Polestar

Swedish performance car brands Polestar and Koenigsegg have teased an upcoming video collaboration that could see a showdown between their two latest models. The Swedish carmakers took to their respective Instagram accounts to promote the new project, sharing photos of the Polestar Precept all-electric concept vehicle and the Koenigsegg Gemera plug-in hybrid megacar side-by-side. UPDATE (5/6/20): This story has been updated with a statement from Koenigsegg. Details in story.

Volvo Cars has opened its first dedicated battery assembly line at its manufacturing plant in Ghent, Belgium. The addition marks the Ghent plant as the first in Volvo’s history to receive a dedicated production line for batteries, affirming the brand’s commitment to its electric future. The Ghent plant is seen as a proof of concept and will be used to trial processes that will be rolled out to other manufacturing sites to improve efficiency.

Polestar, sub-brand of Volvo, has teased its second production model ahead of its reveal on February 27. The inventively-named Polestar 2, which is gunning straight for the Tesla Model 3, will be a pure EV with a driving range somewhere in the realm of 400km.

Volvo has announced a new software upgrade, developed by its Polestar division, which increases the torque distribution to the rear wheels of all-wheel drive vehicles built on the company's Scalable Product Architecture (SPA) or Compact Modular Architecture (CMA). The company claims by increasing the amount and frequency of torque going to the rear wheels it has come up with a "more engaging drive", as well as improving steering turn-in, cornering control, and traction under acceleration.