programme lead for the development and delivery of the Mercedes-McLaren SLR, while Swift had a long stint at Lotus and was an engineering director at blue-blooded Canadian automotive innovator Multimatic. They both share an ambition to instil within the 5 a feeling of “sports car heritage”.

What exactly that means is something one hopes will become clear when we get behind the wheel of the car. For now, from an outsider’s perspective, you have to assume it alludes to a dynamic purity, transparency and all-round intuitiveness, but without sacrificing usability. 

An appealing simplicity, perhaps. Does anything already out there exhibit all that? The entry-level RWD Taycan gets close but lacks practicality; AMG and M cars froth with heft and complexity; Tesla products are accurate and rabidly quick but the handling never sparkles.

“You have to be able to deliver second-row comfort, which is not something most sports car manufacturers pay much attention to,” says Allen, in summing up the extent of the challenge. “But you also have to make it feel, in the front, as though the car is shrinking around you.”

Achieving that blend is where it gets interesting, not least because the 5 represents a rare opportunity to develop a mass-market performance car from scratch. 

The team are not shoehorning one product onto a platform designed for something else. Because, although this architecture needs to be scalable enough to underpin future models ranging from a higher-riding seven-seat crossover to a production version of the O2 roadster concept, in essence it’s very nearly bespoke to the 5. 

Polestar’s four-seat GT won’t therefore rely on active anti-roll bars, rear-wheel steering or complicated air suspension to meet its dynamic goals, as do many others in the category.

The suspension is passive and the team’s expertise has been focused on getting the rates, geometry and tyre characteristics matched up with the stiffness of the platform and just so for real-world duties – all the various journey types and road surfaces you would encounter. Done well, that equals purity.