► 95% year on year increase
► Dealership network to grow in 2026
► Polestar 4 has a strong start
2025 was a breakthrough year for Polestar’s UK business. Powered by the arrival of the 3 and 4 SUVs – as well as the always strong 2 – the clean-living, Volvo spin-off improved sales in the UK by 95%. That brings total sales of new cars to 17,000 in 2025 – although pre-owned sales also increased by 300% in the same period.
‘For a brand that’s five years old in the UK, that’s pretty damn good,’ says Polestar’s new UK MD Matt Galvin talking at the business’ annual update. ‘Global sales were up 34% which we announced last week, which was great. And we sold our 50,000th Polestar in the UK in December,’ he added.
Now in the job for around a year and a half, Galvin was also able to break down the success of each new model. The story in brief? The 2 continues to perform well, although the 4 has more volume than you’d expect.
The 2 continues to take the lion’s share of business for Polestar UK, performing well in a congested and competitive segment. There, the 2 had a 12% share, beating the Mercedes CLA and finishing just behind the Tesla Model 3 and BMW i4.
The 3, on the other hand, had a 21% share albeit of the much smaller luxury electric SUV segment. It was second, beaten by the BMW iX but eclipsing the Mercedes EQE SUV and the Lotus Eletre. Not the strongest competition, but impressive nonetheless.
The biggest breakthrough however comes from the quirky 4 SUV. It seems customers weren’t deterred by its lack of rear window and its not-always-intuitive software, because it achieved a market share of 20% in 2025, selling 10,021 units and beating the Audi Q6 e-Tron and Porsche Macan. Only the Tesla Model Y outsold the Polestar 4 in the segment.
As well as the new products, Galvin credits visibility as being a key reason for improving sales: ‘One of the things that helps us as a brand to grow is having cars on the road,’ he said. ‘When people see our cars, hopefully they understand a bit more about what who Polestar are, because we don’t have and cannot compete with some of the major league players in terms of share of voice.’
New Polestar Spaces should also improve things further, with the number of dealerships and stores almost doubling – with more planned in 2026. ‘We doubled the size of our UK retailer network,’ Galvin said. ‘We went from eight spaces to 15, and we’re going to be moving to around 20 in the next by the end of this 12-month period.’
‘We are now going to be moving away from those shopping centres into more traditional formats,’ Galvin told CAR. ‘And that’s what you’ve seen in terms of our retailer growth.’ With that in mind, expect to see some of those shopping mall and high street areas disappearing, with more traditional dealerships taking their place elsewhere.
It seems those retail-style Spaces have done their job, though, as alongside the sales figures a new survey revealed Polestar was well-known to the public. ‘YouGov did a survey last year for emerging EV brands, and we were the leading EV brand last year in terms of brand awareness,’ he added.
The 5 will appear next year, but all the while Polestar is also hard work at work in its mission to ccelerate growth to zero emission (at the tailpipe) vehicles. With that in mind, it’s lobbying the UK government to make EVs more attractive – and one of its suggestions is a financial incentive for electric used cars.
‘The Netherlands did a really interesting trial about two years ago,’ Galvin explained. ‘They’ve got a [circa] €2000 incentive on buying a used EV. If we want people to truly adopt EVs, we’ve got to give them a lower entry price point to an electric car, and that’s achieved through a used car.’
‘I think actually having an incentive around used EVs would give more people the opportunity to consider an electric car, and that would actually be more advantageous for residual values as well, which we know are under serious pressure,’ he continued. ‘We know customers have a big concern about the losses potentially around driving and buying a new EV.’
Would it work? Let us know in the comments.
Curtis Moldrich is CAR magazine’s Digital Editor and has worked for the brand for the past five years. He’s responsible for online strategy, including CAR’s website, social media channels such as X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, and helps on wider platform strategy as CAR magazine branches out on to Apple News+ and more.
By Curtis Moldrich
CAR's Digital Editor, F1 and sim-racing enthusiast. Partial to clever tech and sports bikes