Volvo's Polestar Division Working On Hotted-Up Plug-In Hybrids

Last year, Volvo bought the tuning arm of Polestar. The company was known for racing Volvos and developing performance parts. At the time of the purchase, Volvo hinted that the next-generation of Polestar vehicles “will utilize Volvo’s twin engine electrification technology”. Since then, we haven't heard much of what Polestar is cooking up, aside from building tweaked versions of the S60 and V60.

“I think even if Volvo stands for safety and design, why can’t you have a high-performance version still? And we have done that,” said Volvo Cars CEO Hakan Samuelsson to CarAdvice.

“But of course if we’re going to invest in that and have that as a concept more-or-less on all of our cars – Polestar as top of the line – we want to own that brand as well, that’s why we bought it.”

Samuelsson reiterated that future Polestar models would take advantage of plug-in hybrid system used in the XC90.

“It will be high performance developed on electrification, we will use electrification as a booster, we will not start diluting our brand with big engines and extra cylinders, V8s. The combustion unit will be Volvo but we will use electrifications to create a modern high-performance car.”

What will be the first vehicle to get a Polestar tuned Plug-In Hybrid powertrain?

CarAdvice speculates that the recently introduced S90 and soon to be shown V90 will the be first models to get the Polestar treatment. After that, it is anyone's guess. But Samuelsson does hint not all of Volvo vehicles will get a Polestar variant.

“We can use it where there is a market or interest for that, probably not every model, but models that are suited to a high-performance variant”