Author: Hu La Quan

Attracted by appearance, but fallen for the inner, people establish emotions towards all things in the world, and the process is generally like this.

Modern industrial design is conquered by the minimalist “less is more” ideology. From Apple to Braun, the classic minimalist design in the past few decades is widely acclaimed and remains the source of inspiration for designers. However, when minimalist, which was once non-mainstream, became mainstream, misunderstandings and deviations about the word have inevitably arisen.

If we only focus on appearance, it is easy to rudely understand minimalist design as cutting off anything that can be saved and smoothing everything that can be flattened. When this kind of thinking becomes extreme, it can lead to an opposite result of simplifying things just for the sake of simplicity, regardless of the practical essence. When such extreme practices are also interpreted as minimalism, minimalist design gradually becomes a superficial mystery.

If we pay attention to the famous Nordic design known for its simplicity, we will find that “simple” is never a simple task. Simplifying in one direction is of course easy, but it may lead to the wrong path of simplifying just for the sake of simplification. Those classic minimalist works are all balanced in both directions: this is a subtle position between “addition” and “subtraction”, not a superficial and simple removal.

Breaking out of the Narrowness of Discard and Eliminate

Rooted in Sweden, Polestar is a distinctive brand with its unique minimalist design as a signature feature since its inception. Since the Polestar 1 has created and established the design language for the Polestar family, the Polestar 2 has shown us a new interpretation of this minimalist style on a four-door car.

Polestar is a rare and new automotive brand with a current CEO who comes from a design background and therefore has higher regard for car body shapes. The exterior design of the Polestar 2 is mainly composed of pure straight lines, supporting clever transition surfaces. Their unique style blends boldness and low-keyness, highlighting a simple, quiet, and pure overall image.

Underneath the ultimate minimalist appearance, there is a high-strength and robust body that has won the ANCAP 5-star safety rating. The pursuit of design by Polestar 2 will never affect their preciousness towards the user’s life. Like the minimalist design, the safety is trustworthy, which is also a gene inherited by the Polestar brand.

The simplicity in overall dimensions does not mean dullness and coldness. The XC40 Recharge is full of pioneering spirit in addition to simplicity. The design department of XC40 Recharge has shown us what true minimalism really means, highlighting futuristic exquisite details everywhere. The design is not only simple and pure, but also satisfies the higher pursuit of functionality, which is well-balanced and well-placed.

A typical example is the XC40 Recharge’s unique borderless exterior mirror. The traditional exterior mirror shell is fixed and the viewing angle is adjusted by changing the angle of the internal lens. This structure is cumbersome but mature in reality. The XC40 Recharge creatively integrates the mirror lens and the shell of the exterior mirror into one, which requires the exterior mirror to be precisely adjustable to meet the needs of the lens field of view adjustment.

Is this kind of exception just for the sake of simplifying the structure and achieving a clean and minimal visual effect? Of course not. The borderless exterior mirror removes the space between the lens and the shell, allowing the mirror lens to maximize the area. Therefore, under the same lens area, the wind resistance can be smaller, and under the same wind resistance, the rearview mirror field of view can be larger. This is not simplifying for the sake of simplifying, but a win-win situation of aesthetics and practicality.

Therefore, Nordic-style minimalism is often easy to imitate but difficult to learn its essence, because it is not just a simple subtraction on the surface, but also a new thinking based on the internal and bottom-up.

The design journey of XC40 Recharge is still going on. Recently, XC40 Recharge has created a special XC40 Recharge “Arctic Circle Special Edition”. It is inspired by the winter ice and snow rally and is based on the XC40 Recharge dual-motor long-endurance version with high-performance kit modified. The vehicle height of the “Arctic Circle Special Edition” has been raised by 30 millimeters, equipped with custom 19-inch tires with 4-millimeter snow studs, and the shock absorbers and springs have been specially adjusted for ice and snow. The customized racing seats in the car add to the feeling of an ice rally car.

