Polestar to declare full climate impact details from its EVs

'Car manufacturers have not been clear in the past with consumers on the environmental impact of their products,' says Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar CEO. 'That’s not good enough. We need to be honest, even if it makes for uncomfortable reading.'

Polestar, the erstwhile performance arm of Volvo, which is now the high-performance EV brand of the Swedish carmaker, has made a bold and rather honest announcement. With the debut of its second model, the upcoming Polestar 2, the company will declare the full details of an EV's climate impact from the time of its production. This will be done for every Polestar model in the future with the objective of being the most transparent electric vehicle manufacturer in the world. What’s more, Polestar’s complete lifecycle assessment will even show an estimation of a car’s total climate impact over its predicted life cycle.

With this initiative, Polestar aims to provide answers to prospective customers who have understandably questioned the environmental friendliness of EVs while looking at the bigger picture of owning and running an electric car. This will undoubtedly shake up things for EVs, as it will increase the accountability of every EV manufacturer.

'Car manufacturers have not been clear in the past with consumers on the environmental impact of their products. That’s not good enough. We need to be honest, even if it makes for uncomfortable reading,' said, the CEO of Polestar, Thomas Ingenlath.

Polestar has done its own calculations about the environmental impact for its new Polestar 2 model and has declared that every unit of the Polestar 2 leaves the factory with a 26-tonne carbon footprint. This is significantly more than for an ICE model, states Volvo. Polestar states that this is a result of the energy-intensive battery production process.

However, once the Polestar 2 reaches the hands of a customer, if it is charged with 'green energy', its environmental impact is negligible. In an ideal world, it would take a Volvo XC40 petrol 50,000 kilometres of driving to surpass the Polestar 2’s carbon footprint.

This, however, is in theory, in reality, it’s worth noting that a major portion of the world’s electricity comes from fossil-fuelled thermal power plants. So, in this case, charging a Polestar 2 with electricity generated by fossil fuel will result in a far greater carbon footprint depending on which part of the world we are talking about and will consequently widen the gap for an ICE powered car’s carbon footprint to catch up with that of an EV.

'Fragmentation will only lead to confusion. Car manufacturers have to come together and be more transparent,' says Fredrika Klarén, Head of Sustainability at Polestar. 'What we’re saying at Polestar is, as an industry, let’s help consumers make the right choice.'

Also read - All-electric Polestar 2 breaks cover

Volvo rebrands Polestar as an electrified performance car maker