Polestar stops accepting custom Polestar 2 orders because demand is too high
Polestar’s online configurator is no longer accepting new custom Polestar 2 orders, and Polestar says that the reason is because demand is too high for its best-selling vehicle.
Polestar has been having a bit of a rough time lately. While the company’s sales were up 6% in 2023, that’s smaller growth than most of the EV industry has seen. In particular, Polestar’s Q4 numbers ticked down compared to Q3, despite first deliveries of a new model, the Polestar 4, happening in Q4.
Just today, the company received a significant blow as Volvo decided to sever its relationship with Polestar, which was originally spun off from Volvo. This leaves Polestar’s other partner, Geely, and of course Polestar itself, responsible for Polestar’s fate.
However, the Polestar 2 did just get a facelift, and deliveries of that started last quarter. This usually buoys sales of a vehicle line, and often leads to a dropoff in preceding quarters as customers wait for the new version of the car to come out. But between Q3 and Q4, that didn’t happen. Maybe Polestar hasn’t been able to scale production of the facelifted version quickly enough, or maybe customers were just not aware of the facelift, but it’s still odd to see a drop in the quarter that a facelift comes out.
So one might think that things are looking shaky for Polestar, but the company’s order website suggests otherwise.
In recent days, customers have apparently been unable to configure new custom Polestar 2 vehicles in the US. When attempting to do so, Polestar’s configurator website states:
Due to high demand, we are currently closed for new factory orders. Please explore our available cars to find the right one for you.
Then, you can click a button stating “check similar cars for fast delivery” to see whether there are any inventory vehicles which match your order.
Upon checking a few different configurations, there do seem to be a good amount of configurations available, at least in Southern california where I checked.
On the UK site, a slightly different error message appears. Certain configurations will say “Configuration not available for factory order. Compare your configuration with available cars,” but some other configurations show that “fast delivery is available” and give a timeline when selected. Either way, no mention of demand across the pond, even though the effect seems to be about the same.
This isn’t the first time this has happened with an EV, though. Lots of EVs end up getting a lot of preorders, to the point where companies shut down additional orders until they can work through the backlog. Tesla has done this several times in the past, here’s one example from 2022.
We reached out for additional comments, and a Polestar rep told us that it’s “temporary and not related to suppliers or production or anything like that”. So not a lot more detail there, but we do know that, currently, you can’t order a custom Polestar configuration, and will have to either wait until the configurator is reopened, or look for an inventory vehicle instead.
Electrek’s Take
This story is interesting given the constant (and incorrect) media narrative lately that “EV demand is down” – a phrase that was used even in another article we saw covering this very story about demand supposedly being too high for Polestar to fulfill.
This narrative is, in so many words, wrong. EV demand isn’t down, it’s up, and so are EV sales. In order to find any indication of slowing growth in EVs, you have to go to the second derivative of an EV sales chart. It would be more accurate to say that percentage growth of EV sales is lower now than it has been in the past, but that’s a natural result of the base number getting larger – 100 -> 1,000 is a 10x increase, but 1,000 -> 5,000 is merely a 5x increase, despite clearly being a much larger increase in raw volume.
Meanwhile, gas car sales actually are going down, and yet that narrative is not widely reported on. It looks like gas vehicle sales peaked at 2017 and will likely never recover to that level, while EV sales continue to rise.
However, there can be headwinds for certain individual brands (e.g. tax credit availability, NACS support coming but not yet implemented, supply disruptions, and so on). And Polestar is one of the brands that is growing more slowly than others lately, especially when it is relatively smaller in terms of deliveries, and therefore should have an easier time producing higher percentage growth than a larger company might (see the small/large number comparison above).
So it actually is strange to see this notification on Polestar’s website, given the company’s more modest recent growth. We’d like to understand a little more about what kind of numbers we’re dealing with here, but in absence of that it looks like shoppers will just have to scrounge around a bit for the time being to find a car close to what they want.
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Solar panel giant Qcells announced today that it’s temporarily furloughing 1,000 US workers – 25% of its workforce – and reducing pay and shifts at its factories in northeast Georgia due to supply chain delays caused by US Customs.
Qcells furloughs 1,000 workers
The supply chain delays are hindering the company’s ability to import components to build its solar panels. This has resulted in Qcells’ two factories in Cartersville and Dalton being unable to operate at full capacity for several months.
