Polestar to preview new look with Formula 2030 concept
Polestar will provide a first look at its new era in October when it unwraps the Formula 2030 concept.
It will be the first car designed from a clean sheet under head of design Philipp Römers, who joined the company in January 2025.
This is particularly notable because, as Römers told Autocar last year, “Polestar is a design-driven company”; former CEO Thomas Ingenlath was a designer and under previous head of design Max Missoni it produced several striking cars.
Polestar said the Formula 2030 represents a “bold evolution” of its look, and it will showcase cues coming to the next-generation 2 – due next year – and the forthcoming 7, a compact SUV coming in 2028.
“Polestar’s design and brand is already so strong, it was obvious we needed a bold evolution,” said Römers.
A preview image released by Polestar hints at a more angular look with sporting cues, with a low, wide-set stance and cambered front wheels. It also appears to have an S-duct – an aerodynamic device that takes air through the front grille and directs it through a large duct in the bonnet to suck the car’s nose down onto the road. Polestar’s familiar ‘blade’ daytime-running lights remain, however.
Speaking to Autocar about his vision for the brand, Römers said: “My first decision is that it would be bad to do a design revolution, because the brand is so young.
“I don’t want to make a revolution. I want to do a bold evolution built on our values. That’s a big challenge, no question. Our brand awareness is still growing, so we have to build on our existing design language.”
He added that he had “the topic of performance in mind”, because its focus on dynamics is “a way to separate us” from sibling brand Volvo.
“The cars have to look super-attractive and should not scare people,” he said. “There’s currently a trend where car makers are designing cars screaming out ‘I’m here’ and we don’t want that. We should not look super-aggressive. Ambitious, but not aggressive. I don’t think that would fit Sweden and we should really look like a Swedish performance brand.”
Polestar is, more broadly, a company in transition. Current CEO Michael Lohscheller was appointed to help turn it from a loss-making start-up into a profitable player. It made a net loss of $842 million (£623m) during the first half of 2026, an improvement of 29% compared with the same period in 2025.
Key to its revised strategy is to hit 100,000 sales per year, up from 60,000 in 2025, by targeting Europe’s mainstream EV segments.
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