Two’s company
£46,900 After govt grant
FOR Beautiful design and build quality, Scandi-cool image
AGAINST Performance Pack’s suspension too rigid without adjustment
The Polestar 1 coupe wasn’t really what Volvo’s electric offshoot is all about. It was a limited edition £140k luxo-hybrid. This new all-electric Polestar 2 saloon, and its upcoming cousin, the Polestar 3 SUV, are where we find out how seriously to take this ‘electric performance brand’.
Prices start at £46,900 (at the moment), for a Polestar 2 equipped with a 78kWh battery pack and electric motors on the front and rear axle. Polestar says it’s planning a two-wheel-drive version, and a 2 with a smaller battery, which will bring the cost down towards 30-something thousand. It won’t be lost on EV-watchers that it’s exactly the same tactic employed – with some success – by Tesla and its wildly popular Model 3.
The 2 is taller than a regular saloon to carve out room for the water-cooled battery pack that’ll juice the 2 for a claimed range of up to 292 miles. Now, an equivalent Tesla Model 3 Long Range is good for another 50 miles of claimed endurance, and for some folks, the argument will end there. But we’ll not get utterly bogged down in Tesla tit for tat now. The Polestar fights back with a roomier cabin and boot. The Tesla has Superchargers. But the head-to-head showdown will come.
I don’t need to labour the point that this is a quick car. Despite the weight, having 487lb ft instantly supplied to all four wheels pelts the 2 along with ease. Yet this isn’t quite the kick in the head that the Teslarati thrive on – the roll-on performance is ever so slightly less violent, which makes the 2 easy to drive smoothly, both in town and when overtaking.
The tantalisingly named Performance Pack is a £5,000 option, bringing 20-way adjustable Öhlins dampers, Brembo brakes, and gold garnish. Not actual carats, just a golden finish to the calipers and seatbelts, which sounds as tasteful as a downtown Dubai skyscraper but, trust us, actually works nicely. The 20-inch wheels are especially handsome.
The brakes are adequate, given they’ve got such a pudding to rein in, but the pedal feel isn’t the best. Happily, the regen effect is so well judged in its ‘Normal’ setting that the 2 becomes a one pedal car. You can turn down the regen effect, or delete it completely, via a vivid touchscreen menu.
It isn’t exactly a Sunday morning B-road entertainer, but it’s more engaging for longer than you might expect for a thickset electric saloon-on-stilts. Given that it’s actually based on an XC40 (the shared platform contributes to the lardy weight, but has safety boons and helps bring the selling price down), it’s a creditable crack at an agile executive express.
The pay-off is the firm ride, which does seem a bizarre decision: manually adjustable household-name dampers are a hugely nerdy USP, but how many Polestar owners are really going to arm themselves with an Allen key and
fiddle with the dampers? Better to leave the £5k pack and cosy up inside.
The centrepiece in here is an 11-inch portrait display mounted high enough that it is in your eyeline without suffering from ‘lost iPad on the dash’ disorder. The graphics are crisp, the operation impressively rapid, with no stuttering or discernible loading time, and it speaks fluent Google Android.
So, it has native ‘Hey Google’ voice assist, you can sign into your Google account to personalise your settings and download apps, log in to your Spotify account, and Google Maps is built in. If you prefer navigating with Waze or listening to Apple Music, that’s all inbound. There’s no Apple CarPlay yet – that’s apparently due next year – but even for a hardened iPhone user this is the first infotainment centre in years that doesn’t feel like it would be improved with iOS.
Although you sit a little higher than in, say, an Audi A4, that effect is masked by the high door tops and cocooning nature of the cabin. Light woods and fabrics are employed instead of business-suited carbon fibre. You can spec leather, but the interior is vegan as standard, and the more welcoming for it. The Volvo-spec seats are supremely cossetting. It’s not a Frankfurt office or Silicon Valley coffee shop. It’s a lodge retreat, in a pine forest.
It’s a very complete EV, this. It lacks gimmicks, but impresses on you a real sense of quality, and depth of common sense. A 100 per cent charge offered a 260–270 mile range on test. Polestar is adamant the future for EVs isn’t carrying three tonnes of batteries to guarantee a 500-mile endurance. Make the right car, and the demand will summon the necessary infrastructure. Hope so. This is definitely the car to do it.
“HAVING 487LB FT INSTANTLY SUPPLIED TO ALL FOUR WHEELS PELTS THE 2 ALONG WITH EASE”