Qcells spokeswoman Marta Stoepker shared the following statement in an exclusive with Channel 2 Action News in Atlanta:
The company says the furloughed workers, who were notified this afternoon, will retain full benefits and won’t be laid off. However, Qcells will no longer be using staffing agency employees in Georgia “at this time.”
As Qcells introduced new supply chains to support its growing solar panel manufacturing facilities in Georgia, the company was recently forced to scale back production while our shipments into the US were delayed in the customs clearance process.
Although our supply chain operations are beginning to normalize, today we shared with our employees that HR actions must be taken to improve operational efficiency until production capacity returns to normal levels.
Stoepker said it expects to bring the furloughed workers back “in the coming weeks and months.” She continued:
Our commitment to building the entire solar supply chain in the United States remains. We will soon be back on track with the full force of our Georgia team delivering American-made energy to communities around the country.
Electrek’s Take
In January 2023, the Seoul-headquartered Qcells announced it would invest more than $2.5 billion to build a solar supply chain in Georgia – the largest-ever investment in clean energy manufacturing in the US to date. That included expanding the Dalton solar factory and building a fully integrated solar supply chain factory in Cartersville, Georgia, that will manufacture solar ingots, wafers, cells, and finished panels.
It’s not quite there yet, because that takes time. In the meantime, it’s being penalized by Customs. The US government under Trump says it’s keen on boosting domestic manufacturing. Why would it work against a company that’s onshoring an entire solar supply chain, including recycling?
Dalton and Cartersville employ nearly 4,000 people. Its total output will reach 8.4 GW of solar production capacity per year, which is equivalent to nearly 46,000 panels per day – enough to power approximately 1.3 million homes annually.
It’s ludicrous that it has been forced to furlough a quarter of its workforce due to the ineptness of the Trump administration’s US Customs policies. This is right up there with the ICE arrests at Hyundai’s plant in Georgia. Bravo.
Read more: Georgia gives US solar panel manufacturing a big boost with a new factory
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The breakthrough EV batteries Toyota says will double driving range and cut charging times are facing another setback. The company is once again delaying plans for a new battery plant in Japan.
Why is Toyota delaying its EV battery plant this time?
Earlier this year, Toyota bought a 280,000-square-meter plot of land in Fukuoka, Japan, where it planned to build a plant to produce the more advanced EV batteries.
A location agreement was expected to be signed by April, but Toyota pushed back construction by several months, blaming slower-than-expected demand for electric vehicles.
The agreement was expected to be finalized this Fall, but that will no longer be the case. According to Nikkei, Toyota is delaying the EV battery plant for the second time. Toyota will review and adjust plans over the next year.
Fukuoka governor, Seitaro Hattori, confirmed the news with reporters on Friday following a meeting with Toyota’s president, Koji Sato. Hattori also shut down claims that Toyota was planning to scrap the battery plant altogether.
Toyota again blamed slowing EV demand for the delay. The decision comes despite Keiji Kaita, president of Toyota’s Carbon Neutral Advanced Engineering Development Center, confirming at the Japan Mobility Show just last week that it’s “sticking on the schedule” to introduce its first solid-state battery-powered EV by 2028.
Last month, Toyota said it aimed to “achieve the world’s first practical use of all-solid-state batteries in BEVs” after securing a partnership with Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. to mass-produce them. It’s also working with Japanese oil giant Idemitsu.
The company recently revealed a solid-state battery pack prototype that it claims can deliver 747 miles (1,200 km) range and 10-minute fast charging, but will we ever see it actually in production?
Electrek’s Take
Toyota has been making empty promises about EV batteries for almost a decade now. It initially planned to introduce solid-state EV batteries in 2020, then pushed it to 2023, then 2026, and now it’s saying it will be around 2028.
Mass production is likely closer to the end of the decade, if Toyota doesn’t delay it again. While it’s blaming the slowing demand, global EV sales are still on the rise. According to Rho Motion, global EV sales topped 2 million for the first time in a single month in September 2025. Through the first nine months of the year, EV sales are up 26% compared to the same period in 2024.
Even with the US ending the $7,500 federal tax credit and other policies designed to promote electric vehicles, global adoption will continue building momentum over the next few years.
Is it a demand issue, or is Toyota just looking for another excuse? With rivals like Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, BMW, and Honda advancing next-gen EV batteries, Toyota will only fall further behind if it continues delaying key projects.
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