Polestar to double global retail presence this year, five new Asia Pacific markets



Polestar, Volvo’s electric car brand, is by all measures, a very small carmaker. As of the beginning off this year, the Swedish EV maker only officially sells their cars in nine countries. And so, just like how we make our annual resolutions, Polestar is targetting to double that figure this year – and unlike the rest of us, they’re actually on track to achieve their goal.

A big part of the success lies on its plans to expand into five new markets in the Asia Pacific region, as Polestar announced back in March. These markets include South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand.

The expansion will also see the carmaker double its retail outlets to around 100 locations. These “retail environments” will include the existing Polestar Spaces retail approach which are usually found in city centre locations, a new Polestar Destinations concept that can be found “easy-to-access out-of-town locations”, as well as some “temporary pop-up locations”.

Polestar did not expand further on these pop-up locations, but noted that the other two will offer “the same experiential approach for customers to immerse themselves in the Polestar brand”, including test drives and vehicle handovers.

Polestar has just announced the Polestar 3, a performance EV SUV to be built in the USA. More details here!

“We are expanding both within markets in which we already have a presence and into new markets extremely rapidly. As a brand that has only been fully operational for just over 12 months, this sort of footprint is unprecedented,” sais Polestar CEO, Thomas Ingenlath.

“We aim to expand at a similar rate in terms of new markets in 2022 as well. This continued pace, combined with new retail concepts, will support our goal to exceed our owners’ expectations,” he added.

Polestar took an experimental (read: more powerful) Polestar 2 to the Goodwood Festival of Speed. Watch the video here!

Aside from the physical locations, Polestar will also be ramping up its online car-buying environment, which the carmaker says fits some of their newer markets particularly well.

Customers will not need to visit a showroom to buy a car, though the brand recognises how important it can be for customers to take a closer look and test drive the cars. To that end, it will be adding around 60 test drive locations by the end of 2021, while handover centres are also expanding rapidly alongside other formats such as home delivery.

As for aftersales, the company aims to increase its service points in Polestar markets from 650 to over 780 by the end of 2021.


GALLERY