√Polestar: Recycling is not our responsibility, calls for industry standard

The CEO of Volvo-backed electric-car brand Polestar has called for an industry standard for measuring the carbon emissions of automotive manufacturing.

Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath says car companies alone should not be responsible for recycling vehicles and their components – despite company executives declaring the world to be in a “rampant climate crisis”.

In April last year Polestar pledged to develop a climate-neutral car backed a net-zero manufacturing process by 2030. And not just offsetting emissions by planting trees. The ambitious proposal also applied to parts suppliers and shipping companies.

Now the company has conceded it needs the help of regulators to achieve net-zero.

Polestar’s sustainability expert Fredrika Klaren has acknowledged net-zero emissions – from the factory to the end of life of a vehicle – for now remains a highly ambitious target.

“We don’t know how to reach it. It is truly a Moonshot goal. [But] I have hopes that we will achieve it,” Klaren told media during a preview of the Polestar 3 SUV in Europe last week, ahead of Australian showroom arrivals in early 2024.

Klaren said one of the most important steps to net-zero is to incentivise other car manufacturers to share the same goal.

“We know that many (car companies) are doing amazing things, and there’s a lot of sustainability work ongoing within all car companies now,” said Klaren.

“But we are in a very traditional system, so it’s very hard for us to talk to each other and collaborate. For a very good reason: that it has been heavily regulated in the car industry.

“Now in this new era we need to do like other industries such as fashion and collaborate to combat the immense challenge we share. Frankly we need to get out of that [traditional mindset]. We are inviting others to participate in this project.”

Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath acknowledged the importance of recycling, the executive stopped short of saying it was the responsibility of car companies.

“The business of recycling itself, no we don’t have to get into it,” said Ingenlath.

“Our job is to actually engineer and design the cars (to) … enable the recycling that is keeping the value of the materials. Our job starts much earlier to enable the recycling industry.”

Ingenlath called for an industry standard to measure carbon emissions of vehicles from different manufacturers, so consumers and watchdogs can compare pollution outputs between automotive giants.

“We actually are seeking, we would love to have, a standardised industry norm on how to evaluate the carbon footprint of a car,” said Ingenlath. “We actually said ‘hey look, this is our way of doing it, can we as an industry actually agree on a sensible way of doing that?’

“And there has been very little feedback, and very little initiative to jointly come to a standard. That’s a little bit of frustration from our side. Time is running away, at some point we will be missing a hell of a lot that we did not find the right moment to agree on a standard for how to calculate the CO2 footprint.”

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