Author |Zhao try.
It was unveiled in April last year, launched in November, and on January 12 this year, new car deliveries began nationwide. The Polestar 4 is Polestar's most rhythmic car ever.
On January 19, the delivery of Sichuan and Chongqing began.
Polestar's change began when Polestar Technology was founded. Polestar Technology has two major shareholders, the first shareholder is Meizu with a 51% stake, and the second largest shareholder is Polestar Automotive with a 49% stake. It is worth noting that Hubei Xingji Era, controlled by Li Shufu, chairman of Geely Holdings, holds Meizu 7909% of the shares, that is, the actual control of Polestar passed into the hands of Li Shufu.
Previously, Polestar was controlled by Polestar China, a 100% owned company owned by Polestar Automotive, a Singapore-based company whose largest shareholder is Sweden's Polestar Holding AB.
From Polestar (China) to Polestar Technology, what has Polestar experienced in the intervening period?
Lost in self-confidence, Polestar suffered a "Waterloo".
As the "chosen son" of Volvo Car Group and Geely Holding Group, Polestar originally held a good hand. Polestar, formerly the high-performance division of Volvo, has been promoted to become a global high-performance electric vehicle brand. Headquartered in Gothenburg, Sweden, Polestar has synergies that are unmatched by new local players, including two global R&D centers (Sweden and the UK) and two multinational production bases in China and the United States.
Polestar's headquarters in Sweden.
In addition, Polestar is the only independent electric car brand in Europe, and its status is as high as that of Tesla in the United States. The concept of "all-European electric seedling" also helped Polestar get on the NASDAQ in June 2022. However, according to Jiemian News, on January 18, Sweden's Nordic Bank (SEB), the main adviser of Volvo when it went public, directly lowered the valuation of Polestar from 18 billion kronor to 0 kroner, and SEB Bank does not believe that Polestar can be profitable before 2025.
Polestar entered China in 2017, when China's electric vehicle market had not yet opened, Tesla had not yet built a factory in China, "Wei Xiaoli" was still busy preparing products, traditional luxury brands were still in the wait-and-see period, and domestic electric vehicles were still in the stage of "oil to electricity", so there was no time to take care of the high-end electric vehicle market.
However, Polestar's good hand was played to a pulp, and the Polestar 1, which cost as much as 1.45 million yuan, announced the discontinuation of production after three years on the market, and became the decoration of the once famous Polestar Chengdu factory built by Polestar 1. From 2019 to 2020, Polestar did not launch a new car for two consecutive years, and finally the Polestar 2 was launched in 2021, ** also entered the 30-350,000 range, but it encountered a series of incidents such as dealers** thunderstorms and backstabbing old users, and the Polestar 3 launched in 2022 has not yet started to be delivered, and it is said that it will be delivered within this year.
"Infighting" is also an important reason for Polestar's rise to the street, with five changes of China CEO in five years, according to a person familiar with the matter, each CEO has his own ideas, but in the end they are all controlled by the outside party (Polestar Automotive). The long-term chaos has turned Polestar into a "three-no" person with no brand, no reputation, and no sales. By the end of 2023, Polestar has sold 150,000 units worldwide, but Polestar has never announced sales in China, and it is reported that Polestar only sold 1,100 units in China last year.
Reopening the Chinese market, Polestar is busy making up for classes
Polestar, who was so self-confident, gave up its best fighter jet, and by the time Polestar came to its senses, the domestic new energy vehicle market had undergone earth-shaking changes. In 2023, the penetration rate of new energy will exceed 35%, and domestic new energy brands will hold more than 8% of the new energy market of 100,000-500,000. ICT, represented by Huawei, has become another new force, with electric vehicles entering the smart electric vehicle track, and major car companies rolling cockpit chips, semiconductors, operating systems, and high-end driving assistance. Down-coil electric drive assembly, 800V high-voltage fast charging, battery chassis integration; After last year's uninterrupted war, the original 30w+ high-end electric vehicles dropped to about 250,000. Even Musk said, "Chinese auto companies are the most competitive, and if there are no ** barriers, Chinese automakers will 'kill' most other car companies in the world".
The complex and brutal competition in the market has undoubtedly made it more difficult for Polestar to turn around, although Polestar Technology** will significantly improve Polestar's local combat capabilities.
