Polestar has posted another quarter of weakened sales, as the electric vehicle (EV) brand battles delays and low demand.
Polestar announced it had delivered “approximately” 13,000 vehicles globally throughout the second quarter of 2024 (April to June), without detailing an exact number.
While the carmaker hailed this result as an 80 per cent improvement on the 7200 cars delivered in the first quarter (January to March), it represents a drop of at least 17.5 per cent on the 15,765 deliveries it made across the same period last year.
It’s also the third successive quarter where its year-on-year deliveries haven’t improved, having delivered approximately 12,800 vehicles in the final three months of 2023 – a significant 39 per cent drop on its record Q4 2022 result.
Year-to-date, Polestar has delivered about 20,200 EVs worldwide.
For context, Tesla has sold more cars in Australia alone across the same period, notching up 23,116 sales locally from January to June.
While its global lineup has been effectively limited to the Polestar 2 liftback, the larger Polestar 3 and 4 SUVs are slowly rolling into overseas driveways.
Polestar’s pain continues in Australia, where it sold 950 vehicles in the first half of 2024. That’s down 17.2 per cent on the opening six months of 2023, despite the EV market growing by 16.5 per cent to 50,219 sales.
The EV maker’s first-half sales add to its troublesome 2024.
In January, Polestar said it would retrench 450 staff, about 15 per cent of its workforce, in a bid to reduce external spending and edge closer to breaking even. Polestar today confirmed these job cuts have been completed.
In February, former parent company Volvo offloaded a 30 per cent stake in Polestar to its own parent company, Chinese car giant Geely, which it valued at 9.5 billion Swedish krona (A$1.4 billion).
While Polestar secured US$950 million (A$1.46 billion) in funding from a syndicate of 12 global banks in late February, the investment didn’t reach the US$1.3 billion (A$2bn) in external funding Polestar previously said it would need to break even in 2025.
The carmaker had also originally intended to start Australian-bound, Chinese production of the Polestar 3 in the fourth quarter of 2023 (October to December), though this was subsequently delayed to February 2024.
As such, its Australian arrival was delayed from early 2024 to June and now late August, though it’s still expected to touch down before the Polestar 4 in October.
A mildly refreshed Polestar 2 is due in Australian showrooms late in the third quarter or in the early fourth quarter of 2024.
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