S60

Make
Volvo
Segment
Sedan

The big news this past week has been the reveal of the Polestar 1, the new high-performance offshoot Volvo brand that's aiming to take the EV fight straight to Tesla. Although the Polestar 1 has an internal combustion engine range extender, demand for the sleek coupe is expected to be high, especially with a planned production run of just 500 units per year. But what if you live in a country, like the UK, with right-hand drive? Will Polestar accommodate you? Nope, and there's a totally logical reason why.

Autocar spoke with Polestar's Chief Operating Officer, Jonathon Goodman, and English man himself, at the vehicle's unveiling in China and was told flat-out it'll be left-hand drive only. The reason? "It's an engineering cost, that's the honest answer," Goodman said. "You're not going to get me to sit here and say it's the right thing to do – it would be a bit strange coming from an Englishman to say I don't think we should have (right-hand drive). We're building 500 cars a year, so we've got to be realistic about how we do that. It's not excluded in the future – one of the things we want to do is put pressure to see if we can get more production volume, which is a possibility. That will depend on opportunities in the future."

Fortunately for UK, Australian, and all other right-hand side drivers, the 2019 Polestar 2 and 3 pure EVs will be offered in both driving configurations. Another reason why RHD isn't available at the moment is because Polestar is such a new company. It has, no joke, just 100 employees at the moment, and production on the Polestar 1 hasn't even gotten underway yet. Point being is give these guys some time to get up and running.