Polestar CEO Michael Lohscheller said on Tuesday the premium EV brand plans to reach 25 retail locations in France by year-end, a target that requires nine openings in approximately three and a half months.
Lohscheller disclosed the target in a LinkedIn post announcing a new Polestar Space in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a suburb west of Paris.
He called the site the brand’s 16th French retail location.
“We’re continuing to expand our retail network across Europe, with an ambition to reach 250 locations globally in 2026, including 25 in France,” Lohscheller wrote.
The pace required — more than two French openings per month through December — would be steep for a brand that opened 24 sites globally across all 29 of its markets in the entire first half of 2026.
Lohscheller tied the expansion to the recent launch of the Polestar 4 SUV, a conventionally roofed variant of the brand’s best-selling model that went on sale September 2.
“We just launched Polestar 4 SUV and have been encouraged by the positive response from markets around the world,” the CEO wrote, adding that “as more customers discover the brand, having a place where they can experience Polestar for themselves becomes increasingly important.”
He framed the store openings as a marker of the company’s development.
“For a young company like Polestar, opening new locations while bringing new models to market is an important sign of progress and a great reflection of the growing interest in the brand,” Lohscheller wrote. “Every new location represents a lot of hard work from the Polestar team and our partners.”
Citroen x Polestar
Polestar could not trade in France until last year because it lost a trademark case to Citroën.
The French carmaker began proceedings in 2018, arguing that Polestar’s logo, two chevrons forming a star, drew on the double chevron it has used since 1919. The Paris judicial court ruled against Polestar on June 4, 2020, ordering it to pay 150,000 euros in damages and about 70,000 euros in legal fees and barring it from using the logo in France for six months.
The court accepted that the two marks look different and that buyers were unlikely to confuse them on sight, but held that Citroën’s standing in France meant Polestar could benefit indirectly from it.
Polestar’s French website went dark, showing visitors a notice that access was restricted under French trademark registrations, and Citroën petitioned the European Union Intellectual Property Office to extend the injunction across the bloc.
The two companies settled confidentially in August 2022, withdrawing all proceedings against each other and agreeing to accept each other’s logos.
Polestar began selling in France in 2025, its 28th market, using retail partners drawn from the Volvo Cars network. Asked about the ruling in 2020, a company spokesman had said Polestar did not operate in France and had no plans to.
Global Target
Tuesday’s post is the first public restatement of the 250-location global target since first-quarter results in May.
Geely-backed Polestar set the ambition after Q4 2025 earnings, projecting a roughly 20% expansion from the 211 sales points recorded at year-end.
Lohscheller told analysts on the Q1 2026 call the company remained “focused on scaling our business by expanding our retail network, especially in Europe, with plans to reach 250 sales points globally by the end of 2026.”
When H1 results landed on September 3, the figure disappeared.
Polestar said only that the network was expanding “at pace” and did not offer a revised target. Nor did the company formally withdraw the goal.
The H1 release reported 235 sales points outside China at the end of June — 15 short of 250 with six months remaining.
Polestar averaged four new sites per month during H1.
Sustaining that rate would put the network at approximately 259 by December, comfortably above the target.
The company signed 20 new retailer partners in the first half, bringing its total to 178, a 13% increase from the end of 2025.
The network’s expansion has been enabled by a shift from the company-owned Spaces Polestar launched with to a partner-led retail model that pushes fixed costs onto independent dealers.
Adding a retailer partner is cheaper and faster than building a Polestar-owned facility, allowing the store count to scale even as the company tightens spending elsewhere.
H1 Sales Record, Guidance Cut
Polestar reported first-half retail sales of 30,423 cars, a record, though growth slowed to 0.4% year on year.
Second-quarter sales fell 4.0% to an estimated 17,296 vehicles — the brand’s first year-on-year quarterly decline since 2024.
The company cut its full-year volume guidance to “low-to-mid single-digit” retail growth, the second downward revision in seven months.
Polestar had halved the target in February from a 30–35% compound annual growth rate — set in its January 2025 strategy update — to “low double-digit” growth.
On a 2025 base of approximately 60,100 deliveries, the latest range implies fewer than 64,000 vehicles for the full year.
Polestar cited intensified competition and regulatory headwinds, particularly in the United States, where the brand was barred from selling connected vehicles from the 2027 model year.
US sales fell 42% in H1 to 1,895 vehicles.
Lohscheller ruled out an appeal and framed Europe as the company’s primary growth engine.
The net loss for the first half reached $842 million. Cash stood at approximately $888 million as of June 30 after about $850 million of operating outflow.
Operating losses narrowed 43% year on year, and no impairment charges were booked — a contrast to the $2.4 billion full-year 2025 loss, which included a $739 million write-down on Polestar 3 assets.
First-quarter gross margin had swung to negative 3.2% from positive 10.3% a year earlier.
Since mid-2025, Polestar has raised $1.2 billion in equity and completed approximately $640 million in debt-to-equity conversions with Volvo Cars and Geely Sweden.
Lohscheller said the growing share of the Polestar 4 in the sales mix is helping margins. Polestar 5 grand tourer deliveries are set to begin in the coming weeks.
Polestar operates in 29 markets globally, with the United Kingdom and Germany its highest-volume European markets.
Sales points outside China grew 39.1% in the same period.
