Polestar 4 will be built in Korea, with potential US-China trade war implications
Polestar has announced that its upcoming Polestar 4 EV will be contract manufactured in a factory in Busan, Korea. Heretofore, Polestar’s vehicles have been assembled in China.
We’re at Polestar Day in Santa Monica today, where the company is showcasing its future plans to media, investors and owners. For more news from the day, check out our Polestar Day News Hub.
On yesterday’s earnings call, Polestar mentioned that progress was being made on new manufacturing plants for its upcoming cars. The Polestar 3, for example, will be built in factories in Chengdu, China and in South Carolina, USA, with both of these factories coming online in 2024.
But it also mentioned that a “new non-China plant” was in the works, though Polestar did not elaborate on that yet.
Well, less than 24 hours later we now know where that plant will be – the port city of Busan, South Korea, the second most populous city in the country and site of one of the world’s largest ports.
But this isn’t a new plant – it’s an already-existing plant owned by Renault Korea Motors (RKM). The plant is Renault’s largest in Asia, and will build the Polestar 4 for the North American and domestic South Korean markets. It’s the first battery EV to be built in the plant.
Polestar has so far focused on contract manufacturing, rather than building its own plants. It calls this an “asset-light” approach, which it says “enables it to benefit from the competence, flexibility and scalability of its partners and major shareholders, without needing to invest in its own facilities.” Polestar has no Polestar-only plants, all Polestars are built in plants on a contract basis.
Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath said that RKM shares Polestar’s vision for sustainability and touted Polestar’s global footprint and ambitions:
We’re very happy to take the next step in diversifying our manufacturing footprint together with Geely Holding and Renault Korea Motors, a company that shares our focus on quality and sustainability. With Polestar 3 on-track to start production in Chengdu, China in early 2024 and in South Carolina, USA, in the summer of 2024, we will soon have manufacturing operations in five factories, across three countries, supporting our global growth ambitions.”
Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar CEO
RKM’s CEO also commented on the new partnership:
Polestar 4 will be the first full battery electric vehicle produced in the Busan plant, symbolising Renault Korea Motors renewal and our ambitious vision for the future. We are very proud of this new partnership and grateful to the Polestar brand for their trust.
Stéphane Deblaise, CEO of Renault Korea Motors
Korea is an interesting choice, because it does have implications for the US. Right now the US and China are in a gradually expanding trade war, and it’s affecting electric vehicles. The EV tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act include limitations on battery component and critical mineral sourcing, primarily focusing on increasing US domestic assembly of EVs and EV battery components, but also wanting to source minerals from US free trade countries – which Korea is one of, and China is decidedly not.
This has caused rankling with some of the US’ trade allies, with Korea being one of the main objectors to the rule. While Korean minerals qualify under the rule, cars that are assembled in Korea are not. The Korean auto industry has been doing well in terms of US EV sales with E-GMP platform cars like the excellent Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6, and the tax credit changes represented a blow to that industry.
Korea did push for a different interpretation of the tax credit rules, which the IRS eventually accepted. This means EVs assembled overseas can bypass basically every tax credit requirement by leasing, since a lease is counted as a commercial sale, which is covered by a different portion of the Inflation Reduction Act that doesn’t include the protectionist manufacturing requirements. Polestar does currently pass-through the credit for those who lease a vehicle rather than purchase it, though the company routinely claims that the deal is for a limited time only (before routinely pushing back that deadline).
So even if Korean manufacturing could help the Polestar 4 meet the mineral requirements of the law, the car still won’t qualify for purchase tax credits because it’s assembled overseas. But if the trade war expands further from here, building outside of China might help keep things more stable for the company.
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Just after Tesla launched its ‘Full Self-Driving’ package, in China, the country announced that it cracking down on automated driving features with new limitations.
In February, Tesla launched a first version of its “Full Self-Driving” FSD package in China for owners with the latest “Hardware 4.0”, or “HW4”, vehicles.
Most of the features under Tesla’s FSD package have been limited to North America due to Tesla training its system for this market first and due to regulatory limitations in other markets.
Shortly after Tesla launched FSD in China, the American automaker had to pause its rollout due to updated requirements from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
Now, MIIT has confirmed that it held a meeting with automotive industry stakeholders yesterday, and it has further clarified the rollout of advanced driver assistance (ADAS) features.
CNEV reported on the meeting:
Car companies were asked to refrain from using words like “self-driving,” “autonomous driving,” “smart driving,” “advanced smart driving,” and instead use the term “combined assisted driving” to avoid misleading consumers, according to the minutes of the meeting.
Tesla had already changed the name from ‘Full Self-Driving’ to “Intelligent Assisted Driving” following the launch in China.
Based on a statement from MIIT, the meeting focused on enforcing the previously announced updated requirements that launched right after Tesla introduced FSD in China (translated from Chinese):
The meeting emphasized that automobile manufacturers must deeply understand the requirements of the “Notice”, fully carry out combined driving assistance testing and verification, clarify the system functional boundaries and safety response measures, and must not make exaggerations or false propaganda. They must strictly fulfill their obligation to inform, and truly assume the main responsibility for production consistency and quality safety, and truly improve the safety level of intelligent connected vehicle products.
