Editor's Note
The century-old automobile industry is undergoing great changes, and the wave of automobile intelligence has fully invaded all corners of the industrial chain. In the field of new energy vehicles, new car-making forces have emerged, and more and more traditional car companies have opened up "secondary entrepreneurship" to incubate new brands of intelligent electric vehicles eager to overtake in curves. At the same time, xiaomi, Baidu, 360 and other technology giants have joined the car-making army, which is called the advent of the new car-making 2.0 era.
New forces, traditional car companies and crossovers are fighting each other, and the new year will become the first year of the intelligent electric vehicle war. On December 15th, the 2021 WISE Future Mobility Summit was grandly opened, and dozens of car industry leaders gathered together to talk about the future.
The following is a transcript of the speech of Nathan Fochau, President of Polestar China and Asia Pacific, and edited by Future Automotive Daily.
Distinguished guests, good morning. I'm Nathan Fochau and it's a great honor to meet you today at the WISE Future of Mobility Summit 2021.
This is an exciting and challenging time for the electric vehicle industry. The growing demand for electric vehicles is gradually becoming mainstream. We believe electric vehicles offer a real path to achieving zero carbon emissions, but it's not perfect at the moment. Building an electric car should not be an end point, but a new starting point.
Recently, some car companies signed a zero-emission declaration, planning to phase out fossil fuel vehicles by 2035-2040. This means that in the second half of this century, car use will still pollute the environment.
At present, some manufacturers continue to invest in the development of gasoline and diesel power systems, rather than developing innovative solutions to truly achieve environmental carbon neutrality. This also slows down the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
The electric vehicle industry needs to be radically transformed. The production of electric vehicles is just the beginning, and how to establish a climate-neutral supply chain, a recycling approach, and a circular economy also need to be concerned. Electric vehicles are a good start and a way to achieve climate neutrality. But now electric vehicles have not yet achieved clean production and use from start to finish.
To accelerate the shift to climate neutrality, the automotive industry needs to set a more elusive and bold goal to reverse the emissions curve over the next decade.
As an independent brand, we have set our own goal of producing a truly climate-neutral car by 2030 and becoming a truly climate-neutral car company by 2040, with our emphasis on climate neutrality encompassing four important aspects: traceability, recyclability, inclusion and transparency.
To that end, we launched the Polestar 0 program, the Polestar Polar Zero Carbon Program, which was announced six months ago and led by electrification legend Hans Pehrson. At present, the project has entered the first phase. We want to achieve this plan without carbon offsetting, which means reducing carbon emissions throughout the supply chain and manufacturing.
Polestar strictly controls the use of materials, manufacturing, recycling and other aspects, and comes up with a data: when a Polestar 2 leaves the production center, it has a carbon footprint of 25-27 tons, which is lower than that of the same level of fuel vehicles.
As Fredrika Klaren, Polar Star's sustainability officer, puts it: "We are committed to achieving zero emissions from production, and if clean energy is charged, the carbon emissions generated by the life cycle of electric vehicles will be less than half that of similar fuel vehicles." ”
We need to use cleaner global hybrid energy sources as much as possible on the road to true climate neutrality and reduce the data on carbon emissions from production processes to zero. We also want to work with our suppliers and OEMs to achieve visibility into the carbon footprint supply chain. If it can't be measured, it can't be managed effectively. For consumers, without enough right to know, they cannot make more informed choices.
Previously, many brands and car manufacturers were reluctant to disclose information such as decarbonization methods and technologies. Starting with Polestar 2, we publish data on everything from cradle to factory in car production, and we use blockchain to track the mining of cobalt elements, and we have obtained LEED Gold certification from the global green building assessment system. Secondly, material use and recycling are extremely important, and in our Polestar concept car, the Precept, a range of renewable materials are used: we worked with Bcomp to replace plastics with flax, which can reduce plastic usage by about 85%.
We believe that in the new era of electrification, the new, creative materials we use will redefine the new luxury.
Sustainability has become the key to every business model and a prerequisite for long-term success. With global warming, we should challenge ourselves and challenge the entire industry in the pursuit of zero emissions. I invite everyone to join us and embark on a journey of zero carbon, thank you!