Shen Ziyu, chairman and CEO of Polestar Technology, was "hand-picked" by Li Shufu, a graduate of Shanghai Jiaotong University and a software engineer who has led a number of companies, including ECARX, SiEngine and Meizu Group. The "combination of two stars" will make up for Polestar's shortcomings in the in-vehicle system and in-vehicle ecosystem. Shen Ziyu said at the previous "Star Picking Night" that "Polestar will be the ceiling of human-computer interaction for global tram brands". However, the Meizu Flyme Auto platform is not exclusive to Polestar, but is shared with Geely's Zeekr, Lynk & Co and other brands.
At the "Night of the Stars", Polestar also unveiled a package: in terms of new cars, Polestar will maintain the rhythm of launching one new car every year for the next three years, the first model is the Polestar 4; In terms of channels, up to now, 55 Polestar spaces have been built nationwide, and it is planned to increase to 120 by the end of 2024, including three types: Polestar brand center stores, brand space stores, and brand experience centers. In terms of energy replenishment, Polestar plans to complete 60 self-built charging piles in the first quarter of this year, and access more than 550,000 charging pile resources, covering 331 prefecture-level cities, with a city coverage rate of 98%. In addition, Polestar has entered into a partnership with Tesla to share the supercharging network; In terms of after-sales service, Polestar will establish its own after-sales service centers in core cities to provide one-to-one exclusive "Proxima Centauri" services, and continue to cooperate with Volvo Cars, and by the end of 2024, there will be 100 Volvo Cars after-sales service centers in more than 72 cities to serve Polestar owners.
It is worth mentioning that at the beginning of January this year, Chen Siying became the COO of Polestar Technology, and Chen Siying, the "point general", firstly, valued him for Lynk & Co and had experience in high-end brand operation; The second is because he has worked in BAIC and Qoros, and has experience as a "fire captain". "The three fires of the new official taking office" depends on how Chen Siying burns these three fires in terms of brand, sales, and market confidence.
Polestar 4, Polestar's lifesaver
Whether Polestar can get out of the "1,000-car cycle" depends on the Polestar 4. The Polestar4 enters the fastest-growing SUV market of 300,000 to 500,000 units, with a price range of 2999-39.990,000, counting equity, the lowest ** has fallen to 280,000.
The Polestar4 has four main selling points, in addition to the Nordic minimalist design, the environmentally friendly and safe cockpit, and the new Polestar OS operating system developed based on the Flyme Auto platform (autonomous driving is provided by Mobileye), the highest performance is still its biggest support, including: the rear motor is equipped with a silicon carbide inverter as standard, and the four-wheel drive 000 acceleration 38 seconds; ZF's second-generation One-Box brake-by-wire, Brembo four-piston calipers, large ventilated brake discs, Pirelli PZ5 high-performance tyres, a 100km H-0 braking distance of 34 meters, and a 1. for better cornering performance49g transient lateral acceleration. According to Polestar, it took the Polestar Engineered team 586 days to find the optimal chassis tuning for the Polestar 4. There is no doubt about that.
But the Polestar4 faces many opponents visible to the naked eye, Wenjie, Ideal, Xpeng, NIO, AVATAR, and Zhiji all have corresponding models, and the 532 is larger in size than it, all equipped with urban navigation systems, and the fancy configuration is more than it and the first is cheaper than it. Moreover, this year's ** war is better than last year, as many as 20 models with price reductions in January, ideal for guaranteed quantity, ideal L7 drop 50,000, L8 "dark box" discount has reached 60,000.
Whether the Polestar 4 will become a "can't buy" series is a big question mark. The high-performance card has been difficult to play in the Chinese market since ancient times, and it was not until the launch of the 220,000 Zhiji LS6 that it had a little sense of existence.
Finally, let's talk about it
Whether Polestar will become an "outcast" depends on whether it can bring confidence to investors, and to put it bluntly, whether it can achieve good growth in sales. In fact, since Geely launched ZEEKR, Polestar's position has been in jeopardy, and ZEEKR is aiming for an IPO, with a cumulative sales of 11 in 202380,000 units, ZEEKR 001 has been sold to Europe, this year's ZEEKR target is 230,000 units, Geely Group will tilt resources to whom, who sees, who knows.
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