► Single-seater Polestar Synergy concept
► Created by design competition winners
► Announced in parallel with Hot Wheels deal
Why create your own concept cars when someone else can do it for you? Rather than coming directly from the in-house design team, the Polestar Synergy electric car is the result of the firm’s latest design competition. It’s on display as a 1:1 model at the 2023 IAA Munich motor show.
Part Group C racer, part hammerhead shark, the Synergy is an ‘electric fantasy supercar’ that fulfils a brief to ‘design a Polestar vehicle centred around the experience of performance, providing an advanced technical story that enables this in a sustainable way.’
Sounds complicated. Looks fab.
Why Synergy?
Having had over 600 entries into the competition, Polestar whittled them down to a shortlist of 10 before deciding it couldn’t actually pick a single winner. The Synergy is in fact the product of three different student designers’ visions.
Devashish Deshmukh and Swapnil Desai, both based in Paris, combined their exterior concepts to create the striking, swooping look of the Synergy, while Yingxiang Li in China did the interior.
This is notable for being a single-seat layout based around the idea of ‘floating comfort and control’.
What’s really cool about this is these three student designers got to spend six months refining their ideas with the Polestar design team – an experience that much better reflects the reality of modern car design than some genius individual penning the entire thing.
Polestar’s Head of Design, Maximillian Missoni: ‘This year, the story is as much about collaboration as performance. I’m proud that the team were able to guide and support the winners to realising their dream as a full-scale model. It’s not often student designers receive such exposure at the start of their career, something the Polestar Design Community on Instagram does so well, amplified this year by the 1:1 scale model and its planned tour of Polestar locations around the world.’
How fast is the Polestar Synergy supposed to be?
Polestar’s bee remarkably coy about making up performance figures, but since it’s described as an electric supercar, we’re going to go with ‘very’.
What we do know is that the full-scale model stands 1.07m tall and 4.56m long – so it’s certainly compact and purposeful as well as dramatic.
Why is there a go kart in one of the pictures?
That’s another of the competition entries – Kamil Kozik from Poland was highly commended for his sustainability-focused go kart.
This not only takes things back to a minimum, it’s also designed to plug into grid when not in use to provide local power or battery storage.
When can I buy a Polestar Synergy?
You’re expecting us to say ‘never’, aren’t you – go on, admit it? But actually, Polestar’s just signed a deal with Hot Wheels, so there’s a very good chance a 1:64 scale version will be appearing on the pegs of a toy shop near you in the not-too-distant future.
The 1:1 scale Synergy, meanwhile, will go from the IAA to the Hot Wheels Legends Tour in El Segundo, California on 7 October 2023, before making appearances at other Polestar events and locations.