Polestar’s performance push: EV brand’s fast BST models to battle BMW M and Mercedes-AMG

Swedish EV brand Polestar has pledged to up its game in terms of performance models, with a renewed focus on more sporting cars part of the firm’s three core pillars alongside design and sustainability.

“In terms of how we will continue to deliver performance with our future models, I think we're going to deliver a more consistent way in terms of performance cars, in terms of the specifications,” Polestar chief executive Michael Loscheller told a small group of journalists, including Auto Express, at the company’s headquarters in Gothenburg this week. 

“We want to focus a bit more on performance, because that is where we can do even better going forward, on track, on acceleration, but also in terms of being superior to others.”

What that means in production terms is still to become clear, but the company has pedigree in the form of the limited-run Polestar 2 BST Edition 270 – the BST short for ‘Beast’ – which launched in 2023 with chassis tuning, increased power and a prominent bonnet stripe differentiating it from the standard 2. 

A BST version of the Polestar 6 roadster concept car was also revealed in 2024, and the company’s head of design Philipp Romers has previously talked enthusiastically about the 2 BST Edition 270. “This is inspiration for the future: it has character, looks sporty and drives fantastically,” he told Auto Express at the Munich Motor Show last year.

Loscheller said that despite closing the UK engineering base that developed the new Polestar 5, a car that has rave reviews from early prototype drives, the expertise remains in the company to take on the likes of BMW M, Mercedes-AMG and Audi RS, should Polestar choose to go in the direction of a range-topping icon for its model lines to fulfill its performance ambitions.

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