Polestar has announced the launch of its 2024 Design Contest in collaboration with Mattel’s Hot Wheels brand. Begun in 2020, the Polestar Design Contest challenges aspiring professional and student designers to create exciting visions in line with the Polestar brand and design. Since the first contest, the competition has highlighted top talent around the world, with many of the students going on to work for the Polestar Design team or in the wider design industry.

This year’s brief invites designers for submissions weaving Polestar’s design DNA into their vision of the ultimate Hot Wheels collectible. The winning design is planned to become part of the Hot Wheels offering, available for purchase globally, as the first Hot Wheels x Polestar vehicle to be produced as part of a wider partnership with Polestar production models.

“Dreams have the power to inspire and transport us beyond what we thought possible,” said Maximilian Missoni, Polestar’s Head of Design. “This is a chance for all participating designers to really push that Polestar envelope and let their imagination run riot.”

Entrants are encouraged to be as imaginative as possible and push the boundaries of vehicle design in their submissions. The only requirement is that Mattel should be able to translate the design into a 1:64 Hot Wheels diecast vehicle, and visuals showing the vehicle’s interior design and immediate surroundings should be included as part of the submission.

“The Hot Wheels design team has always challenged the conventional approach, and the Polestar Design Contest allows the design community to showcase their skills and wow us with something we have never seen before,” said Ted Wu, VP and Global Head of Vehicle Design, Mattel.

In the spirit of the competition’s history of collaboration, entrants shortlisted ahead of the final selection—by both Polestar and Hot Wheels designers—will be coached one-on-one by Polestar’s design team to refine their submitted designs towards final selection.

“I believe this year’s Hot Wheels collaboration will push the design community to work outside of their traditional comfort zones by balancing the minimalist Polestar brand essence with the extreme Hot Wheels aesthetic,” said Juan Pablo Bernal, Senior Interior Design Manager at Polestar, Founder of the Polestar Design Contest, and curator of the @polestardesigncommunity Instagram account. “But while we’re expecting some of the most extreme submissions yet, we don’t expect to be any less inspired by the quality, quantity, and diversity of entries we receive.”

The competition opens for entries on March 5th and the submission deadline is April 16th. The jury panel includes Polestar’s Missoni and Bernal as well as Sam Livingstone, Founder and Director, of Car Design Research Ltd. The shortlist will consist of 20 finalists. Polestar expects to reveal the winner of the contest in Q4 2024.

Since its inception, the Polestar Design Contest has featured a variety of vehicles and concepts. The designs have included a car that tackles local pollution with onboard and externally visible air filters and, beyond cars, with an electric-and-helium airship, prosthetic springboard blades to aid walking, and the KOJA micro-space tree house by designer Kristian Talvitie that was shown in full scale at the Fiskars Village Art & Design Biennale in Finland.

The competition’s history of collaboration was on full display with the 2023 Polestar Synergy concept car, the single-seat electric supercar being a joint effort of the three design winners.

Student designer Devashish Deshmukh created the Polestar Lynx P3 high-performance EV for track use. The exterior design was notable for its hollowed-out volumes, made possible by the lack of a large combustion engine and associated cooling components, which would aid its aerodynamic performance, which is increasingly important when creating more sustainable cars. Deshmukh says his design takes inspiration from the hammerhead shark in its raised narrow front fenders, which combines with LiDAR sensors and associated ADAS and digital technologies on its roof.

Central to the exterior design by student Swapnil Desai is the idea of the “emotional durability” that can be seen in its simple geometry, the consideration of materials that age gracefully over time, and its celebration of aging via its clock-like age-in-years counter display. With incorporated recording of in-car experiences, and “technical upgradability,” this “super-low performance car” is designed to be timeless in several ways to increase its sustainability.

Interior designer Yingxiang Li provided a new type of performance experience of “floating, comfort, and control” in a two-seat interior featuring a single-hand control in place of a steering wheel with support from the car’s driving systems, just as a camera stabilizer enhances the control a user has over a camera. Gesture control is used when the car is stationary. The way the simple and calm forms sit within an inviting interior is further enhanced with bucket seats and a Swedish gold harness to hold the driver and passenger in place when driving at speed.

Selected from over 600 initial entries, they spent six months working with Polestar’s design team to turn their three designs into one cohesive reality with the Synergy concept. Realized in full scale by HOTE Studio für Produktdesign GmbH, the concept debuted at the 2023 IAA Mobility show in Munich followed by Mattel’s Hot Wheels Legends Tour stop in El Segundo, CA.

For more information on the 2024 Polestar Design Contes, visit https://www.polestar.com/global/polestar-design-contest/2024/.