It will come as a shock to no-one that he worked for the VW Group from 2001 through 2006 in top design positions before joining the Volvo group.
Here is our two minute brief biography video of Thomas Ingenlath:
Thomas Ingenlath, was the Senior Vice President of Design for Volvo, when on June 2017 the company announced that its performance brand, Polestar, was transforming into a separate company focusing exclusively on high performance electric cars and that Ingenlath would become its CEO and Chief Design Officer. Now, to be clear, when Volvo says “high performance” they mean Model 3 high performance; neither Volvo nor Polestar make hypercars.
Given that Volvo is an established global automotive player, a style trend setter and the fact that Volvo proper will stop making gas powered vehicles by 2025, this makes Mr. Ingenlath a big player in the future of EV’s.
His primary role is to develop enough attractive EV’s to fight Tesla. Even though Polestars will be very low volume (no more than 50,000 units per year), he does not want the cars to look like a science project.
“We think that this design will convince people that it was made by people who know what they’re doing” SOURCE
He also knows that many consumers wrongly believe the EV’s are favor negatively to gas vehicles in the race to reduce CO2 and that light is the best disinfectant. He is pushing for
“…greater transparency over vehicles’ total CO2 footprints…” and expects “…net zero manufacturing as a possibility in the next decade.” SOURCE
He came in at number 30 in this years Motor Trend Power List Top 50.
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