The Polestar 1 Is Coming To The UK, But In Left-Hand Drive Only
Polestar has confirmed that the ‘1’ hybrid coupe won’t be built in right-hand drive, after early demand from countries like the UK failed to meet the necessary levels.
The company’s dealers will still sell the car here on the much-talked-about subscription service, but they will be completely Europe-spec vehicles with the steering wheel on the left. On top of the extra wait on these shores, that could be a deal-breaker for executives who don’t really want the inevitable hassle when it comes to toll booths and automated car parks.
Polestar is willing to sacrifice sales in this country, and others that use right-hand drive, in order to maximise potential profits from European and American nations with larger combined populations and much greater overall levels of interest.
The extra expense of re-engineering the car for right-hand drive would reportedly dent the project’s overall profitability because sales in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Japan and other left-side-driving nations wouldn’t be high enough.
For anyone who absolutely insists they have to buy one outright, the Polestar 1 is expected to be around €130,000 (around £115,000), but Polestar will aim to offer the car solely on its all-inclusive leasing programme.
The 592bhp hybrid, based around a turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine, will be built in China and exported around the world. It will be followed by a smaller saloon called the Polestar 2 and then a Polestar 3, which will be a large SUV (of course).
Source: Auto Express
EDIT: We received a Tweet from Duncan Forrester, Polestar’s head of PR and communications, who said that demand in the UK was high but that build volumes will be low, and the technical demands of building a right-hand drive version prohibit the changes.
To us that means it would either cost too much for the amount of cars that will make it to right-hand drive markets, or would be impossible for packaging reasons. Either way, it’s unlucky for British ‘buyers’!
Comments
Right hooker? Welp, that’s interesting
Common British slang for right-hand drive. :)
Polestar 1: Caveman Edition
triggered
RHD - because jousting had you keep left and hit the opponent on the right
LHD - because driving/riding an ox wagon had the rider sit back left to have the whip in the right hand over the oxen
Years later.. what is wrong and what is right?
Motorcycles have the side stand on the left which favours driving on the left side of the road
But the majority of cars (including said above) have steering wheels on the left (like the ox cart)
The debate continues…
LHD or RHD???
LHD for more corners to the left and overtakes on the right.
At least its still coming
Why not have it in the middle. It’s not like it will be complicated……
Like the McLaren F1
Don’t quote me on this, because it could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure it is illegal to sell new cars with the steering wheel in the middle in the US
But at least it has”592bhp hybrid, based around a turbocharged 2.0-litre four-cylinder engine.”
Well at least you get to have new cars with the steering wheel on the “wrong side”: in Canada you have to wait 15 years, but in Quebec they had to be dumbasses and make local dealers with their overpriced cars without opponents: you can buy a RHD car after 15 years (any car which is not from Canada or United States has to be minimum 15 years old, which is utterly stupid), but you can’t put a plate on it if it’s under 25 years old.
Their reasons? “You have 30% more chance to get an accident”, except that apparently, as soon as you cross the border to Ontario, it’s apparently less dangerous because they don’t have that dumbass law. And if it would be really more dangerous, they’d ban RHD cars alltogether, but it’s not the case. That’s what happens when your gouvernment is more busy dealing with lobbyists than getting actual regulation that makes sense. That means I can buy a car, but I’d have to wait 10 years to plate it. It’s ridiculous.
Oh, and for the 15 years, it’s as stupid. It’s from federal level, and that would be because imported cars (even LHD, but EDM) would “not comply to Canadian legislations”, but when you read the law, you see that even if you modify the car so that it would comply with Canadian legislations (daytime running lights, etc), it would still be illegal. Again, only because local car dealers don’t want competition to keep their prices as high as possible. So yeah, that would mean I have to wait until 2030 to get a simple GTI Clubsport.
(Yes I know it’s 25 years for you US boys, but at least it’s 25 years everywhere, not just in CA or in AZ)
I’ve never heard of this problem, i live in Alberta and know a few people with RHD vehicles less than 15 years old…
What I see it is that the RHD cars you usually get are Japanese sports/perforamnce cars. Performance cars have a higher rate of crashing as careless drives would be more prone to drive fast in them. If they are basing their point only on local statistics, it’s incredibly biased.
Want
anyone arguing that vehicles should be right hand drive (being the minority) should drop the whole getting America to convert to metric thing
Minority? 35% of countries are right hand drive and many of them are quite rich. At last check, 40%+ of cars sold worldwide were Right Hand Drive. That’s not merely “a minority”. That’s a gigantic international market. The UK is one of the single most popular markets in the EU for sports and luxury cars, for example.
we stink at using metric, you stink at driving on the correct side of the road. In the end it evens out.