Polestar says it is important to provide more insight into the ‘footprint’ of electric cars. According to the brand, people sometimes think too easily about the impact of electric driving. It illustrates with a calculation example that her own Polestar 2 is really not that one two three better than a car with a combustion engine.
Electrically powered cars are seen as a hugely important step towards reducing emissions. The idea is that carbon dioxide emissions in particular can be drastically reduced with EVs. Polestar believes that it is sometimes too easy to assume that with an EV you will have almost no ‘footprint’ in no time. According to the Swedes, it is important that car manufacturers are open and honest about the emissions associated with EV production. The Swedes want to make that more transparent. Although Polestar immediately seems to want to be the best boy in the class, it sets a good example by explaining how long they think it takes before you have less impact on the environment with a Polestar 2 than with a Polestar 2. Volvo XC40.
To begin with, they say they already emit 1.7 times more CO2 when extracting raw materials for a Polestar 2 than Volvo for an XC40. That is of course mainly in the batteries. The Polestar starts its life cycle with a carbon footprint of 26 tons of CO2 and has directly produced more emissions than the XC40. From then on it will of course be interesting, because if all goes well the Polestar 2 will then ’emit’ less CO2, because it runs on electricity. Then the Polestar ultimately comes out better than the XC40.
Polestar outlines three scenarios that affect when that actually happens. That depends on the power mix. According to Polestar, on the global average power mix, a Polestar 2 must travel as much as 112,000 km to have a lower CO2 footprint over its entire life cycle than the XC40 with the same distance traveled. It will be more beneficial for the EV if the average European power mix is ​​included; then it would already be that far after 78,000 km. Those who purely use wind energy to get their batteries full, according to Polestar, are better off in the Polestar 2 than in the XC40.
Of course, with all this, it is a bit of a case of ‘we from Polestar advise Polestar’. In any case, it is interesting to hear how it works in the long term with the emission of carbon dioxide.