In April 2021, Polestar has made a bold statement. The electric vehicle startup was going to create a climate-neutral car. Now Dennis Nobelius, COO of Polestar, tells Reverse it was only half true – they had no idea how to do it.

“We think it’s a moonshot because we don’t know how to do it,” Nobelius says. “And we don’t know if anyone else in the industry knows how to do it.”

According to Nobelius, the company’s goal at the time was to catalyze the automotive industry at all levels, from material suppliers to drivers. It worked. When Polestar made its commitment, General Motors had already announced its intention to be carbon neutral by 2040, but not throughout the supply chain. Mercedes Benz made a similar promise: to be carbon dioxide neutral by 2039, covering “all stages of the automotive value chain”.

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Now Polestar is really aiming to create a climate-neutral car over the next decade. This means designing a car without greenhouse gas emissions – from the factory to the road – by 2030.

“We may be a little naive, but we are totally determined to make it happen,” Nobelius said. Reverse.

Why zero emissions?

Clean transport is an essential part of how world leaders plan to reduce emissions and avert the climate crisis – earlier this month the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said released a 3,675-page report calling for a spike in global greenhouse gas emissions. by 2025.

This peak would allow the world to reach net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050, which, in turn, would allow global average temperatures to remain below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Transportation accounted for 14% of global emissions in 2010 — electric vehicles offer a better way forward. Electric vehicles don’t spit out exhaust, but they’re still not carbon neutral. A 2018 report from the International Council on Clean Transportation found that overall, after 93,000 miles of driving in an electric car, the emissions burden will be about half that created over the same distance by a traditional car. – an improvement, but not quite as green as the EV company’s marketing would say.

The reason for this is largely due to the manufacturing process. The same ICCT report found that in the European Union around half of an electric car‘s emissions come from manufacturing. And about fifty percent of those emissions came from battery production alone.

This could become a more pressing issue later. A 2020 McKinsey report claimed that while materials production accounted for 18% of a car’s lifecycle emissions that year, reductions in other areas could mean manufacturing would account for 60% of car emissions. by 2040. Global emissions could fall thanks to the reduction of non-manufacturing emissions. emissions, but automakers won’t be able to get to zero without addressing manufacturing at some point.

Polestar’s climate-neutral car is a lofty goal, but so far it has proven impossible to make a completely emissions-free car. Yet, as Nobelius explains to Reverse, whether or not the company succeeds in its ambitions is perhaps less important than setting the intention in the first place.

“We believe it could be done, but we don’t know how,” Nobelius said.

Polestar’s Project 0

Dubbed “0 Project”, Polestar first announced it would try to create a climate-neutral car in April 2021.

To date, Polestar isn’t the only automaker wanting to make an emissions-free car. Mercedes-Benz has its 2039 Ambition, which is to build a “fleet of emission-free vehicles”, according to the company’s website – like Polestar, the emissions pledge would apply at all stages of the process supply, manufacture and delivery.

General Motors, for its part, plans to be carbon neutral by 2040, but this refers to its “global product portfolio and owned businesses”. Instead, the company’s press release says it is “working with suppliers to set ambitious supply chain goals to reduce emissions.”

Polestar’s Project 0 is one of the most ambitious plans in the industry – it aims to get the job done this decade, rather than by 2039 or 2040 – and perhaps the most collaborative. Polestar is launching an open call for proposals from industrial partners, academics and inventors to help them achieve their goals. The call for submissions will end in mid-May 2022.

“If you can show a roadmap for a technology idea you might have, then we open the partnership,” Nobelius says.

Already, the company has set up a series of partnerships with industrialists from February 2022:

• Nordic-American steel company SSAB aims to produce fossil-free steel to build Polestar cars.
• Materials partner Hydro will offer Polestar aluminum. Currently, Hydro is hydropower-based and low-carbon, but has defined three pathways to net-zero aluminum production by 2030.
• Lighting and appliance company ZKW will create climate-neutral electronic components for Polestar’s car.
• Automotive safety company Autoliv will work with Polestar to research climate-neutral safety features, such as seatbelt materials.
• Automotive components company ZF will work to develop zero-emission electric drivetrains – part of the mechanism that turns the wheels.

By working with other suppliers and manufacturers, Polestar could produce more than one climate-neutral car by 2030: Giving other automakers the blueprint to do it themselves.

“One of those great [suppliers]…before we started, we had a goal of reaching true zero by 2050,” says Nobelius. “But then we started working with them and said we’re not interested in a little continuous improvement over the years.”

Now Polestar has pushed the supplier to commit to its 2030 date.

On the horizon…

Polestar’s Nobelius believes innovations from these and other partnerships could find their way into their cars before they achieve a completely zero-emissions vehicle. The company is expected to launch the Polestar 3 crossover in 2022, the Polestar 4 compact crossover in 2023 and the Polestar 5 sedan in 2024.

In March 2022, Polestar also unveiled the O2 concept roadster. The car has some exotic quirks, like a built-in drone that can follow the car and film the driver. It also offers new sustainable technologies.

“With O2, we thought, ‘Okay, let’s take some of these ideas that we already see on the horizon for 2030 and incorporate them into the design of a concept car,'” said Max Missoni, head of design at Polestar. recount Reverse.

For example, O2 uses more mono materials than older models in the fleet. This should make it easier to recycle its parts, such as upholstery.

“Foams, 3D-knit fibers, adhesives and other soft components…if we get them all from one material, there’s no need for disassembly,” says Missoni.

“You can recycle the material as a single material, and that has a big advantage.”

It’s a preview of what the car of the future could look like – expect more as Polestar tests new designs as part of the overall project.

All Terrain

Polestar will also head into space to fulfill its ambition, Nobelius said. The automaker is in the “very early stages” of the conversation with the Swedish National Space Agency to use satellites to track parts of the supply chain, he says. Which satellites could tell Polestar things like: how is the landscape around the factory changing? Is deforestation happening?

“It sounds like Big Brother, but it’s actually doable today,” says Nobelius.

The effort would replicate that of official satellites like NOAA-20, operated by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which captured changes in the Amazon rainforest over time due to industry.

Another technology Polestar plans to use to hold the supply industry accountable for emissions is blockchain. This digital ledger technology is used by cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin to record transactions without relying on a central server or authority.

In 2019, Polestar announced plans to use blockchain to track materials moving through the supply chain. In collaboration with battery suppliers LG Chem and CATL, and blockchain start-up Circulor, the ledger is used to track data such as origin, weight, size and guideline compliance for the cobalt material. used in many electric vehicle batteries.

A 2018 paper published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers wondered if this kind of tracking could also be done with a traditional central server. But the harvard business review noted in 2020 that blockchain means no business has to maintain an asset tracking system, which can be time-consuming and expensive. Records are also available for all parts of the supply chain.

“One of our core values [is] be transparent, so everyone can verify that what you claim is actually true,” says Nobelius. This app is used to check where the cobalt comes from and if it was sourced responsibly, which is important because the material is mined under horrible conditions. Other automakers like Tesla have announced plans to stop using cobalt in some of their batteries.

Ultimately, Nobelius believes Polestar will help drivers completely transcend the need to own a car.

“I think you wouldn’t call it a car, I think you would call it a whole host of different options for getting around,” he says.

He predicts that the inhabitants of the cities of the future will use vehicles to get around, but these will be part of a semi-autonomous fleet (it looks a lot like an urban bus system…). The system would place less emphasis on the brand of car, as users focus more on how best to get around an area rather than the car they are driving, such as a bus. It might require a bigger cultural shift than Polestar is capable of bringing about.

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