RAY MASSEY: Polestar 1 coupe leads Volvo's electric charge, but you'll need to take out a subscription to drive it
Volvo has revealed the first of its new stand-alone performance cars, which, it hopes, will trump Tesla in the electric revolution.
But if you want a Polestar, you can only order one online and will have to drive it using a 'hassle-free' subscription rather than owning it outright. The equivalent price of ownership would be around £115,000.
Volvo's owner, Geely of China, aims to turn Polestar into an all-electric, separate brand.
Inspired: The Polestar 1 is almost indistinguishable from a 2013 Volvo concept car. That in turn was hailed as the 21st-century iteration of the classic Sixties Volvo P1800
The first car in the range, launched globally in Shanghai, is the Polestar 1 grand tourer electric-hybrid and should be in production by mid-2019.
As new as it is, the Polestar 1 is almost indistinguishable from a Volvo Coupe concept shown at the Frankfurt Motor Show in 2013.
Suave: Roger Moore driving the original P1800 coupe
That in turn was hailed as the 21st-century iteration of the classic Sixties Volvo P1800 coupe.
It's a name few will recall, but millions will remember it as the car of choice for Roger Moore when he played Simon Templar in The Saint.
Significantly, a Briton, Jon Goodman, a veteran of Volvo and Peugeot, will play a leading role as Polestar's chief operating officer overseeing the tilt at market-leader Tesla.
The Polestar 1 is the first of three models to be made at a new factory in Chengdu, China, which opens next summer.
The 600hp Polestar will look to rival equivalent Tesla models that will be on sale in 2019 as well as Jaguar's new I-Pace SUV
The Polestar 1 will have a range of 93 miles on pure electric power alone – more than any hybrid car on the market today
The new Polestar 1 is a hybrid-powered two-door coupe with a 2+2 seat layout
Polestar’s chief operating officer is Briton Jon Goodman, a veteran of Volvo and Peugeot, who is now charged with turning the company into a Tesla-beater
The two-door, 2+2 seat is an electric car supported by an internal combustion engine that generates on-board electric power.
The 600 bhp hybrid has a range of 93 miles on electric power alone and new driving technologies that make it 'a true driver's car', says the company.
Bosses say future models will be 'fully electric only'. The mid-sized battery-powered Polestar 2 will follow later in 2019 to take on the Tesla Model 3, with the larger SUV-style Polestar 3 arriving after that.
Going for pole with electric cars: Polestar is a new standalone Swedish car brand - a spin-off of Volvo cars. This will be the first model in 2019 called the 1 GT
The Polestar 1 has a carbon fibre construction that reduces bodyweight and improves stiffness by 45%
The luxury-spec Polestar 1 will be worth between £115,000 and £120,000
A special Phone-As-Key technology will allows the owner to share a virtual key with a third party, such as Amazon, to deliver parcels directly to the boot of the car
Polestar models will be built at a new production facility in Chengdu, China
Cars will be driven on a two or three-year monthly subscription, which covers delivery, servicing and the ability to rent other Volvos and Polestars.
Orders will be taken online, with showrooms called 'Polestar Spaces' where customers can still kick tyres.
- While the Beatles sang about '4,000 holes in Blackburn, Lancashire' — enough to fill the Albert Hall, comparison site Confused.com has worked out that the total depth of the million potholes reported to UK highways authorities in 2016 would be more than 25 miles — four times deeper than the Pacific Ocean at its deepest.
The 'buccaneering British spirit' will see our specialist car companies sail through Brexit, say industry chiefs.
They were speaking at the launch of a new industry report concluding that Britain's specialist car-makers, from Aston Martin to McLaren, are leading the world in proving that small is beautiful, with production set to soar by 60 per cent by 2020.
Business Minister Claire Perry, Dr Andy Palmer, the boss of Aston Martin, and the SMMT's Mike Hawes (right) at the industry event
The UK's low-volume, high-value manufacturing sector is the largest of its kind in the world and is on course to top 50,000 vehicles within three years, says the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).
Two thirds of the vehicles built here are exported, with exports outside the EU 'continuing to rise'.
- Shell this week opened its first electric car-charging points in the UK to cater for the rise in battery-powered cars. They are in London, Surrey and Derby, with seven more to follow by the end of the year.
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