There's a new player in the Australian electric vehicle market. This is the Polestar 2,
the very first EV model from Volvo's new electric sub-brand. On paper,
it's the right price, it has decent real-world range and performance,
and it looks the goods inside and out. Let's take a closer look.
The Polestar 2 arrives in Australia from February 2022 as the first of four anticipated EV models
from the Swede car maker that are set to grace local roads by 2025. It makes no apologies in
setting sights on the Tesla Model 3's growing Aussie audience with an identical $59,900 starting
price and three different models to choose from. The flagship being the $70,000 all-wheel drive
long-range dual motor. Here, we're driving the mid-level Polestar 2 long-range single motor,
priced at 65k. It finds itself within proximity of both the Tesla Model 3 and the Hyundai IONIQ 5.
In person, the Polestar 2 makes quite a striking first impression with its raised ride height and
crisp lines all over. And when you do take a closer look, the attention to detail is strong,
excellent paint work, consistent panel gaps and quality materials on the inside and out.
Made in China, the Polestar 2 feels every bit as sturdy as its Volvo stable-mates.
The long-range variant ride standard are 19-inch alloy wheels and features LED lights all around,
as well as frameless wing mirrors. At its core is a 170 KW, 330-newton-metre electric motor that
drives the front wheels feeding energy from a 78 kilowatt-hour battery pack. Polestar claims that
reaching 80% of charge using a 50-kilowatt fast charger will take about one hour and 20 minutes.
That time increases to about eight hours when using an 11 kilowatt wall-box connection at home.
Just like the outside, the interior of the Polestar 2 makes a huge initial statement with
its build quality, furnishings and technology. Now, this car is based on Volvo's existing
CMA architecture, and for that reason, it has a few internal combustion legacies like the big
transmission tunnel and the foot wells at the front. If I'm honest, it's a little bit of a
missed opportunity in terms of maximising this car's layout and space, and there are other EVs
that do a much better job. The Hyundai IONIQ 5 is one that immediately springs to mind.
With all of that said, the materials are top notch and the driver is cosseted by quality
furnishings all round with a high-set window line, allowing you to sit low in the cabin.
The Polestar 2 uses Google's Android Automotive OS system with Google Play,
Google Assistant and much more. The thinking being that the system goes a step
further than Apple Car Play or Android Auto by actually allowing you to adjust vehicle
settings. So for example, you can adjust the fan speed. Hey, Google. Turn on the fan.
Okay, turning on fan.
There you have it, one more way to continue driving without
taking your hands off the wheel or taking your eyes off the road.
Our test vehicle didn't feature Apple Car Play, but Polestar assures us that it will
be fitted to the first customer vehicles when they are delivered early next year,
courtesy of an over-the-air update. Safety isn't so clear-cut for the Polestar 2 in part because
adaptive cruise control, rear-cross traffic alert and blind-spot monitoring and not fitted standard.
You can have them fitted, however, if you opt for a $5000 pilot pack, which bundles in some
other inclusions. The Polestar 2 does include all other expected safety systems and is backed by a
five-star Euro NCAP rating. It is yet to be crash tested in Australia. A 405 litre boot area offers
enough space for a couple of full-sized suitcases, but not a lot more on account of its narrow width.
The Polestar 2 lift-back design does allow easy loading and unloading from the boot area.
So if the Tesla Model 3 is all about roll, speed, performance,
acceleration and doing everything in relative silence, well, for me,
the Polestar 2 is more conventional with its feeling and feedback and a lot more linear
with this acceleration. That's not to say that the Polestar 2 doesn't get up-to speed easily.
It does. It's very, really fast, getting up to highway speed or a round-town passage, but it's
definitely a lot more linear and nowhere near as explosive out-of-the-blocks as a equivalent
Tesla Model 3. I'm a big fan of the three-stage regen breaks on the Polestar 2. They give you
everything from neutral-like rolling resistance through to pretty much one pedal driving where
you rarely need to engage the traditional break pedal. That's how strong the level of regen is.
I'm also a big fan of what Polestar calls the creep function. Basically at low speeds,
so between intersections or traffic lights when you just need to crawl ahead a few meters you're
able to engage that setting and it's kind of akin to an internal combustion automatic car that you
basically just take your foot off the brake pedal and it rolls ahead under its own power.
It's a very natural organic feeling thing, and it means that the Polestar 2 feels kind of like an
internal combustion car in that sense. It's just one less boring thing about this latest electric
car. All in all, I'm gonna say the Polestar 2 does everything quite well from the way that you
sit down low in the cabin, its outward vision, its assortment of switch-gear, and at the way
that everything's placed. It's a car that you're able to jump into pretty quickly and feel right
at home, especially if you've driven anything Volvo-related in the past three or four years.
Both front-driven Polestar-2's offer a 0-100 time of 7.4 seconds, which is hardly a headline
figure in electric terms. Instead it is the smaller details that define the Polestar-2
drive. Suspended by a McPherson strut front and multi-link rear, the Swede makes no apologies for
its on-road tuning. On the road, the Polestar-2 feels inherently sporty. The steering and all the
key controls are quite reactive to driver inputs, and there's a decent level of poise and grip
on offer for a front-drive car. You throw up to through a corner and it's pretty well sorted with
its front-to-rear balance, in just the way that it conducts itself through fast changes in direction.
With all that said though, it is unashamedly heavy at about two tons in curb weight on billiard
smooth roads, that translates to a little bit of business, over pitter-patter style imperfections.
But then when you take the Polestar-2 to a more rugged B-grade country road,
like I'm on at the moment, it is noticeably firm with the way that it dispatches obstacles.
I think the biggest most pronounced feature of that weight, it's just the amount of vertical
movement, and be it through larger drawn out undulations or sharper bumps in the road,
there's a lot of movement up and down, and you constantly feel it. The car just lacks
that key control that you're really looking for, especially for a sportier tuned vehicle.
On harsher obstacles, there's a lot of thudding, quite a bit of crashing as well,
and then over the more drawn-out undulations you just notice that it kinda gets to the bottom of
its compression and then rebounds quite harshly. So certainly not as polished or refined as the
technology in this car might have you believe. It's not a deal breaker, so to speak, but for me,
the ride is simply to firm for Aussie conditions. Noticeable road noise is another detractor from
the Polestar's on-road poise. Rumbling through the cabin on all surfaces, but becoming particularly
pronounced on coarse chip bitumen. In every other respect, this car feels, well, sorted it. You sit
nice and low in the cockpit, the door sleeves seem quite high, so you really do feel as though you
sit in this car, rather than on top of it, which really does buy into that sporty kind of premise.
In terms of all important efficiency, our long range test car displayed 430 kms worth of range
at 100% charge. Well short of its 540 km claim. We averaged 19 kWh per 100 kms, within reach of
the 17.4 kWh claim. The Pulsar-2 is backed by a five-year unlimited kilometer warranty
in Australia, while its battery is backed by an eight-year 160 000 km term. The first five
years worth of servicing a free, reaffirming the Polestar's consumer-friendly appeal. The Polestar
2 is an impressive first effort from the Swedish car maker and sets an exciting tone for the rest
of its model line-up. For me, it's internal combustion origins, it's cabin fitment and its
firm ride are key detractions, but this is still a welcome addition to the EV class nonetheless.