Polestar has had a long and interesting history on its way to becoming a manufacturer of electric vehicles (EVs). The company started out as a vehicle tuner, which led to a collaboration with Volvo in 1996 to become their in-house tuning arm. The result was several high-performance Volvos that also carried the Polestar name, including the Volvo V60 Polestar and the Volvo S60 Polestar. After being owned for 11 years by the Ford Motor Company, Volvo was subsequently purchased by Zhejiang Geely Holdings in 2010. Geely is a huge Chinese automaking conglomeratethat also owns car brands such as Smart, Lotus, Proton, Geely Auto, LYNK & Co, and ZEEKR.
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In 2015, Volvo bought all of Polestar and incorporated it into Volvo as a dedicated performance sub-brand, much like M does for BMW or AMG does for Mercedes-Benz. Then, in 2017, Polestar was spun off from Volvo to become an independent performance EV brand. Geely and Volvo provided Polestar with 640 million Euros as a starting investment in the new Polestar enterprise.
As of the first quarter of 2024, Geely Holdings owns 24% of Polestar shares, with Volvo holding 18%. New shareholders have been welcomed, and the free float (shares available for public trading) has been raised to around 18%. In February of 2024, Polestar was able to secure $950 million in additional funding from a group of international banks, which should be sufficient to achieve its upcoming production plans.
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