Car Design Review 9: Maximilian Missoni, Polestar

It’s such a privilege that we are getting paid to create amazing products for somebody, and some designers haven’t really been critical and thought, ‘what am I doing here? Is this the right stuff, or am I just doing what I’ve learned to do?’

For me that sets us apart, that we are thinking twice before we do things as a team. And especially with Polestar taking a mission to zero seriously (where the brand has promised a 100% climate-neutral car by 2030), there are a lot of steps we need to identify first. And for me that’s part of the design scope. We can’t leave that up to engineering or to product planning. We need to find the right solutions, and we need to find the means to aesthetically create desire for those.

I came from brands where heritage was a thing, where you always had to connect the future with the past to justify the values of the brand. The beauty of Polestar is we created it from scratch. We said we cannot – and should not – repeat the stereotypes that people are used to from premium brands, because it would inevitably be fake. We should start from where we are today and ask, what are the issues in society? What are the new processes, the new technologies, the new paradigms? Let’s tap into those and create a brand — and create products for a brand — based on those.

It’s a very liberating feeling and it’s the best part of the job.

Some people may not have realised that we were originally part of the Volvo team and we did this massive split over the past years while designing at least three cars in parallel. And that was an operation in itself. Only a few people moved over to Polestar, but we also recruited a lot of new team members to make sure all the complex processes we needed were taken care of. Now we are completely separate, which was a big operation but one that happened quite silently over the last few months. You can imagine what a stressful situation it was, but we are in a great place now. With Thomas Ingenlath as CEO, he has moved on to a very different role with different responsibilities, which obviously extend beyond design. I can now very much feel the trust that we have built working together at Volvo for a decade.

Polestar went public last June on the Nasdaq stock exchange. Being part of a team that takes a company public is a special feeling. It is a major step, that makes us proud, but also reminds us of our responsibility for the company. Many of us were there during the first days, building the brand, so we identify with our products much more closely on a personal level. This gives us a great motivation to deliver.

In 2022 we also showed the concept version of Polestar 6 at Monterey Car Week in California. We see ourselves in that group of brands who are represented in the show and it was a fantastic experience to interact with the crowd who are potential customers for this car. It is obvious that the shift toward electrification is mixing up the whole playing field. You see a lot of new brands, new body styles and new typologies because of this shift, and it’s clear we are entering a new era.

Some designers look for inspiration in specific disciplines outside of cars, like architecture, or certain kinds of art. But for me the process is so organic. I do try to combine my trips with contemporary art, but it doesn’t really mean that it inspires my work. It just feeds my hunger for new and creative ideas. I believe that as a good manager, you are creative through people. You identify individuals who have this special something, they have this spark. It’s like art, when you see certain things that inspire you, it gets your own creativity going. Each Polestar model has its own character and that is because they’re designed by strong characters and that’s what I’m looking for. I’m not looking for somebody who can do a good sketch, I’m looking for a good character.

Lately I have really tried to stop being too hands-on with design. I’m in charge of exterior design because I still want to make the decisions, because that’s something you need an additional layer of knowledge for, which you gain by being in the management team. But I’m not the one taking the tape or taking the pen and telling my team to do this line or that thing, because if I’m doing that, the people who I hire to inspire me and inspire the brand get demoralised and just do what they’re told and I want them to shine. That builds trust. They trust that I will make the right decisions, and I trust that they will inspire me.