2028 Polestar 7 Compact SUV Will Be Built At Volvo's New Slovakia Plant
Polestar announced today that the upcoming 2028 Polestar 7, which will serve as a premium compact crossover successor to the Polestar 2, will be built at Volvo's upcoming factory in Kosice, Slovakia. Prior to this announcement, Polestars have only produced in Asia and in North America, so this will be the premium EV maker's sole car produced in Europe, surely in a bid to avoid tariffs. This Volvo factory has already been under construction by Volvo, and the company says the location "offers good logistical connections" to European customers and already developed suppliers. Polestar also released the first teaser image, which shows a fairly traditional blocky shape and thin LED lights that extend pretty far into the nose and bumper.
With this news, Polestar is officially announcing Volvo as the development and manufacturing partner for the Polestar 7, as part of the company's strategy to better use different architectures from within the Geely Group to save cost and have new tech better spread across the brands. Polestar says the 7 will use a technology base from Volvo, in-house-developed electric motors, cell-to-body construction methods and Geely's most advanced battery density and performance. Geely brands in China have some of the fastest-charging EVs in the world, like Zeekr's 007 that can charge from 10% to 80% in 10.5 minutes, so hopefully the 7 will have some of that power. Polestar says despite sharing tech with other Geely models, the 7 will have "design and sporty driving characteristics that are instantly recognisable."
As a standalone brand, Polestar has had quite a non-linear trajectory. It was first introduced to the world as the high-performance racing specialists at Volvo, but then in 2017 Polestar was spun off into its own standalone EV company, though its first model was the Polestar 1, a plug-in-hybrid sports car. The Polestar 2 competed with the likes of the Tesla Model 3 and BMW i4 as a sporty compact liftback, but it's been taken off sale in the U.S. due to the tariffs, as the 2 is built in China. Now there's the Polestar 3, a larger Cayenne-sized SUV that does battle with the Cadillac Lyriq and BMW iX; the first batch of 3s were made in China, but now they're all built in South Carolina. On sale this fall will be the Polestar 4, a smaller coupe-like crossover with no rear window that will be built in South Korea. All three of those cars use various platforms developed by Geely brands. The upcoming Polestar 5 sedan and Polestar 6 convertible, meanwhile, will use a bespoke supercar-like platform that's being developed in the UK.
