AutoBeta(AutoBeta.net)08/11 Report--

Feng Dan will succeed Nathan Forshaw (Nathan Forshaw) as president of Polar Star China from August 15, the company announced on Aug. 10.

According to the data, Nathan Forshaw once held senior management positions in Jaguar Land Rover, Volvo Group and other multinational companies, joined Star Motor in 2016, and was appointed Chief operating Officer in China and head of APEC in Asia-Pacific region, responsible for operation management and market development in China, and will be responsible for team building and business development in Asia-Pacific region.

Regarding the addition of Feng Dan, polar star CEO Thomas Ingerat said: "We sincerely welcome Mr. Feng Dan to join Polar Star." Mr. Feng Dan has a deep insight into the automotive industry and has successful experience in brand growth. He will lead Star China into a new stage of development. " It is understood that before joining Star Motor, Feng Dan had worked at SAIC GM for eight years and served as Cadillac brand marketing minister.

In recent years, the personnel of Polar Star Automobile in China has changed frequently. It is understood that Shen Feng is the first CEO in Polar China, with more than 30 years of automotive work experience, first joined the Ford Motor Company in the United States in 1999, after Geely bought Volvo cars in danger from Ford, Shen Feng joined in the establishment of Volvo China Automotive R & D China, and served as Vice President of Volvo Automobile Group Asia-Pacific Research and Development and President of Volvo Automotive China Research and Development Company. In 2016, Volvo and Geely established an independent Polestar brand, and Shen Feng served as Polestar global CTO and Polestar China CEO, the first CEO of Star China, but left soon. In December 2017, Xilai announced that Shen Feng, the former global CTO of Polestar and CEO of China, has joined Xilai as vice president of quality and chairman of the quality Management Committee, responsible for its overall quality management and reporting to Li Bin.

In March 2018, Polestar Star Motors announced its new appointment, with Wu Zhenhao, former vice president of Asia-Pacific products of Volvo Automobile Group, as president of Polestar China. However, in March 2020, Polestar Star announced a new personnel appointment, and Wu Zhenhao was transferred to Volvo Asia Pacific, responsible for strategy and business coordination. Gao Xing took up the position of president of Polar China, reporting to Polar CEO Thomas Ingerat. A year later, in March 2021, Polestar Polar appointed Nathan Forshaw as President of Polar China and Asia Pacific, with overall responsibility for Polar China and Asia Pacific operations, reporting to Polar CEO Thomas Ingerat.

Behind the frequent high-level unrest is the poor development of Polestar Star cars. In October 2017, Volvo and Geely jointly announced that Polar Star would become an independent electric high-performance vehicle brand and join Geely's new energy product series with a new new energy vehicle brand.

As an independent electric high-performance car brand, Ji Xing has been on Standard Tesla from the very beginning and imitated Tesla's development route. At that time, Polestar 1, the first model launched by Ji Xing, was a two-door sports car with a positioning price of 1.45 million yuan, but the performance of Polestar 1 was really ugly. According to the Federation of passengers, only 24 Polestar-1 vehicles were sold in 2020. It is generally believed in the industry that Star 1 is not for sales, but to create a high-end brand image.

On February 27th, Polar Star launched its first pure electric car, Polar 2, which is based on Volvo CMA architecture. The current standard endurance version of single motor costs 258000 yuan, the long endurance version of single motor costs 282800 yuan, and the long endurance version of dual motor costs 338000 yuan, directly matching the standard Tesla Model 3, which is considered to be the volume model of Polar Star. However, the Star 2 has not become a competitor to Tesla Model 3, but has become a popular model in the Chinese market. According to the data, the total global sales of Star cars in 2021 were 29000, but the authorities did not disclose the specific market performance, while Tesla sold 295000 vehicles in the Chinese market this year. As a new power brand, Ulai, Xiaopeng and ideal are also approaching the class of 100000. In the face of the slowdown in sales, Jixing began to lower its sales target. Previously, Polaris originally set a sales target of 65000 vehicles in 2022, but due to the epidemic and the supply of spare parts, it reduced its annual sales target to 50000.

On July 13th, Polestar Star released first-half data showing that a total of 21200 vehicles were delivered in the first half of the year, an increase of 125% over the same period last year, achieving the target of 42%, but did not disclose specific sales in the Chinese market.

In June this year, Polar released a picture of its future product line, showing models of Polar 2, 3, 4 and 5. According to the plan, Polar will launch three new cars in the next two years. Among them, Polar 3 will make its global debut in October this year, and it is a pure electric SUV model. Polar 4 and 5 will be launched in 2023 and 2024 respectively. Prior to this, Nathan Foxhaw, former president of Polestar Star China and Asia Pacific, believed that these three products were well adapted to the needs of the Chinese market, such as Polestar 3 and 4 are all SUV models, which precisely took into account the preferences of Chinese consumers, but the industry believed that even if Polar Star speeds up product layout, it may not be able to change its decline in the global market.

Take Tesla as an example. Tesla Shanghai Super Factory has become one of the factories that contribute the most production capacity among its factories in the world. Coupled with the enthusiasm of domestic consumers for Tesla's products, the Chinese market has become Tesla's largest single market in the world. In addition, including BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Audi and Volkswagen continue to accelerate the layout of China's new energy vehicle market. It is undeniable that the Chinese market has been very important for the development of many new energy car companies, but five years have passed since its independence, it is still difficult to make a breakthrough in the performance of Star Motor in China and even the global market, and its popularity has not been significantly improved.

Welcome to subscribe to the WeChat public account "Automotive Industry Focus" to get the first-hand insider information on the automotive industry and talk about things in the automotive circle. Welcome to break the news! WeChat ID autoWechat