Polestar design chief: 'I don’t want revolution - I want evolution'

While Polestar and Audi are both broadly ‘premium performance’ brands, Römers says the firms are “totally different”, with vast differences in their heritage (Audi can trace its roots to 1885 while Polestar was launched in 2017) and national identities. “The culture is different and Sweden is different,” says Römers. “Being in a different country affects the culture and collaboration within the company. And that’s part of the challenge – and it’s a good change.”

Still, the difference between Audi’s home in Ingolstadt, Germany, and Polestar’s in Gothenburg became abundantly clear on his first day back in January. “I arrived in the middle of a snowstorm and I thought: ‘Oh my god, that’s quite different,’” he laughs. “But from that day on, it got better and brighter. My family moved there two months ago and are settling in.”

As well as adjusting to Swedish winters, Römers is also adjusting to the difference in size between the two firms. “We have a much smaller team,” he says. “At Audi, my team was 150 people, just for the exterior design. At Polestar, we have 61 people in the whole design team.

“It’s much leaner, but that’s not a bad thing – if you have the right people. It’s more agile, so it’s good. But we shouldn’t be smaller: we are a brand that is growing and entering new segments.”

By moving from a brand with a long heritage to one with very little, Römers faces a new challenge. Companies such as Audi and Mercedes-Benz have struggled to balance maintaining their design heritage while moving forward in the electric era.

But Römers says succeeding at a brand without that rich history is a harder challenge. “With a manufacturer that has 100 years of heritage, you can always refer to elements of your DNA that are appreciated by the audience,” he says.

While Polestar is growing, the trajectory of its sales has been uneven in recent years because the firm has felt the effects of being an EV-only brand at a time when electric demand is softening. Polestar’s share price has also been hit, prompting the departure of Ingenlath, with industry veteran Michael Lohscheller taking over as CEO with a new brief focused on growing sales rather than building a brand.

“I came from a brand in transition at Audi to a brand which is also changing,” says Römers, who believes his experiences at a car giant will help as Polestar grows, both in terms of sales and line-up, in the future. “In the VW Group, I worked on small cars, big cars, SUVs, sports cars – but I wasn’t a free artist, so you learn to do the best with the prerequisites you have.

"That will help Polestar: we have to do the right things now. You can’t afford to do everything, so you have to make good compromises here and there. That’s something you learn working in a big group.”

Although Polestar is part of the Chinese Geely group and still shares some technology and platforms with Volvo, it has a greater degree of independence and autonomy than some subsidiaries. With a small team and a small but growing line-up, Römers says that “clarity is key” to plotting out its future designs. And while it would be easy for a designer to step into a company and instantly put their own stamp on it, Römers isn’t planning a revolution.

“I had a period of gardening leave [after leaving Audi] thinking about the brand and what to do,” he says. “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.”

During his time tending his shrubs, Römers says he also had “the topic of performance in mind”. That’s always been a value of Polestar, but it will be ramped up in the future. “It’s a way to separate us from Volvo, to have a specific take,” he says.

“When I started, I had a close collaboration with the brand team, looking at sharpening the brand. So we really nailed the values of Polestar: design, performance and sustainability.

“So now, whatever we do is according to those values. That’s something you have to be pragmatic about. For example, when you’re looking at technology, you could put everything you have into a car, but then it’s ‘what do you stand for?’, so now we make decisions based on our values. Is it design-driven? Is it performance-oriented? Is it sustainable? That makes things easier and clearer.”

The next Polestar to go on sale will be the 5 super-saloon, a Porsche Taycan rival that has already been shown in production form. Römers must wait until the 7 compact SUV, now delayed until 2028, to launch the first car led by his design. But he’s already offering some hints.

“Thomas was a designer, so everything was about design and sustainability, but performance was a little bit hidden,” he says. “With Polestar 5, we are lucky guys: that’s really the halo car, which is expressing performance at its best. So the 7 has to be influenced by it. That means something for the design.”

To convey that performance feel in the exterior design, Römers hints that future cars will be more “horizontal, so they’re more dynamic: a bit lower and sleeker, especially for an SUV.”

One design trend that Römers won’t be jumping on is making his cars look aggressive. “The cars have to look super-attractive and should not scare people,” he says. “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.”

Instead, the focus is on a design that’s progressive: “It doesn’t have to look friendly, but it should not scare people. Progressive can scare people. Or progressive can be like: ‘Oh, that looks like a UFO, that’s cool.’ That’s what I want.”