Polestar's straight shooter isn't here to sell cars - she wants to save the planet

OPINION: Fredrika Kláren, fresh from a month-long holiday touring the east coast of Australia, dropped on unsuspecting local automotive media corps like a cluster bomb this week, igniting truth explosions that resonated right across the industry and the world.

And it was bloody marvellous.

Across the media landscape, the bombs kept detonating. And their explosive power was tight, accurate and right on point.

‘Vegan’ interiors are nothing more than greenwashing. Hybrids won’t help reduce the temperature of the planet. Australian mineral miners need to develop carbon-neutral supply chains to make a difference. Rich consumers need to spearhead the EV revolution. Carmakers need to tear up their five-year plans and start again.

Kláren is the head of sustainability at Polestar , once Volvo’s performance arm and now one of parent company 吉利控股集团 ’s leading EV lights.

The Swede has more than 20 years of experience in the sustainability space, including a long stint with global furniture behemoth 宜家 , so she’s got plenty of skin in the game.

And while there will be a sizable number of auto execs who won’t feel comfortable with what she said, there’s no denying the fact that she’s right.

It can be argued that Akio Toyoda is the most influential CEO in the automotive space… and the Toyota Motor Corporation boss’s continued campaign to talk down the switch away from wet-fuel transportation resonates strongly across the space.

Toyoda makes valid and key points about the dangers of a rush towards a politically motivated uptake of battery-electric propulsion at the expense of alternatives like hydrogen and ICE/battery hybridisation, and his assertion that not all markets across the globe are ready for BEVs is bang on.

Imagine, though, if he directed his and his company’s energies into not talking down the space.

“Manufacturers are locked into their business plans, and I understand that,” Kláren told journalists. “But the thing is, the timeframe is wrong.?It's not aligned with climate science.”

That climate science says there are just seven years between now and a planet that’s 1.5deg C hotter, so Kláren says plans to fix the problem by 2040 or 2050 are “not interesting, because we’ve missed the goal by then.”

Car companies have long worked on business plans that can extend between five and eight years into the future.

For product planners, it’s akin to juggling a priceless crystal ball with hands soaked in olive oil… one misdirection in a key area of growth, and the jig is up.

But Kláren is unequivocal in her belief that the climate crisis requires the big players to revisit their respective plans for the future, regardless of the investments already made.

“So what we need to do is to tear up those business plans and make new ones and ensure, again, that all of the money that we're putting into just obtaining and making the legacy technology more efficient,” she said.

“And all of the incentives that are supporting ICE cars and the fossil industry is being put into clean technology and electric vehicles, so we can quickly start scaling up so that we can create a closed loop for minerals and metals.”

She didn’t back down when challenged either, countering questions about Polestar’s Chinese origins with insights into the increased use of hydroelectric power by the company to produce key aluminium parts for their cars and reducing CO2 output in the process.

She was also unapologetic about her view that the EV revolution should be led by those with means.

“People with money need to finance this change [from ICE to EVs]. They need to be early adopters, they need to invest in this so that it can be scaled and delivered to many people,” says Kláren.

When pushed about the current state of inflation, rising costs and big mortgages here in Australia, she said there’s plenty of money Down Under and the conversation around EV affordability needs to change.

“Why do we always focus on that in the conversation?” she said.

“Australia has more millionaires than any other country. You have money. There’s a lot of money here. I mean in the world there are a lot of people that can afford to make this transition.”

Her vision is simple, salient and strident – as a planet, we don’t have time to screw around. And this isn’t a view that goes down particularly well when there are metric tonnes of dollars at stake.

While Polestar is a small player in volume, it’s making a lot of noise in the right areas… and it’s a noise that shouldn’t be treated lightly.

- Tim Robson