Polestar’s well-received Precept concept is making the transition from a design study to a production model. Now called 5, the electric four-door fastback will ride on a new architecture made largely out of bonded aluminum that the Swedish company developed in-house.
Designing a platform from scratch is a surprising move for the firm; it’s owned by China-based Geely, which has numerous architectures in its global portfolio, and one of its sister companies is Volvo, which sells several large sedans and SUVs. And yet, Polestar started from a blank sheet of paper. It explained that taking this route will help its engineers keep overall weight in check and expedite the sedan’s arrival.
Bonded aluminum promises to make the 5 lighter than some smaller cars, according to Polestar, while giving it more torsional rigidity than two-door sports cars and supercars. Both of these attributes are important: less weight means better handling and, for an electric car, better driving range while increased rigidity should make the fastback feel tighter around a turn. Polestar’s goal is to develop a true sport sedan.
Engineers at Polestar’s research and development center in England had to develop a new manufacturing process to ensure that the 5 can be built relatively quickly and without quality-related issues in spite of its bonded aluminum architecture. We’re told that the production-bound model will look a lot like the concept that previewed it, though we already know that some changes were inevitably made. Photos of a prototype published in September 2021 notably reveal that the suicide rear doors have been replaced by front-hinged units, for example.
Polestar plans to launch the 5 in 2024, meaning we might not see it on our shores until the 2025 model year. Until then, the company’s range will grow with the addition of two crossovers called 3 and 4, respectively. The former will be built in the United States and is scheduled to make its debut before the end of 2022, while the latter will be sportier and smaller. Both will be only offered with an electric drivetrain.
It will be interesting to see what (if anything) Polestar does to offset the presumably high costs of developing this platform. It could use it to underpin other models, but it could also let some of its sister companies build a car on it in order to reap the rewards of economies of scale. There’s no word yet on whether it’s modular enough to underpin, say, a big SUV or a coupe, but we’re hoping to learn more details soon.
Source: www.autoblog.com