Swedish electric vehicle maker Polestar is facing a tough time of it right now, with sales floundering, its CEO departing and interest in EVs cooling around the world. To try and turn around its fortunes, the automaker launched a ploy to poach Tesla buyers looking to distance themselves from Elon Musk’s increasingly right-wing ideas. While the plan bolstered sales, it will take more than a few embarrassed Model 3 owners to turn things around at Polestar.
Polestar offered as much as $20,000 in incentives to any Tesla owner in America who was happy to make the switch to one of its models. The deal appears to have worked, with InsideEVs reporting that the Geely-backed brand “saw some of the highest order days for Polestar 3” last week.
The incentives include a $5,000 discount to any household that currently owns a Tesla EV, as well as another $15,000 of incentives to lessees. This is proving to be just the encouragement that some Tesla owners needed to jump ship, as Jordan Hofmann, Polestar’s U.S. head of sales said on Linkedin:
The response to our Tesla Conquest Offer has been incredible. Manufactured in the USA, Polestar 3 is turning heads and drivers are making moves — it’s clear they like what we bring to the table.
That’s all well and good, but the problems at Polestar run deeper and may not be so quick to solve. In fact, the same day that Polestar was celebrating “incredible” sales here in the U.S., it was also asking for a $450 million loan and confirming that it would delay publishing its quarterly results, adds Reuters.
Like every other EV startup trying desperately to make it, Polestar is burning through cash at alarming rate as it rolls out new models, ramps up production and rushes to get its name out to the world. The EV maker announced it had secured more than $800 million in 12-month loans in December, reports Reuters, and confirmed last week that it had secured another $450 million, which would be spent on “general corporate use,” the site adds.
The automaker also delayed publishing its quarterly results once again, which is a worrying trend for the brand. Instead of publishing its latest finances in March, they will now be made public in April, which Reuters adds led some “investors to question the firm’s accounting measures.”
