Polestar investors just can't catch a break.

Shares of the electric vehicle maker plunged on Thursday after the company reported first-half 2026 numbers. The snake-bit EV maker's problems just won't go away.

The company sold 30,423 cars in the first half of 2026, essentially flat with the 30,319 sold in the first half of 2025. Sales dropped 4% year over year to $1.4 billion. There isn't much of an analyst consensus to compare that number to. Only three analysts cover the stock. All three rate shares Sell.

Shares were down almost 29% in midday trading to $8.55, while the S&P 500 was up 1%. The decline left shares off about 74% over the past 12 months, and off about 98% from an all-time high of more than $400 a share reached in 2021.

If investors don't remember Polestar at $400, there's a good reason. The company did a 1-for-30 reverse stock split at the end of 2025.

The big problem with the results wasn't current sales. It was the guidance. Polestar now expects "low-to-mid single-digit volume growth from previous low double-digit volume growth."

One gale-force headwind is the U.S. The government won't allow it to sell 2027 model-year cars or newer vehicles in the U.S. The problem is Chinese software. Polestar and Volvo are both backed by Chinese auto maker Geely. A Commerce Department rule effectively bans cars that run software from China and Russia. (Volvo won an exemption.)

That's only the latest problem. Before the ban, Polestar faced 100% tariffs on its cars. The Polestar 2 and 3 were manufactured in China. To get around the tariffs, production of the 3 was moved to a Volvo plant in South Carolina in 2024. The new Polestar 4 is being manufactured in South Korea. A prudent move, but one that didn't help with the Commerce Department ruling.

Neither did changing U.S. policy. EV makers lost the $7,500 federal purchase tax credit about a year ago. That has depressed U.S. EV sales. Americans bought about 463,000 EVs in the first half of 2026, down 24% year over year. EVs accounted for less than 6% of new car sales in the first half of the year, down from a peak of more than 10% in the third quarter of 2025, before the credit expiration.

All of this turmoil happened as Polestar invested in its own distribution, adding overhead. Little has gone right for Polestar in the U.S.

To be sure, Polestar still sells in Europe and China and will likely work on a U.S. fix. Its woes, however, illustrate how difficult it has been for EV startups to gain traction. In 2023, about a year after the company raised capital in a SPAC merger, eight analysts covered the stock. Four rated shares at Buy. The average price target was north of $150. Back then, Wall Street projected 2026 sales of about $13 billion, with a small operating profit. Those numbers now look likely to come in at less than $4 billion and a loss of almost $1 billion.

It's one of the sadder car stories in recent history.