Regulators want automakers to reduce the frequency of new software updates and instead focus on extended testing before releasing new updates.
The last few months have been quite chaotic for ADAS systems in China. Along with Tesla’s FSD release, several Chinese companies released their systems, including BYD, Xiaomi, and Huawei.
Xiaomi reported a fatal accident in which its ADAS system was active just seconds before the crash, and Tesla owners using FSD racked up thousands of dollars in fines due to FSD making mistakes.
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The Global Payments Company logo seen displayed on a smartphone.
Igor Golovniov | LightRocket | Getty Images
Global Payments shares tumbled 17% on Thursday after the company said it’s buying Worldpay for more than $24 billion while simultaneously selling its Issuer Solutions business to Fidelity National Information Services.
The company said that in acquiring Worldpay, which FIS had purchased in 2019 before later selling a majority stake, it’s expanding its reach and will be able to serve over 6 million customers across more than 175 countries, enabling $3.7 trillion in annual payment volume.
In selling its Issuer Solutions unit to FIS for $13.5 billion, Global Payments is divesting a unit for back-end financial processing that’s long been viewed as a stable provider of growth. In the end, Global Payments is going bigger in providing payments services to merchants, while FIS is focusing on issuer processing.
FIS bought Worldpay for about $35 billion in 2019 and sold most of its stake last year to GTCR.
Global Payments said on Thursday that it obtained committed bridge financing and plans to issue $7.7 billion of debt “to replace the bridge commitment and refinance Worldpay’s outstanding debt.”
Global Payments CEO Cameron Bready called it a “defining day,” and said the transaction gives the company “significantly expanded capabilities, extensive scale, greater market access and an enhanced financial profile.”
But Wall Street was less enthusiastic. While the acquisition gives Global Payments a larger footprint in payment processing, analysts at Mizuho described it as a strategic step backward.
Mizuho reiterated its neutral rating on the stock, warning that “the business could be seeing more meaningful margin pressure than investors acknowledge.” The analysts wrote that FIS won the trade, getting the “crown jewel” with Global Payments getting “more of the same.”
FIS shares rose more than 8% on Thursday.
Both deals are expected to close in the first half of 2026, pending regulatory approval.
The Tesla Cybertruck is in crisis. The automaker is still sitting on a ton of old inventory, which it is now heavily discounting, and it is throttling down production to try to avoid building up the inventory again.
When launching the production version of the Cybertruck in late 2023, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed that the vehicle program would reach 250,000 units a year in 2025:
“I think we’ll end up with roughly a quarter million Cybertrucks a year, but I don’t think we’re going to reach that output rate next year. I think we’ll probably reach it sometime in 2025.”
We are now in 2025, and Tesla is expected to currently be selling the Cybertruck at a rate of about 25,000 units a year – a tenth of what Musk predicted.
Earlier this month, we reported that Tesla began the second quarter with 2,400 Cybertrucks in inventory, valued at over $200 million.
This is a real problem for Tesla as many of those Cybertrucks are older 2024 model year units not eligible for the federal tax credit, and even some ‘Foundation Series’, which Tesla stopped building in October 2024 – meaning that Tesla is sitting on some 6-month-old trucks in some cases.
Tesla is now offering deeper discounts on the new inventory of Cybertrucks. The discounts can go as high as $10,000, but the average one is closer to $8,000, which is more than the tax credit:
Despite Tesla’s efforts, the automaker has only reduced its Cybertruck inventory by about 100 units since the beginning of the month.
Tesla is now further throttling down production of the Cybertruck at Gigafactory Texas, according to a new report from Business Insider.
According to two Tesla workers speaking with BI, the automaker has reduced its Cybertruck production teams and now operates at a fraction of its original capacity. It also moved some Cybertruck production workers to Model Y production at the plant.
One of the workers said:
“It feels a lot like they’re filtering people out. The parking lot keeps getting emptier.”
As we previously reported, Tesla has been operating all its factories at approximately 60% capacity to avoid building up excessive inventory amid lower demand.
When it comes to the Cybertruck program, it sounds like Tesla is lowering production even further.
Last week, Tesla launched a new version of the Cybertruck in an attempt to boost demand, but it has been poorly received due to the automaker’s removal of many essential features.
Electrek’s Take
There are a lot of other automakers that would have already given up on the Cybertruck ith these results, but not Tesla. Musk is not one to admit defeat easily.
However, Tesla is running out of options.
The new Cybertruck RWD was a desperate attempt, and I doubt it will work. Now, it sounds like Tesla is further throttling down production – virtually confirming that the new trim didn’t help.
The next step would be a complete production pause.
Again, I don’t think Musk wants to admit defeat, but at some point, it’s inevitable.
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