Polestar Asks The Fashion Industry For Help Building Cars
It’s weird, but the brand might be on to something here.
The 2022 Global Fashion Summit is, predictably, all about fashion design. Some of the largest brands in the world attend, like North Face, Gucci, and others. It’s like the Geneva Motor Show for clothes but it’s a little weird to walk up and see a Polestar 2 parked in a shipping container outside. The fashion world can be weird, but Polestar insists putting the car there is serving an important point.
That point is Polestar 0. It’s not an as-yet-unreleased Polestar model, either. Instead, it’s more of a business plan. In short, Polestar 0 is the Geely-owned brand’s goal to create a genuinely climate-neutral car by 2030. Part of that comes down to how materials are used and produced for this hypothetical climate-neutral car. And that’s why Polestar is at the Global Fashion Summit for 2022.
We’ve talked about the Polestar 0 plan here before. Back in April of 2021, the brand called for open collaboration with everyone from suppliers to detailers. Back then, Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath said that simply offsetting a car’s carbon emissions is a cop-out. With that in mind, the brand is looking for new partners in the textile (and thus fashion) industry to help make this climate-neutral car a reality. Finding a way to sustainably produce the interior of a car would be a significant step and one that Polestar could implement quickly.
“The fashion and automotive industries are two heavy emitters of carbon dioxide. Both industries share many complex challenges when it comes to sustainability, related to resource use, human rights and transparency. We are now in the ‘climate decade’ and working in silos just won’t cut it,” says Polestar’s Head of Sustainability Fredrika Klaren.