Electric car maker Polestar wants to break even by 2025

The Swedish-Chinese electric car maker Polestar is facing a big challenge. Sales are not growing as fast as expected, expanding the product range takes time and causes losses. The company, like its sister brand Volvo, belongs to China’s Geely Group, continues to believe in a successful future.

“The plan remains that we will break even in 2025,” Polestar boss Thomas Ingenlath told them Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). Ingenlath also continues to emphasize the future promise of a double-digit gross profit margin. “We want to achieve this goal with a total of 150,000 to 160,000 car sales. We have adjusted the sales figures that we want to achieve this goal. It’s about the real sales figures, as well as the high profitability of the brand paid for by our future models.”

Polestar previously talked about 290,000 cars a year. The goal was to achieve profit, not sales figures, it was said in an interview with HE DOES. We don’t have to have direct price cuts like that of competitor Tesla to grow the business. However, a temporary discount of 4,500 or 6,500 euros is currently being offered on the only model in the range so far, the Polestar 2 mid-size sedan.

“While competitors are lowering prices regardless of the value of used cars, we have not changed our position. We remain at the top of the electric vehicle market and are excited to fill the gap left by others,” says Ingenlath. It is also important to satisfy business customers. The Polestar boss said this against the background that Tesla has recently lost important fleet customers – also because the price cuts are affecting the residual value of the electric cars sold.

In addition to the Polestar 2, the Polestar 4 SUV has been on sale for a few weeks now, with the first units going to customers in China in the fourth quarter of 2023. Three more models should follow: the Polestar 3 large SUV, the Polestar 5 large sedan and the roadster. Polestar 6.

Product plans remain

“We still have to spend a lot of money on our product portfolio, which applies to 2024 and 2025. Because it’s a big effort to expand from one supplier with one product to three and then five by 2026,” said Ingenlath. He emphasized that the company will not deviate from these product plans.

In 2023, Polestar increased its 2022 results by six percent with 54,600 deliveries. In fact, around 80,000 cars were supposed to be sold last year. With weak sales figures, a workforce reduction of 15 percent or 450 employees was announced.

Polestar is currently adjusting from the start of expansion to the company’s second phase, where efficiency is more important, said Ingenlath. HE DOES. In the future, he can continue to rely on technical support from Geely and Volvo, but the latter company will no longer provide capital. Volvo announced in February that it wants to sell a stake in Polestar. The focus is on our own transformation into a pure electric car manufacturer.