Polestar has started production of its Polestar 3 SUV at the Volvo plant in Ridgeville, South Carolina.
The company says the Polestar 3 will be built at the South Carolina plant alongside Volvo’s EX90 electric SUV, sharing the same SPA2 platform and battery pack, supplied by CATL. The company says that to produce the Polestar 3 at Ridgeville it has ‘leveraged its asset-light’ approach to manufacturing, this allows Polestar to utilise partner companies’ production infrastructure, while the plant has also been adapted to meet some specific requirements for the vehicle build.
Building the Polestar 3 in the US allows the company to tap into a strong SUV market and avoid tariffs on vehicles built in China, where Polestar produces vehicles at its production centre in Chengdu and Geely’s Hangzhou Bay facility. Vehicles produced at Ridgeville will also be exported to Europe.
Polestar says it will further expand its production footprint with plans to produce the Polestar 4 in South Korea by 2025. This will be done through a contract manufacturing agreement, initiated last year, with Geely Holding and Renault Korea Motors (RKM), to produce vehicles for the North American and domestic South Korean markets at RKM’s Busan plant.
Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar CEO, said of the agreement: “We’re very happy to take the next step in diversifying our manufacturing footprint together with Geely Holding and Renault Korea Motors, a company that shares our focus on quality and sustainability. With Polestar 3 on-track to start production in Chengdu, China in early 2024 and in South Carolina, USA, in the summer of 2024, we will soon have manufacturing operations in five factories, across three countries, supporting our global growth ambitions.”
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