Here’s a short assessment of the Polestar electric powered car after my 90 minutes with it today. Half of that time was a 45 minute drive – on our own, not accompanied by a Polestar rep – in a four car convoy of Polestars around Aberdeenshire on a variety of roads from dual carriageways to single track country roads and a short part of it was town driving. There should have been 8 Polestars available but they couldn’t find an HGV driver for a car transporter so four were driven to Aberdeen.Undried Plum wrote: ↑Fri Sep 24, 2021 5:22 pmI'll be interested to read your appraisal.CharlieOneSix wrote: ↑Wed Sep 22, 2021 10:57 amWo-hoo! Just booked a 90 minute walk-round presentation and test drive of the all electric Polestar 2 in Aberdeen on Sunday afternoon.......
The car I drove after a comprehensive briefing was the version with two electric motors and included the Plus and Pilot options. The book says 0-60mph in 4 seconds and I can vouch for that and, although I warned her I was going to slam accelerate, Mrs C16 said it scared the hell out of her and rammed her head back into the headrest! My overall impression of the car was Wow, just Wow!
A “weight on driver seat” switch turns on the instrumentation. A stubby drive selector with D N and R options is moved to D and with application of throttle the car moves off silently. There are three options for regenerative braking – Off, Low and Standard. It takes a moment or two to get used to the Standard setting but during the whole 45 minutes I only applied the footbrake once when someone pulled unexpectedly out of a side turning. With your foot completely off the accelerator pedal the car comes to a smooth but positive stop. There is no handbrake, nor hill assist function – the car just sits there. I tried the Low regenerative braking function at one point and it was just like driving a normal automatic car with hardly any braking function. I soon reverted to Standard setting.
Apparently the brake lights only come on during regenerative braking when a nominal ‘g’ deceleration is sensed. I think I was told this was 0.3 ‘g’ but don’t quote me. I drive an automatic so I was used to the two pedal layout. I was no. 4 in the convoy and the driver in the Polestar in front of me kept blipping the brake lights. I spoke to him afterwards and he said he was used to manual gear changes and had a few problems getting used to a two pedal layout. Watching the professional driver’s car at the head of the convoy it was quite obvious that his brake lights only came on with a significant deceleration.
Road holding was superb – the roads were dry and I threw the car hard into some sharp bends and there was no body roll. The suspension was firm but it was not uncomfortable going over rough road surfaces.
Control of onboard systems such as navigation, radio , phone etc was all done with the “Hey Google” voice preamble to whatever function you desired. The fixed tablet display – it’s 11” tall – was superb with the Nav display repeated in front of the driver under what in a normal car would be the instrument binnacle. On the final stop, P was selected by means of a push button. No handbrake remember! Boot space is good and charging cables are kept in the ‘frunk’ where an engine would be in a normal car. There is no spare wheel.
Criticisms? A few. My left leg was hard against the central console, maybe I’m too used to the spaciousness of my A6. For me the angular opening of the rear doors was too narrow. As a result I found it extremely difficult to get in and out of the rear seats. I thought that was possibly due to being 6ft tall plus my painful knees but Mrs C16 is 5’4” tall and she hit her head on the top of the door opening when she got in. In my view legroom is poor in the back and not as I expected but again, I’m used to the A6. Headlamp washers seemed to have been deleted from the spec for basic cars but I was unable to get an answer about their inclusion in either the Pilot or Plus options. They are not listed there. That’s a question for Polestar support tomorrow. Final criticism – leather fronted seats with a cooled function are a £4000 option!!! Not for me.
Battery warranty is 8 years with a guaranteed 80% of new capacity at that point. The car has a 3 year warranty, 3 years automotive assistance, 3 years internet connection and 3 years servicing. Servicing is every two years or 20,000 miles and I was told that mainly consists of a pollen filter change, checkup of battery cooling fluid and a check up of steering bushes etc. This is a heavy car at 2123kg (4680lbs) kerb weight.
Will I buy one? Yes, but not for about a year. I will go for the single motor version (0-60 in 7 seconds) and the Pilot and Plus options. It’s not a cheap car – my version would be £49,900 though a replacement new Audi A6 Allroad is now £57,430.