Elon Musk made his ultra-far-right beliefs well known after endorsing Germany’s right-wing AfD party. Elon Musk is also still the CEO of Tesla, and owning Tesla stock or buying one of his cars is directly supporting him. If you happen to be in the market for an electric vehicle and would prefer not to support a Musk with your purchase, Polestar’s CEO would like to humbly suggest you buy one of his cars, Bloomberg reports.
Speaking to Bloomberg about Elon Musk’s hard right turn, Polestar CEO Michael Lohscheller said, “We get a lot of people writing that they don’t like all this. It’s important to listen closely to what they say. And I can tell you, a lot of people have very, very negative sentiment.” That, of course, gives Polestar an opportunity, with Lohscheller adding that he’s told his sales staff to target Tesla owners for conquest.
While he did call Musk a “very successful businessman” and said he’d “done incredible things with Tesla,” Lohscheller, who was born in North Rhine-Westphalia, also made it clear that Musk’s support for the ultra-far-right Alternative for Germany party was beyond the pale. “For Germany, somebody outside of Germany endorsing right-wing political parties is a big thing,” he told Bloomberg. “You want to know what I think about it? I think it’s totally unacceptable. Totally unacceptable. You just don’t do that. This is pure arrogance, and these things will not work.”
If Polestar is going to survive, it’s going to need some of those Tesla sales, too. As Bloomberg reports:
Polestar was spun out of Volvo Car by the Swedish carmaker and its Chinese parent, Geely Holding Group, four years ago. Its US-listed shares have plummeted 92% since the company’s market debut in June 2022. Tesla’s stock has soared 73% in that span.
Lohscheller, a former head of German carmaker Opel, became CEO of Polestar in October. His predecessor, Thomas Ingenlath, had led the company since 2017.
Lohscheller expects Polestar to increase retail sales by as much as 35% annually over the next three years by moving to a more traditional dealership model and rolling out new vehicles, including a compact SUV. The company previously took a Tesla-like approach to retailing, letting car shoppers kick tires and book test drives through showrooms while taking orders online.
“It is so obvious basic things were just being missed,” Lohscheller said of Polestar’s early years. “If you don’t have an active selling model in an industry which is ultra-competitive, that’s a big miss.”
Polestar is burning through around $110 million a month, a level that Chief Financial Officer Jean-Francois Mady called unsustainable and unacceptable during an investor briefing last week. The company plans to address this by reducing inventory and capital expenditures after spending heavily to launch the Polestar 3 sport utility vehicle, the 4 SUV coupe and the 5 sports sedan.
Polestar ended the third quarter of last year with about $501 million in cash reserves and in December secured another $800 million in funding. And by the end of the month, it may have an additional $400 million ready to go. So the company has money. It’s just a question of whether or not it can start generating real profits before it runs out of that money.