There is a “renaissance of retailers” happening in the industry according to the boss of Polestar, who credits the firm’s recent increase in sales with having more physical retailers and people selling its cars.

Polestar started as an online-only brand with limited physical presence but CEO Michael Lohscheller, who took the top job last October, is overseeing a roll out of a physical retail network that is doing “active selling”.

“Leasing or buying a car is an important decision and you don’t just do it online, or at least not everybody does," he told Autocar. "Some people like it, but others want more advice, to come back, to get quotes and think about things.”

Polestar plans to go from nine retailers today to 17 in the next 18 months in the UK. New showrooms in Glasgow, Sheffield and Southampton have opened in the UK in the past year. 

Lohscheller said Polestar now had “good retail partners” and its physical presence was further bolstered by its relationship with Volvo carrying out its aftersales. 

He said that “personal relationships and a human touch” were still hugely important in the car buying and selling process, and digital channels should offer “support” to the process.

Lohscheller was speaking on the day Polestar announced its Q1 sales numbers for 2025, which were a 76% improvement on last year following the launch of the new Polestar 3 and Polestar 4 models which have joined the Polestar 2 in production.

A total of 12,304 Polestars were sold in Q1 2025 compared to 6975 in the same period of 2024. Around one in four Polestars globally is sold in the UK, and growth here stood at 185% year-on-year thanks to the new model introductions and an increase in the size of the retail network. 

The company is planning growth of around 30-35% per year over the next three years, from a baseline of around 45,000 sales in 2024. The UK-engineered Polestar 5 will launch later this year as another new model line. 

Lohscheller’s reaction to the ongoing global tariffs and trade war was to ensure Polestar had localised production wherever possible, with access to Geely and Volvo factories in the US, China, South Korea and Europe. To that end, a “localisation strategy was the best way forward”.

An immediate priority was to ready its European-built Polestar 7 compact SUV for production, a model that will likely be Polestar’s biggest-selling model and being made and sold in its best-performing market, Europe.

Asked what he thought of tariffs being rolled out across the world, such as the 25% tariffs on cars imported into the USA, Lohscheller said “we have to live with it”.

Just complaining about it is not a good solution. While it changes so many times, it's obviously not that easy. It would be better if we have more planning security, also for investments, but we have to live with it.