The front and rear adjustments to the 9th gear and the Öhlins three-stream valve shock absorber equipped with auxiliary lining adjustment are designed to adapt to the high-speed driving on ice and snow roads. The front and rear pillar support brackets in the car are designed to improve torsional stiffness and steering responsiveness. The powerful power of up to 350 kilowatts and 680 Newton meters of torque is designed to easily cope with ice and snow. The carbon fiber anti-skid board added to the front bumper provides additional bottom protection.The changes made to the “Polar Circle Special Edition” of the Polestar 2 are not redundant but rather the true essence of minimalism. Polestar has created this special edition to showcase its deep understanding of extreme cold environments and its pursuit of high-performance driving to meet diverse driving needs.

Minimalism from the inside out

For a Nordic brand like Polestar that embodies minimalism, simple and pure design is not the end goal, but rather the result of an inside-out approach.

Recently, Polestar announced a new car, the all-new electric 4-door GT coupe Polestar 5, featuring a white body structure. This new car will be built on the all-aluminum bonding platform developed by Polestar’s UK team, which will provide industry-leading performance, stiffness, and safety for the Polestar 5.

For modern cars, the white body is the backbone and foundation of the entire vehicle, directly determining the performance orientation and positioning level of a car model. Friends familiar with automotive technology should know that aluminum has always been one of the “luxury goods” among many body materials. Most automakers use aluminum in critical parts of the body, while all-aluminum bodies are rare due to their high cost and complex production process.

At Polestar’s R&D center in Coventry, England, more than 280 top engineers in the industry have developed a new all-aluminum bonding platform for the Polestar 5. Such a structure has faced the regret of unstable quality in mass production, but the engineers of the Polestar UK R&D team, with years of experience in small-batch customized high-end sports car engineering, have developed a brand-new manufacturing process that improves speed and overcomes quality stability issues.

Compared to the commonly used body material steel, aluminum has a density that is only about one-third of steel. Therefore, aluminum has always been considered an ideal lightweight body material. Thanks to the all-aluminum structure, the white body of the Polestar 5 is expected to weigh less than that of a smaller sedan, without compromising other aspects of the car’s body performance, including safety. As an all-electric model, a lighter white body weight means a lighter overall weight of the car, bringing a longer range and better performance.

At the same time, since aluminum parts can be cast creatively, they can achieve high structural stiffness at a very low weight. This all-aluminum platform of the Polestar 5 also uses a large amount of bonding technology. Due to the continuity of structural adhesives, this bonding technology can further improve the overall stiffness of the car’s structure. It is precisely relying on the all-aluminum material + bonding technology that the Polestar 5 will have torsional stiffness of the body far beyond that of traditional two-seater sports cars, even supercars.With the powerful support of the underlying structure, the appearance design can truly be free and designers have more space to unleash their creativity. It is precisely because of this that the appearance of the Polestar 5, inspired by the Precept concept car, can be almost completely reproduced in mass-produced cars.

Therefore, the minimalist aesthetic cannot be separated from the support of the engineering level. Polestar’s engineering and research department is also based on minimalism as its philosophy, using aluminum to build the body and platform of the Polestar 5, and has overcome engineering and manufacturing obstacles in simplicity, achieving high performance with a fully bonded aluminum platform. This engineering miracle supports the ultimate minimalist design we see.

Polestar has its own methodology for minimalism. In terms of design, it has reached beyond the ordinary and is about simplification rather than just decorating. At the brand level, minimalism has penetrated the brand’s genes and is not limited to design. The engineering team also uses minimalism as a guiding philosophy to advance engineering research and innovation.

Anyone can imitate minimalist designs, but it is easy to slip into the trap of oversimplification and increased complexity. The minimalist appearance is not difficult to depict, but supporting this beauty requires engineering strength. The biggest difference between Polestar and other brands is that its minimalist philosophy is rooted deep in the mind.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.