Polestar: sustainability sells cars

Do luxury car buyers care about sustainability? Polestar thinks so and the brands Australian managing director Scott Maynard thinks that an increasing number of its potential customers will extend their focus beyond the tailpipe and onto the entire lifecycle of the car.

While Polestar sales only improved fractionally in the first half of 2026, Maynard says there were extenuating circumstances and the brand is positioned strongly for continued growth in the years ahead.

Polestar is one of the few companies that publishes ‘cradle-to-gate’ emissions data on its vehicles. That is, the emissions produced by a vehicle over an eight-year/200,000km lifespan including its production and scrappage.

“More and more, the Australian new car buyer is becoming more interested in their general climate impact…and they are appreciating a brand that takes quite genuine steps to reduce it,” Polestar Australia managing director Scott Maynard told carsales.

“It’s also being influenced by corporate purchases as well…and for a corporate business to want to reduce their carbon output, they need evidence-based information that suggests we’re not greenwashing.”

In 2020 the brand set a goal of reducing the average lifespan emissions of its vehicles to 36.2 tonnes of CO2 yet soundly beat that by achieving 31.7.

Measures taken include manufacturing factories and battery cell production powered by 100 per cent renewable energy, batteries made with 50 per cent recycled cobalt and recycled textiles.

Decarbonisation measures, including using renewable energy in the aluminium smelters and battery supply chain and using recycled aluminium, reduce the lifecycle CO2 emissions of a Polestar 3 from 33.9 tonnes to 25.9 tonnes, or 24.5 in the case of the rear motor version.

Polestar’s 2030 goal is a vehicle average of 22.5 tonnes, reducing to 4.6 tonnes by 2040.

Maynard had previously told carsales that Polestar, like many EV brands, had enjoyed a surge in orders during the fuel crisis earlier in 2026, but its H1 2026 numbers of 1202 sales – an increase of 2.5 per cent over H1 2025 – seemed not to bear this out.

The devil, apparently, is in the detail.

“We saw a massive surge in that March number, and I think for quite a few brands, ours included, that robbed a little bit out of the normal June activity,” explains Maynard.

“Two of the things that slow our number in comparison to last year, we were running out the previous model year of Polestar 2 and we were doing it on a super aggressive price point.

“We’ve now got MY27 Polestar 2, which we’re not discounting in the same way, and we’ve also worked hard to run-out all of our previous model year Polestar 3 stock, and we did that so effectively that we left ourselves short for almost the first half of the year.

“So to achieve the result we have, with minimal Polestar 2 and almost no Polestar 3 [stock], we’re actually really proud of that.”

The figures bear this out, with 902 of those 1202 sales being the Polestar 4.

That discounting isn’t set to continue, Maynard saying: “Some of the efforts that we’ve applied previously to sell stock or to be competitive, we’re feeling less compelled to pursue.”

Residuals for premium EVs have been punishing for most brands thanks to low demand and the rapid evolution of technology.

Polestar CEO Michael Lohscheller described the upgrades to the facelifted Polestar 3 as “so extensive, it’s like an entirely new car” but Maynard says that Polestar’s decision to keep the exterior styling almost untouched will prevent buyers from feeling like their car is out of date.

Remarkably, Polestar is also offering all existing 3 owners a complimentary upgrade to the new NVIDIA Orin processor from the facelifted model, which has more than eight times the processing power and future-proofs the car in terms of receiving over-the-air updates.

The launch of the updated Polestar 3 is the first wave of a large set of new vehicles from the brand over the next two years. By the end of the year the Polestar 5 flagship sedan and Polestar 4 SUV – the latter wrapping the existing mechanicals in a more traditional bodyshape – will arrive, joined by an all-new Polestar 2 in 2027 and a range-opening Polestar 7 small SUV in 2028.

“Polestar 7 will sit in one of the largest, most exciting, hottest parts of the market, which is just so popular here,” said Maynard.

“It’s still going to sit at the high end of the market, but by its very nature we expect it to be our best-selling product,” he added, the compact SUV also likely to be it’s most affordable product.

As one of Australia’s few all-EV brands, Polestar is also well-placed to open up a new revenue stream by selling the credits it receives under the New Vehicle Efficiency Standard (NVES) to brands who are struggling to meet the mandated targets.

“We’ll have those discussions, we’ll sell our credits and we’ll take their cash,” said Maynard.

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