When it comes to planning your career, for those with a keen eye on sustainability you'd be forgiven for presuming you should swerve the car industry altogether. After all, it's widely reported that around 10% of all carbon emissions come from transport, with over 30% of that being emitted solely by cars.
Now consider that career-planning exclusively from the perspective of a woman; one who not only believes in gender equality but who thinks it's imperative to push female empowerment within the workplace. Would working in the automotive industry be top of your list of options? Would it even be in the top ten?
On International Women's Day, we caught up with Fredrika Klarén, Polestar's Head of Sustainability, to learn all about the highs and lows of working in such a carbon emission-producing, male-dominated industry as a climate-conscious businesswoman…
'Sustainability' isn't a word often associated with cars. How would you most simply sum up the Polestar brand's mission within the industry?
We are a young electric vehicle brand and we were founded in such a significant time when we know - the data and the science is clearly telling us - that so many things are going the wrong way. We are in a rampant climate crisis, we have an unprecedented rate of biodiversity loss with growing inequalities around the world. But, from Polestar’s perspective, what we see is that we can stand for very impactful solutions - especially to the climate crisis. Electric vehicles are one of these solutions. If you as a customer today choose an electric vehicle over a fossil fuel car, you can more than half your climate impact from that choice.
But, what we also know at Polestar and what we stand for, is that electrification is just the beginning. This is really an opportunity for our industry to help shape a new way of working that is much more transparent and inclusive, where we build on circular practices and business models.
In such a typically male-dominated, carbon emission-producing industry, what have been some of the biggest hurdles you've faced as a female Head of Sustainability within this space?
I have to say that I don’t see that many obstacles being a female in a company like Polestar, but I know that my perspective is not the same as most women who are working in the automotive industry. At Polestar we have a high share of women in our workforce. Last year I think women counted for almost 30% of the workforce, with 8% gender neutral, so we have come a bit further than the rest of the industry and I think that is what is shaping my experience now .
Have you always been interested in cars, or was it the sustainability angle that really drew you to the company?
I was actually brought up on a car-free island outside of Gothenburg, so I’m more likely to be interested in boats if you look at my family history. I worked in fashion and furniture before, and I didn’t have experience in the car industry before joining Polestar but as a consumer I’ve seen the impact of cars.
My husband and I took the decision to go for electric vehicles around ten years ago as a way to reduce our carbon emissions from our lifestyle and that was such an impactful thing for me, both in terms of choosing a more sustainable option for our transportation needs but also because I learned so much about the electric vehicle technology. It is time-saving for me - I’m able to charge at home - and also a great driving experience. I love driving an EV much more than a fossil fuel car, so I got really nerdy when it came to EVs.
I had also come to a point in my career when I'd had a lot of experience working in companies with a lot of heritage, very robust organisations working to really do a turn-around in terms of their business models, so I really wanted to take that opportunity and help build a new, young organisation - and also work with a very clear climate solution - and the EV technology is one of the most powerful that we have in the world, and I really wanted to help bring that to the global market and accelerate the adoption of that.
Do you have any advice for other women who would love to get involved in the industry - or any such industry - but are daunted by its perceived 'male dominance'?
When we look into the challenges that we have in terms of inclusion - and specifically when it comes to gender equality within our organisation - we see that the problem is actually not about attracting women.
If you look at the engineering schools around the world today, we are seeing so many female engineers coming up, so this perception that we have a challenge when it comes to attracting females to these occupations that we have, engineers, designers and so on, that’s not true anymore. It’s more of a retention challenge that we have.
So my advice for any women wanting to work in the car industry, or the tech industry, is to really go for it as long as you know that this is your passion and this is what you are skilled within, you should really take the step to become a member of this industry.
Of course, as a woman you will come into situations where you are affected by bias, by discriminating practices that are still in place for example when it comes to pay gaps and so on, so I really want you to be prepared to raise your voice and to really fight for your rights in some areas. But if this is what you want to do and you know that this is where your passion lies go for it full on, don’t look back, and help shape the industry going forward in terms of equality and sustainability.
Have you ever felt pressure - either from yourself or from others - being such a successful woman within this industry, and how have you overcome that?
I am constantly challenged, but I think that it’s more due to the fact that I work with sustainability and I have a lot of wishes and requirements within myself to keep progressing in terms of sustainability performance for the companies that I work at. The work is not done, so clearly we have so much left to do.
I have a colleague with a dark sense of humour who said the other day that if you haven’t been burnt out at some point in your career working with sustainability then you’re not doing it right. That is of course a very bleak statement, but there is some truth to it! We are working with kind of impossible challenges, and setting a high bar in that context can really push you into having too much negative pressure on yourself.
So to me it’s really been about celebrating the successes that we have, being really willing to acknowledge the fact that I don’t know everything and I have to learn a lot of new stuff, and really taking the time to reaffirm to myself why I’m doing this and why I love working in sustainability, and also creating a team of people who support each other is so important as well.
We understand you like to live your personal life as sustainably as possible, too. What practical advice do you have for people keen to make a more positive contribution to our planet but who feel overwhelmed by the enormity of the climate crisis.
For me, I really try to ensure that I use my power as a consumer, and that I really think about how I consume but also what I consume. Making that switch, because it’s possible for me, from fossil fuel cars to EVs has really given me a sense of being able to take action, a sense of empowerment in my everyday life.
I try to do that in all of the ways that I consume things; when I go to buy groceries, when I buy clothes for my kids and so on, I try to be a very mindful consumer and ask for solutions that are more sustainable.
I would advise others to really use that power, because having worked in companies providing consumer goods for many many years I know how impactful it is when a customer asks you for information around the sustainability credentials of a product, or if consumers really show that they would love to support a more sustainable version of this product. You can do that when you go into stores, by asking curious questions or when you are online trying to find information about a product.
What's next for Polestar, and what are the brand's key goals over the next 10 years?
We have a line-up now of Polestar 2, 3 and 4 that are coming to consumers, and for those of course a very important thing for us has been to reduce the carbon footprint.
On Polestar 2, which has been on the market since 2020, we have been able to shave off 3 tonnes in 3 years from the production-related emissions through being very focused on what we know is having a big impact. We are also taking that to Polestar 3 and Polestar 4, and we delivered a life-cycle assessment on Polestar 4 showing that this is our car with the smallest carbon footprint.
We’re focusing a lot on the interior materials in the car, we as a luxury brand, want to really stand for something new when it comes to premium materials. We think the days are gone for these old, thick, glossy wooden panels, or thick leather materials, or what you associate with premium cars traditionally. We think moving forward luxury customers are really looking for innovative solutions that are more sustainable.
Within the next ten years we are really working on our climate roadmap as a company, and one of our flagship missions for that is the Polestar Zero project. We have set a moonshot target for ourselves to try to deliver a climate neutral car by 2030.
This is because we know that there are so many solutions that we can use as an industry today to cut emissions, but after 2030 - when we have to have transition plans to reach for net zero - really ensuring that in our supply chains we have no greenhouse gas emissions - that’s where the solutions are lacking still.
‘Sustainable’ labels can actually mean anything but…
The Polestar Zero project should come up with materials and technologies for how to produce a climate neutral car by 2030, so that we can scale that up and meet our net zero target which is in 2040 for our company and we’re seeing a lot of other car companies setting the same type of target.
This project is so much bigger than Polestar, it really is needing the industry to come together and work together to solve this problem.
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