Volvo, Polestar tech rivalry starts to take shape

Volvo subsidiary Polestar continues to show it's not afraid to step out of its parent's shadow.

The latest instance came this week when the two Geely-owned, Sweden-based automakers issued dueling press releases to announce the infotainment systems in their news cars would start to be upgraded this month via over-the-air (OTA) updates to a newer version of Android Automotive OS, Android 11.

Polestar started offering OTA updates in December 2020 and since then has made 10 significant upgrades to the system, the company said.

Volvo started after Polestar, in late January 2021, by which time its friendly rival had already rolled out two big upgrades.

Volvo is now up to eight major upgrades in total, leaving it two behind Polestar.

Volvo said its upgrade will reach more than 190,000 cars from the brand across the global and highlighted that this week it added Australia, Hong Kong, India, South Korea, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand to the list of countries where OTA updates are available.

Polestar, which celebrates its fifth year as a stand-alone brand in 2022, deployed 40,000 upgrades to its growing fleet of cars by the middle of this week, reaching 19 global markets including Germany, the UK, the U.S. and China.

The other ways Polestar separates itself from Volvo in this arena is by offering an 11-inch infotainment screen to Volvo's 9-inch screen and by including unique apps such as the Polestar Video Player.

Daring to be different from Volvo comes from the top -- something Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath has made clear for years.

A key signal of this came in late 2020 when Polestar announced it would turn the Precept full-electric GT concept into a production model, which we now know as the Polestar 5.

"With the Polestar Precept nobody will ask me anymore, 'Will you always stay that close to Volvo'?" Ingenlath told Automotive News Europe at the time. "It's so clear that that is a car that you would not have within the Volvo brand."

Ingenlath should know. His fingerprints are still all over Volvo's current lineup, which he helped create as the brand's head of design. Even after being named Polestar CEO in 2017, Ingenlath continues as the overall design supremo for both brands.

Ingenlath recently told ANE the forthcoming Polestar 3 will provide another indication that the brand's design will stand apart from Volvo's even though both cars will share the SPA2 underpinnings.

The Polestar 3 will have "a more daring design" than its Volvo sibling, Ingenlath said, adding "there will be a more polarizing, more exclusive element to a Polestar."

Further evidence of Polestar's desire to stand apart from Volvo is that it will underpin the Polestar 5, which will rival the Tesla Model S and Porsche Taycan, with an in-house developed bonded-aluminum platform.

"This is going to be our first opportunity to design from a clean sheet of paper what the signature Polestar driving experience will be," Steve Swift, who is head of vehicle engineering for Polestar's R&D center in Coventry, central England, told ANE in February.