پroduction of Polestar 2 ends, successor due next year

Polestar has built the final example of its first series-production car, the 2 fastback, after six years and around 200,000 sales. Production of the seminal EV has come to an end at Polestar's Luqiao factory in eastern China, several months before its successor is due to arrive on the market. Polestar UK is still offering all variants of the 2, and Autocar understands the company has enough stock to meet demand until the arrival of the launch of the second-generation model - expected in the first few months of 2027. As of February this year, Polestar had sold more than 190,000 examples of the 2 globally since it hit the market in mid-2020 - some 40,000 of those in the UK, the company's biggest market. It's second in the sales charts to the newer Polestar 4 crossover now but still accounts for more than a third of the company's UK sales so far this year. Its successor will play a crucial role in Polestar’s bid to hit 100,000 annual sales by the end of the decade, up from 60,000 in 2025. Polestar has previewed a sleek new look for the new 2, which will be slightly longer than today's 4.6m car, and more overtly targeted at younger buyers, as Polestar seeks to diversify its target market - citing an average age of 45 across its current customer base. CEO Michael Lohscheller told Autocar recently that the new 2 will 'keep all the great things' about the outgoing fastback while adding 'a few things the current 2 doesn't address in the most optimal way'. It will continue to be built in China, but Polestar hasn't confirmed whether the next car will retain Geely's Compact Modular Architecture (CMA). Shared with the Volvo XC40, CMA is a flexible platform that can accommodate ICE, hybrid and electric powertrains. The 4 meanwhile sits on Geely's EV-native Sustainable Experience Architecture. The new 2 will be the first production car designed by Philipp Römers, who joined Polestar early last year as the replacement for Max Missoni, who shaped the brand's current line-up. Römers will give clues to the look of the new 2 – and the forthcoming Polestar 7 crossover – in the coming weeks with a bold concept car called the Formula 2030 (below), which will showcase a 'bold evolution' of the Swedish brand's design language. Early details suggest that Römers will preserve a broadly minimalist and subtle treatment for future Polestar cars, while introducing lower, wider stances and more obviously aerodynamically influenced silhouettes. His refresh of Polestar's design is expected to be evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, and the next 2 is expected to be a visually obvious successor to the current car. 'It would be bad to do a design revolution, because the brand is so young,' Römers told Autocar recently. 'I don’t want to make a revolution. I want to do a bold evolution built on our values. That’s a big challenge, no question. Our brand awareness is still growing, so we have to build on our existing design language.' It is likely that Polestar will emphasise the 2's saloon-like billing for its next outing, to differentiate it more obviously from the Coupe and SUV versions of the 4, which has a similar footprint. When the 2 was launched in 2020, its closest comparable rival was the Tesla Model 3, but the mid-sized executive EV segment has ballooned in recent years and the Mk2 will contend with a broad spread of competitors from both legacy brands and Chinese newcomers - including the new BMW i3, Mercedes-Benz C-Class Electric, Hyundai Ioniq 6 and BYD Seal.