Polestar Canada plans new showrooms, leaving shipping containers, malls behind

Electric vehicle brand Polestar is not letting its reliance on an online sales model stop it from building out a Canadian dealer network.

The start-up has been operating out of three “spaces” in Canada, two of them temporary locations, as it finds its footing in the country’s three largest markets. But by the end of 2022, Polestar will have put down permanent roots in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, opening new showrooms in the latter two cities.

Designed as minimalistic, sales-free environments focused only on Polestar’s vehicles, the spaces, as the company calls them, serve an important purpose, according to Hugues Bissonnette, head of Polestar Canada.

“Our retail model is digital first. Customers go online, they order our cars directly, but obviously they can visit a space if they want to enhance the experience, test drive the cars, if they have any questions.”

Since late 2021, Polestar’s Montreal space has been a shipping container that features a single vehicle. Later this year, it will be replaced by a 12,000-square-foot (1,100 square-metre) dealership with on-site service and a five-car showroom. In West Vancouver, the company has had a store in Park Royal mall. That will change this year as well, as the company opens a boutique on Burrard Street in the city’s downtown.

The two relocated spaces will join the brand’s other permanent location, which opened in Toronto’s upscale Yorkville neighbourhood in late 2020.

“We, from the beginning, wanted to set our footprint where people entertain themselves, where they go eat, where they go shopping and not necessarily in a car mall environment,” Bissonnette said.

The company’s Toronto and Vancouver spaces align with this concept, but Bissonnette said it is not approaching its brick-and-mortar network as one-size-fits-all. The new Montreal location, in contrast, will be highway-facing, attracting attention “almost as a billboard,” as opposed to pulling in foot traffic like those in the other two cities, he added.

“I think it’s important to cater to each market in Canada. Even though we talk about Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, they’re very different settings … you have a lot of diversity.”

While Polestar, which is ultimately controlled by China-based Geely and its subsidiary Volvo Cars, has shaken up the traditional dealership, it is not straying from the franchised dealer model. Transactions are online, but take place between customers and one of Polestar’s three current dealers.

For dealer partners, the brand has pulled from Volvo’s existing Canadian network, partnering with in Toronto with Grand Touring Automobiles; in Montreal with Automobiles Volta Laval; and in Vancouver with Gain Group.

Between the three locations, Polestar said it will be covering about 95 per cent of EV registrations in the country, at least for the short term.

With construction scheduled to wrap up before the end of 2022 on the new Montreal and Vancouver spaces, Bissonnette said those two stores are the current priorities, but the “door is open to expanding” in other regions of Canada in the future if warranted by market dynamics.