What is Polestar? Polestar is a car brand that owns a really unique brand and mission from Sweden. Polestar has been tuning workshops for Volvo before, but in 2016 Polestar started to create its own cars under their brand. Many people have said that it looks just like Volvo but it’s not. Polestar wants to build its own brand but there are many similarities when you compare Polestar to Volvo. That’s because they have been collaborating for a long time and they still do a lot of things together. Polestar’s CEO is Volvo’s present head of engineering and designer. Polestar released their first car Polestar 1 in 2016 which was a supercar. Now Polestar has grown, and they released their second car Polestar 2 which is a fully electric car and the price is more doable for normal people than Polestar 1. Polestar opened a new chapter in their journey by creating that full electric car at a really competitive price.

I had an opportunity to apply to work with this car brand. They were doing road show’s around Finland, and one place was Tampere. They wanted to let people have a chance to see and reserve possible time for a test drive. Polestar needed people to work in places where the cars are. The name of this role was test drive specialist. The main task was to go on test drives with a customer. Telling and explaining everything about the car. Also driving an electric car is quite new for many. There are some features normal cars don’t have. Eventually, I got chosen for this job, and I was super excited to start it.

Everything started with a one-week training. The training was held at Torni hotel in Tampere. The trainer was Polestar’s team leader from Helsinki. The training planned to go through Polestar’s brand, Polestar 2 the car, and how we must behave when presenting Polestar. The training also included a lot of driving. That way we got the touch and feel of the car. And we were able to share the feelings of the first touch to the car with the customers. The training week went by fast because Polestar was organized it really well, and they made it sound and look really interesting. After that week our 5 people team was ready to jump into real work. Polestar gave us nicely designed T-shirts and sweatshirts.

It was time to start the project. Everything was set in the shopping center Ratina. One car was droved inside on the stand, and three cars were in the parking garage full charged ready to test drives. Polestar did a lot of social media marketing via advertising and there was marketing video spinning on the screens around the shopping center. The first two weeks were fully booked. People had a lot of interest in Polestar as a brand and the car. We had 8 hour working days from Tuesday to Sunday. We all test drive specialists had one car that we took care of the whole day, and one stayed on the stand answering the questions people walked by asked. I also had a few shifts on the stand, and it was quite interesting to see how different approaches distinct people had towards the electric car. Some of them were very enthusiastic and excited about where driving culture is going. Also, I saw many people that came to the stand messing around and disturbing the environment, telling me that it’s not the right time for electric cars yet. Those people also described the electric cars as a scooter versus diesel engine cars. These situations were the best moments for learning. What to answer them?  How to not get frustrated? And how to continue with a positive attitude. For me, this was easy to manage because I was super excited about the project, and I trusted and believed the car. I just passed all the negative comments just smiled back at them and continued my day.

The project took 4 weeks. It started last week of July and ended last week of August. The last week was quieter than the first week. There were around 2-3 customers per car per day. We thought that this happened because people’s summer vacations ended. It was still nice to be there because if we didn’t have a reservation on our own car we were allowed to go drive around. The project gave me many tools for the future. I improved my customer service skills a lot. I am way more confident and spontaneous now while being with the customer. Also, I learned that getting deep knowledge of the product help a lot. I will always study everything about the product to be better in these situations. Polestar’s branding was admirable. How they do everything professionally and even small things they did it perfectly.  I also learned many things about electric cars. I had good knowledge of cars before, but e-cars were new. I definitely going to buy an electric car in the future when I have money for it. The prices are too high at the moment, but they are going to decrease because the competition in the field is incessant.