Polestar’s fourth Annual Sustainability report announces significant GHG reductions, updates on the Polestar 0 project and a continued quest for increased transparency and more sustainable materials.
Since the company started measuring in 2020, Polestar has reduced its carbon footprint per sold car with a quarter (24.7%). The most significant contributing factors to this achievement include an increased use of low-carbon aluminium in all models, improvements in battery manufacturing, 100% renewable electricity in the manufacture of all models and more efficient logistics combined with increased use of biofuels on certain ocean routes.
Michael Lohscheller, Polestar CEO, said: “Polestar has shown that it is possible to decouple growth from climate impact. In simple terms, we aim to continue to cut emissions as we accelerate sales. Even though much in the world seems to be going in the wrong direction, we are doubling down on our commitments. When the world zigs, Polestar zags.”
The Polestar 0 project was launched in 2021, as a moonshot goal to create a climate neutral car, aimed at galvanising a sense of urgency and accelerating collaborative research, supporting Polestar’s goal of becoming climate neutral by 2040. Today, the project partners and Polestar are proud to announce that across the companies’ combined initiatives, important low carbon solutions have been identified, showing the potential to produce a Polestar 2 with a 10 tonnes lower carbon footprint than when the project started.
The largest contributions are within aluminium and steel manufacturing, key materials for decarbonisation as they represent around 45% of the total cradle-to gate carbon footprint of Polestar 2. Moving into its next stage, the structure of the Polestar 0 project will shift, with areas that require further research serving as input to the Mission 0 House, a Polestar-initiated but collaboratively driven and funded research centre.
Located in Gothenburg, the research hub hosts scientists from academia and engineers from industry, who work side by side, towards elimination of GHG emissions in materials, products and processes. As a key principle, the ambition is to consider commercialisation of future potential solutions developed by the Mission 0 House.
Circularity, Inclusion and Transparency remain key areas. Polestar joined the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance (IRMA) and continued the expansion of onsite audits in high-risk regions. Traceability of risk materials was expanded to include the mapping of manganese, among others. Polestar continues its efforts to increase both data availability and share of recycled content from car programs to model year upgrades and Polestar 4 now contains 10% recycled material.
Polestar global retail sales volumes amounted to an estimated 12,304 cars in Q1 2025, up 76% versus Q1 2024 and were stable versus Q4 2024, against a challenging economic environment. Sales are supported by a growing uptake of newer models and the ongoing transition to an active selling model.
[source: Polestar]
