I can relate to Polestar in a way. I also keep stupid streaks going for my own enjoyment. I’ve never cooked before, so I might as well just keep ordering takeout ’till I die. I’ve never held a baby, so let’s just keep it going. There are no rewards for these things, but it’s sort of fun to see how long I can go without breaking these streaks. And that’s what Polestar did for a while: it wouldn’t do combustion engines. It wouldn’t do color. It wouldn’t do real car names.
And just like me, Polestar’s random streaks were being stubbornly held for no reason whatsoever. The luxury EV brand’s stock crashed in December 2025 after it ended the year with negative gross margins and tons of debt. Turns out, nobody wanted a colorless EV with no rear windows. To be fair, the Polestar 4 is the carmaker’s best-selling model, although that’s not saying much when you sold a total of 60,119 vehicles in 2025 (its best year ever, BTW).
Well, Polestar is breaking one of its streaks and has four new cars planned for release over the next three years.
Polestar’s new lineup is full of numbers and colors
By 2028, you can expect four new Polestar models. Said CEO Michael Lohscheller: “Following our best sales year ever, we are now launching the largest model offensive in our history, with four premium EVs coming to market within three years. We are targeting the heart of the EV market, where customer demand and profit pools are high.”
The Polestar 5 will arrive in Summer 2026, a four-door grand tourer that offers luxury and lightweight, fun handling. The Polestar 4 is returning at the end of 2026, a new variant with the same technology and performance as the current best-seller – but with a rear window. The Polestar 2 is launching in early 2027 as a “completely new successor” to the brand’s foundation. In 2028, the Polestar 7 will arrive as a compact, premium SUV that the brand is “convinced” will offer customers progressive performance at an appealing price point.
While Polestar is not giving up on being fully electric or using random numbers as car names, it wants this new batch of vehicles to be “more emotional,” according to Design Chief Philipp Romers. AKA colors! A big step for the brand.
The original Polestar lineup was meant to express “purism,” letting the vehicles speak for themselves in a way. Now, however, Polestars will be bright colors to evoke stronger emotion and connection with drivers. The emotion I’m feeling? Confusion. The numbers don’t really seem to mean anything when they’re releasing in a totally random order. And things get even more puzzling when you recall that the Polestar 2 was originally supposed to be replaced by the Polestar 7, skipping a bunch of numbers along the way.
I guess former CEO Thomas Ingenlath did try to explain this to Autocar back in 2024: “As much as we might build a very similar car, because it has a different number, we won’t have this natural trap where we’re boxed into that concept of what the car had been.” With a new, random number, Polestar is freer to innovate and change, or something like that. I don’t know. Yet the Polestar 4 is keeping its name while featuring a brand new design with a sloping roofline that turns the sedan into an SUV. So I guess you can completely change a car while keeping its name. Not that the 4 still really evokes any emotion or concepts to me.
“2025 was a year of continuous operational progress and delivery,” Lohscheller said. “With our attractive model line-up, strong shareholder support, and partners with access to the latest technology, Polestar is set to become one of the winners of the automotive industry’s transformation.”
Is this how you do a transformation? I guess it is, I think? I think I’m still sort of confused. But there will be pretty colors, so we can all look forward to that, since Polestar already has pretty sleek, unique designs.
