Polestar, Volvo’s high-end performance EV brand—and heir apparent—has had, until this year, two models to offer. Both the Polestar 1 and Polestar 2 are powerful and pretty additions to the electric passenger vehicle world, high-performance cars with green souls.

In declaring Polestar the eventual replacement for Volvo itself, Volvo has shown itself perhaps the bravest automaker in the world; the change is coming, like it or not, and for Volvo there simply are no half-measures. There’s the road of preparation, and the road of willful ignorance or avoidance. One leads to a decidedly sunnier destination.

Which brings us to the concept Polestar revealed just ahead of its debut at the upcoming Geneva Auto Show: this is a prototypical Polestar, even as it follows the Polestar 1’s entrance into the automotive world collective consciousness by over two years.

The Polestar press release declares the concept—aptly called the Precept—a ‘clear expression of intent’; if that is so, then Volvo is not only the toughest automaker on the planet, it’s also the most optimistic. No defeatist, cynical pandering to American tastes for gas-guzzling SUVs with a fossil fuels-related ecological cataclysm just around the next bend in the road. The Precept is a figurehead.

There is plant-based composite material in the Precept, and no plastic with the exception of upholstery fabricated from recycled PET bottles. The interiors are artfully utilitarian, a nod to the Scandinavian gift for finding style in pragmatism. The concept is tech-heavy, of course, with a full suite of sensors and cameras giving the nod to autonomous capabilities, although Polestar refrained from saying so explicitly.

As a statement of intent, the whisper-quiet Precept EV sounds out loud and clear.