- Polestar wants to be more like Porsche or BMW M with its future lineup of EVs.
- Company officials have confirmed the brand’s intention to produce sportier, more performance-focused cars.
- It likely means more attention should be paid to the driving dynamics of all its models, but also that dedicated hot models are coming.
The success of BMW Motorsport and Mercedes-AMG has inspired the creation of other manufacturers’ hot sub-brands, such as Genesis Magma, Hyundai N or Toyota GR, among others. Now, Polestar wants to push more into the performance side of things with its future models, which sound sportier than anything it has produced to date.
According to AutoExpress, which attended an event at Polestar’s headquarters in Sweden this week, the manufacturer really is serious about this new direction and wants to make sporty driving one of the key characteristics of its cars.
“We want to focus a bit more on performance, because that is where we can do even better going forward, on track, on acceleration, but also in terms of being superior to others,” Polestar CEO Michael Lohscheller told a group of journalists, according to the outlet.
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Right now, it’s still unclear exactly what Lohscheller has in store. But regardless of whether it means all Polestar cars will be sportier and better to drive, or that they will spawn dedicated performance variants, it’s good news for drivers who care about that sort of thing.
Polestar, which spun out of Volvo in 2017 as an EV-focused brand and is owned by China’s Geely Group, already has a moniker for its spiced-up, track-focused performance variants: BST, an abbreviation for “beast.” So far, it’s only been used on a couple of limited-production models based on the Polestar 2, but we could see more going forward. Polestar showed off the Concept BST back in 2024, an aggressive, track-focused evolution of the Polestar 6 concept.
In late January, Polestar’s Australia CEO strongly hinted to CarSales that more BST-branded performance cars are on the way. “I think we should expect some BST enhancements to more of the range,” he said, stopping short of naming any models that would get the treatment.
The company recently confirmed that the Polestar 2 was getting a direct replacement arriving next year that won’t be a crossover, and I think that would be a prime candidate for a new BST version.
It would be a challenger for the more aggressive M versions of the upcoming BMW i3 or for the AMG variant of the electric Mercedes C-Class. The larger Polestar 5 (coming this year) would also be a good fit for a more hardcore performance model to challenge the supremacy of the Porsche Taycan, which is still the best performance four-door around a track.
So what upgrades should we expect from a Polestar BST? They will likely follow the now familiar formula of lowering and stiffening the suspension, beefing up the brakes, and upgrading the wheels and tires. More power should also be on the menu, although Polestar hasn’t given its only production BST model any additional oomph. But that could and probably will change with the arrival of dedicated performance versions of its models that are more extensively modified.
Polestar is currently in the early stages of rolling out its largest model offensive ever: four new models over the next three years. That could give it the a foundation to do what Mercedes and BMW have been doing for years: offer a hierarchy of increasingly sporty versions of all the models in the lineup, culminating with the most extreme and track-focused one as the range-topper.
The company posted record global sales in 2025 of just over 60,000 units, but it’s largely struggled to find its footing in a stop-and-go environment for electric cars. Maybe more of a focus on performance is the way forward.
