Tucked down the end of one of the many internal roads of the sprawling Horiba MIRA proving ground lies a warehouse unit out of which one of the most significant automotive engineering start-up operations in the UK in many years has been growing.
Polestar opened a MIRA-based site in the Midlands in 2019 as the home of its UK R&D operations, which will soon expand to include a second facility. By the end of 2023, more than 800 engineers will be employed by Polestar across the two sites, around 250 remaining at MIRA, and they will be responsible for engineering Polestar vehicles. Powertrain, battery and software development will remain in Gothenburg, Sweden.
“If this place is the centre of the vehicle, Gothenburg is the centre of the propulsion technology for that vehicle,” said Steve Swift, director of vehicle engineering, describing the relationship between Polestar’s two R&D locations.
The MIRA site has worked on under-the-radar refinements to the Polestar 1 and Polestar 2 but its key work has been the development of the all-new bespoke chassis that will be used on the Polestar 5, and future models after that.
