Can Electric Cars Really Be Environmentally Sustainable?

Polestar’s head of sustainability Fredrika Klarén loves cars – and the planet. She explains to Lisa Grainger why living well and living responsibly don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Here’s something appealingly honest about Fredrika Klarén. Unlike many so-called ‘sustainability experts’ who are adept at fudging truths, there’s no odour
of bulls**t wafting about the 47-year-old Swede – even if she knows what she has to say might be tricky. For instance, she loves cars: the design, the speed, the freedom they give her. ‘I want to live a full life,’ the head of sustainability for Polestar says passionately, over Zoom, from her office in Gothenburg. ‘I don’t want to compromise.’

What she won’t compromise on, though, is allowing her actions to affect the health of the planet detrimentally. In 2016, she and her husband wrote a climate plan for their lives, installing solar panels, reducing consumption of meat, buying secondhand and flying as a family only once a year. They held off buying a boat to get to their summer house until this year, when they found an engine which ran on bio-fuel. And when their daughter wanted to get her driving licence, they ruled out lessons with a manual gear stick because they didn’t want her driving a fossil-fuelled engine – although that means, Klarén says resignedly rolling her eyes, ‘that I’m having to share my car!’

The Future Of Electric Cars

Given the number of cars on the planet – currently about 1.5 billion, or a car for every five people – the need for electric vehicles (EVs) is greater than ever. Vehicle emissions still account for over 15 percent of greenhouse gases, and at the last COP summit, delegates had to admit there was probably no hope of preventing global temperatures rising beyond 1.5°C by 2030. Al Gore, she says, put it well when he stated they’d hit ‘an inflection point for EV sales – and now they had to accelerate’. But it wasn’t fast enough. ‘In Norway now, every car sold is electric. And that’s what we all need to do.’

Surprisingly, Britain is Polestar’s primary market – the carmaker has just sold its 50,000th EV here. Others are ‘China, of course; Norway, Sweden – and Ethiopia, which I think will ban fossil-fuelled cars by 2030’. China’s acceleration to a green economy is extraordinary, she says. ‘China is beating everyone else.’ In 2025, for the first time, it will have reduced its emissions, she explains, ‘because they locked themselves into a wind economy and have built an industry, infrastructure and policies around the green electrification of the country’. The benefits to Polestar of having Chinese owners – the Geely Holding Group – she adds, are enormous because they’re so far ahead. ‘So in innovation and tech, we should all take note.’

When the company started up, its ambition was to make a car by 2030 that was carbon neutral. Every year they make progress: the latest Polestar 4 has the lowest carbon impact of any of its cars to date, at 19.4 tonnes CO2e. Unlike many manufacturers, Klarén adds, every Polestar EV comes with a report that shows its carbon footprint; each of its 50,000 parts is made by suppliers governed by a strict code of conduct and audited; and the purchase of risk minerals is certified using blockchain traceability. The upholstery on the next Polestar 5 – a luxury grand tourer, released in summer 2026 – will be made of cutting-edge natural fabrics, from flax. And that, Klarén says, customers love. ‘If it’s a material they can see, touch and even pick, they get so engaged and proud.’

And making customers care is key to the transformation of our planet, she believes. At COP25, it became apparent that governments weren’t going to make the decisions we need to. ‘So it is basically business that will save the day – and citizens. We can make it happen.’