Polestar Precept EV May Be Built in New Geely Plant in China
26 Oct 2020, 21:51 UTC ·
by
Mircea Panait
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Presented in February to much critical acclaim from the automotive and tech media alike, the Precept Concept received the go-ahead for series production seven months later. The problem is, the Sino-Swedish brand doesn’t have an assembly plant for it.
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According to sources cited by Automotive News, a “state-of-the-art production facility” is planned in the People’s Republic of China, but no concrete details were given about the location or when it will be up and running. Those sources and local media report Chongqing as the most likely site for the assembly plant.
Owned and operated by the Geely Group – which owns Polestar and sister brand Volvo – the future plant is expected to churn out about 30,000 electric vehicles per year at maximum capacity. At the present moment, the 1 plug-in hybrid coupe is built in Chengdu in the west while the 2 all-electric fastback is made in Taizhou in the east.
“China is the home market for Polestar and we recognize the increasingly important drive for greater sustainability here,” declared chief executive officer Thomas Ingenlath, speaking at the Beijing International Automotive Exhibition 2020. “With this new factory, we will again raise the bar, aiming to produce the most advanced and premium electric car in China with the lowest carbon footprint.” That’s a pretty boastful promise, more so if you remember the 2's underwhelming range.
As a brief refresher, the Environmental Protection Agency couldn’t award the five-door liftback more than 233 miles between charges. To make matters worse for the first proper competitor of the Model 3, the Palo Alto-based automaker offers 263 miles for the rear-wheel-drive Standard Range Plus and 353 miles for the all-wheel-drive Long Range. In other words, Polestar can’t challenge Tesla on equal footing.
Turning our attention back to the Precept Concept, care to guess what the Sino-Swedish automaker had to say about what’s hiding under the body shell? Absolutely nothing except for a “large battery pack” that fits within a 122.4-inch wheelbase (3.1 meters). In other words, Polestar probably hasn’t decided on the powertrain just yet.
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