Polestar defends lacklustre sales during rocketing EV uptake

Stock levels have largely determined Polestar’s sales figures, says the company’s managing director, with Australian new-car sales data showing the electric vehicle (EV) brand isn’t enjoying the same growth as its rivals.

As we reported earlier this month, sales of Polestar vehicles are down 10 per cent year-to-date – with September’s delivery number being 15 lower than the same month in 2025. Meanwhile, year-on-year growth for the whole of the reported EV market has jumped by 117.7 per cent.

EVs outsold their petrol and diesel counterparts last month, recording more than 27,000 sales – compared to fewer than 26,000 and 24,000 respectively.

Polestar Australia chief Scott Maynard says there’s nuance to reading the data, with strong 2025 sales and the number of Polestar vehicles available in stock being the cause of its lagging figures.

“Polestar 2 – let's start there – is in runout, and we've only got a finite number of Polestar 2s. The Polestar 2s we've got have to last as long as we can make them last, given that the new car is not going to arrive until the back end of next year.

“So, our final batch of Polestar 2s are on water now. They're about to land, and then that's it. When they're gone, they're gone,” Mr Maynard explained.

“At the same time last year, we were heavily discounting Polestar 2s and pushing volume. There's no sense to doing that right now. We're better to give that car an elegant rundown, make sure that it has strong resale [value], hold its price, maintain profitability for retailers and the brand in doing that, and let this car run out naturally.

“And so that's a very, very different sales focus or mantra to what we were applying to the same time last year.”

Part of the story is that Polestar recorded a 38.5 per cent increase in sales in 2025 – with Mr Maynard making a prediction at the start of the year on the numbers now being reported.

"To set expectations, we wouldn't expect to lodge the same sort of growth again in 2026," Mr Maynard told CarExpert in January 2026.

"It was in part supported by product, the establishment of our dealer network, and all of those things worked really, really well for us – having a wider footprint, more points of sale and representation across Australia – and whilst we've got a little bit of growth to go with network development and cars like Polestar 5 to join the range, no, we don't expect to see 30-plus [per cent growth] again this year.

"We still expect to see growth in each quarter; we just don't see the sort of rampant growth that we derived from some really good, strong new model introductions in 2025," he said at the time.

Speaking with CarExpert recently, Mr Maynard added more context as to why Polestar is underperforming the market.

“We had high levels of stock of [Polestar 3] at this time last year, and [we were] discounting that car heavily and pushing its volume to the detriment of profit. But we did it elegantly. We got the car sold. We returned its stock levels to normal, and so its volume then returned to where it should be for a premium $100,000-plus electric SUV.

“Its volume was being overclocked at this time last year. We've now returned it to something that's steady state, and that's running normally,” he explained.

“But on top of that, we've had a gap in supply. We've switched from China build of that car to US build, and in that, we've gone for a number of months without any arrivals of Polestar 3, so we're now sitting on a 48-unit order bank for Polestar 3 that we're struggling to supply, and so that's turned down the volume on that.

“Polestar 4, by comparison, is absolutely flying, and we're well up on last year. That's where our growth is, and that's where we see that the market has touched Polestar. So, by that measure, the car that we've got to sell is a raging success and actually growing significantly faster than [the] market. However, the other two will take a little bit of time before we can normalise their volumes.”

While Polestar 4 sales are up 10 per cent year-to-date, sales of the mid-size electric SUV appear to be cooling, with the model recording a drop of almost 25 per cent in September – contributing to a 34.5 per cent reduction over the quarter. Meanwhile, total EV sales are up 162.4 per cent during the same period.

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