► New CEO calls for more design confidence
► Michael Lohscheller on his design mission
► ‘We don’t want too much understatement’
With a new CEO and design chief installed at Polestar late last year, it should come as no surprise that a new styling manual is being written in Gothenburg – and the chief has told CAR that he wants to inject more swagger into his Swedish EVs’ fashion sense.
The new chief executive of Polestar, Michael Lohscheller, took the reins on 1 October and has already challenged the design team to make the range more noticeable. ‘The brief I gave Philipp Römers, our new design chief, is that what Polestar has done in the past, I think is really, really good. I want to highlight the performance element even more because that’s where the Polestar brand is coming from.
‘And I also want to also show it in a more confident way, if that makes sense to you. That doesn’t necessarily mean more colours. More paint choice drives complexity. But you know what? Polestar is sometimes a bit too modest, a bit too humble. In several markets, like in Scandinavia, this works but I would like a little bit more confidence.’
Lohscheller (above) joins Polestar after a career working in senior financial roles at Opel, Volkswagen and Mitsubishi.
How Polestar design DNA is changing
This is not a major overhaul, more a development of a successful wardrobe, Lohscheller said in one of his first interviews since becoming CEO. ‘I would say: don’t expect a big radical change. That will not happen, but it’s a continuation of things… I want a bit more confidence, but I also want to highlight this performance element more, because cars like the Polestar 3 really is an SUV as a sports car.
‘We have to work on that. It’s a fine line. Too much understatement is too much. In the US the Americans don’t like too much understatement.’
With development work pretty much complete on the Polestar 5 and Polestar 6 – the next two models in the pipeline, both of which have already been shown as concepts (above) – it looks like the job of signalling to the world the future Polestar design DNA will fall to the Polestar 7, a compact electric crossover expected in 2027 or 2028.
Who is the new design chief of Polestar?
Philipp Römers replaced Maximilian Missoni in summer 2024. He has worked in automotive design for more than 25 years and was previously Audi’s head of exterior design. His CV numbers some of Ingolstadt’s recent EVs such as the A6 e-Tron and Q6 e-Tron, as well as the seventh-generation Golf in his time at Volkswagen.