Polestar planning long-distance debut for SC-built all-electric SUV
Polestar’s high-performance electric sport-utility vehicle will be built in South Carolina, but its public debut this month will take place nearly 4,500 miles away in Scandinavia.
The Polestar 3, manufactured at the Volvo Cars plant near Ridgeville, will be unveiled Oct. 12 during a ceremony in Denmark, the automaker said last week. The event in Copenhagen, featuring CEO Thomas Ingenlath and design chief Maximilian Missoni, will be live-streamed starting at 1 p.m.
The third car in the company’s lineup is expected to cost about $70,000 and compete with the Porsche Cayenne. It will hit showrooms in 2023.
Polestar is a sister brand to Volvo, which owns a stake in the business. The new vehicle will be built on the same manufacturing platform as the Swedish automaker’s upcoming EX90 — the successor to the XC90 sport-utility vehicle.
The EX90 — to be built alongside the Polestar 3 and Volvo’s S60 sedan at the Berkeley County campus — will make its debut on Nov. 9, but the automaker isn’t saying where the unveiling will take place. Polestar’s decision to roll out its new car in Europe rather then the United States could be an indication the EX90′s debut will also take place elsewhere.
The Polestar 3 will be the company’s first SUV. It will be equipped with a dual-motor electric powertrain with rear-biased all-wheel drive, a dual-clutch torque vectoring system for the rear motor and standard adaptive air suspension. An optional “performance pack” will give it 510 horsepower and 671 pound-feet of torque, as well as a specially tuned suspension with gold details, according to a report by the Roadshow website.
“Polestar 3 is the SUV for the electric age,” Ingenlath said in a written statement. “With this car, we bring the ‘sport’ back to the SUV, staying true to our performance roots.”
Going green
One of the Port of Charleston’s biggest customers is appealing to importers’ green sensibilities in an effort to get containers returned quickly and back in service.
The CMA CGM shipping line last week announced its TEUs to Trees program to incentivize the early return of cargo boxes, which some shippers have been holding on to for weeks or longer because they have no warehouse space. Shipping lines want those importers to find space for their merchandise and then return the empty containers so they can be used for more shipments.
TEU is maritime jargon for 20-foot equivalent unit, the standard measurement for a cargo container.
Under the new program, CMA CGM will purchase 2.5 tons of carbon credits in the name of importers that return a container within four calendar days of receiving it. Both dry and refrigerated containers are eligible and the containers must have originated from an Asian country and sent to a U.S. port.
Carbon credits let businesses compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions because the money used to purchase them can fund initiatives that improve the environment, like renewable energy, methane capture projects and forest maintenance.
CMA CGM will keep track of the credits it purchases and send importers a status update every 30 days. When the program concludes at the end of this year, the shipping line will issue a carbon offset certificate for the total credits earned.
“This new incentive program is an opportunity to reward customers for doing their part to increase equipment availability while also helping them offset their environmental footprint,” CMA CGM said in a written statement. The credits purchased will be used to expand U.S. forests, support urban resilience projects in vulnerable communities and drive the creation of additional offset projects, the company said.
“Encouraging customers to return boxes sooner provides additional containers and chassis for export bookings, and the type of incentive we are offering will result in the formation of new socio-environmental projects right here in the United States,” said Ed Aldridge, president of CMA CGM America. “It is our hope that through this program, others in the industry will be inspired to leverage their capabilities to positively impact the environment and our local communities.”