Polestar, Volvo Car Corp.’s electrified performance-vehicle brand, launched hybrid and electric vehicle output at a new plant in the southwest China city of Chengdu. Polestar, a Tesla challenger, is targeting sales in China and abroad.
The first product to be assembled at the factory, known as the Polestar Production Center, is the Polestar 1, a carbon fiber-bodied hybrid coupe with 600 hp and 1,000 Nm of torque.

The Chengdu site, which includes a customer experience center and test track, is jointly owned by Volvo and its corporate parent, Zhejiang Geely Holdings Group. The center will build 500 Polestar 1s each year, with total output of 1,500 planned over a three-year production cycle, Polestar said. Polestar expects to start delivering the hybrid to customers before the end of the year.

Production of the brand’s second product, the Polestar 2 electric midsize sedan, is due to begin in early 2020 at Geely’s Luqiao factory in east China’s Zhejiang province, which now builds the Volvo XC40 and the Lynk & CO 01 crossovers.

All the three vehicles are based on Volvo’s new compact car platform dubbed Compact Modular Architecture. Lynk & CO is a brand jointly owned by Geely and Volvo.

Earlier this year, Polestar started taking orders for its first two models in China: The Polestar 1 carries a price tag of 1.45 million yuan ($202,514) while the Polestar 2 has a starting price of 298,000 yuan. The brand aims to open 20 stores in China by the end of next year.

It expects to open the first store in the Chinese capital city of Beijing in the third quarter, with plans for stores in ten other major Chinese cities — including Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Chongqing, Wuhan, Xi’an, Nanjing and Xiamen — before the end of 2020.

Polestar also expects to export the two China-built vehicles to Western Europe and North America, though it has yet to set timetables for the shipment.