Review: Polestar 2

“What is that?” I wasn't ready for the constant attention the stubby, crouched Polestar 2 demanded from passersby and other drivers. People craned out of car windows, and bikers pulled alongside at stoplights to ask what I was driving. “It's sort of a Volvo,” I'd answer. "But not really. It's a Polestar, an electric car created by a lot of ex-Volvo people in Sweden for the Chinese car multinational Geely, which owns both of them and more besides. You may have heard of Geely … No?" Then I’d drive away (silently, of course), because frankly it's weird to talk auto global manufacturing with complete strangers.

The Polestar 2 is aimed at the same part of the market that the Tesla 3 occupies, where you can pick up an entry-luxury sedan for a tick under $40,000, after a $7,000 federal tax credit. In this segment, people expect their electric cars to be real working machines, not weekend luxury toys. Electric or not, it'd have to be up for daily commuting and grocery-getting on all sorts of roads, and tackle a few road trips on occasion. So I took the new Polestar 2 down New York's infamously potholed Long Island Expressway to see how it coped with roads that could double as Hollywood set pieces for lunar landscapes.

First, a recent history lesson. After Ford acquired Volvo in 1999 for $6.5 billion, it was sold to Chinese automaker Geely in 2010 for $1.6 billion. Rather than gutting the 95-year-old brand, Geely left most of Volvo's design and engineering team in Sweden, where they continue to operate, and infused it with the cash and support for Volvo to turn itself around. A key point in this turnaround was luring Robin Page, Bentley's then head of interior design, over to the brand, where he worked closely with Thomas Ingenlath, then senior vice president of design at Volvo, to craft the hugely successful redesign of the XC90 in 2015.

In 2017, Geely spun off Volvo's in-house performance tuning arm, Polestar, into a separate brand revolving around hybrid and electric vehicles, with none other than Ingenlath as CEO. While most of Volvo's cars sold in the US are built in Europe and South Carolina, the Polestar 2 is built at a Volvo factory in Luqiao, China, along with the Volvo XC40 Recharge SUV that shares its electric drivetrain and platform.

The Polestar 2 aims squarely at the Tesla Model 3. Both of these compact executive-class cars cost roughly the same, and at 181.3 inches and 184.8 inches, respectively, they’re nearly the same size. But whereas the Model 3’s sheet metal flows in smooth, hilly curves, the Polestar 2 is all sharp creases and angles. The prominent tail lights that stretch the width of the Polestar’s trunk are a nice touch that set it apart from other five-door hatchbacks and sedans, and the Hofmeister kink (a forward angle in the glass near the rear-most pillar) lends the car a suggestion of speed, even at rest.

We haven't had the Polestar for long-term testing, but initial impressions of the build quality are impressive. Fit-and-finish is solid, and the standard features list has some gems: heated power front seats, LED headlights and taillights, touchless entry, and dual-zone automatic air conditioning. The long floor hump between the seats where the center console and cupholders are—what we'd call a transmission tunnel on an internal-combustion car—feels exceedingly lightweight, and moderate pressure makes the flimsy plastic bend and flex. It doesn’t interfere with the interior’s functionality, but you’ll notice the cheap feel when you touch it. At least it’s swathed in the same soft-touch fabric that covers much of the rest of the interior’s sturdy surfaces.

Choosing either the standard cloth seats or the upgraded WeaveTech cloth seats means you’ll receive an entirely vegan and leather-free interior. That means no leather trim on the dashboard or doors at all. It’s a nice touch for the large and growing part of the buying public who live vegan lifestyles. The WeaveTech cloth seats are a PVC material that require the addition of the $4,000 Plus luxury package. Considering they cost as much as they do, I thought they felt a bit rough. A leather interior (with reconstructed wood trim) is a $4,000 option, although that also requires the Plus package, for a grand total of $8,000.

You've got a choice of a single-motor, front-wheel-drive model that starts at $45,900 or a dual-motor, all-wheel-drive model that starts at $49,900. Both prices don't include $7,000 federal tax credit or the $1,300 destination charge. If you can somehow manage that extra four grand, our advice is go for it. 

The maximum range only drops from 270 miles on the FWD to 249 on the AWD. That's not bad, but there's no long-range option to push the range over 300 miles, as on the Tesla 3. A few years from now, the range could seem a little short as battery packs and range continue to improve in the EV market.

The range counter on the dashboard was reasonably accurate, although when I'd break out of dead-stop traffic to an open highway (or vice versa) the range would sometimes change drastically as it adjusted expectations. Neither figure is spectacular, but they're adequate in 2022 for an EV when fast chargers are scattered (although, unevenly) across the nation.

ChargePoint and EVgo are two of many companies vying to become the charging station of choice for EV drivers. You can find many brands' chargers on the PlugShare app, so with a little forward planning even long trips are realistic. I use all three services often in my testing of electric vehicles. A range of over 200 miles is more than enough for normal use, especially if you buy a home charger or have a charging station at work.

The carmaker isn't marketing the Polestar 2 as a sport sedan, but it should. It packs a lot of hustle into a sedan that weighs about 4,400 pounds (with an extra 250 pounds on the AWD version). The manufacturer gives 0-to-60 mph figures as 4.5 seconds for the 408-horsepower AWD car and 7 seconds for the 281-horsepower FWD car.

Anytime I needed to urge our AWD test car past slow-moving traffic, I'd blip the accelerator at 60 miles per hour, then find myself at 80 half a moment later. Few cars—and especially few internal-combustion cars—can manage that kind of forceful acceleration while already traveling at highway speeds. Electric motors are excellent at delivering that kind of instantaneously Herculean torque the moment you put your foot down—and the rush doesn’t get old.

Speaking of that accelerator, Polestar offers the option of one-pedal driving. Whenever you take your foot off the “gas,” the car’s regenerative braking kicks in to slow the car by using the spinning wheels to recharge the battery, albeit slightly. There are two levels of regen braking, and on rare occasions, such as collision-avoidance situations, the system will apply the brakes. The effect can sometimes feel pronounced. In a lot of stop-and-go traffic, you can forgo using the brake pedal much of the time.

It's a weird sensation, unlike driving a conventional fuel-powered car, and it's not unique to Polestar. Lots of EVs offer one-pedal driving, and you may end up liking it after you get used to it. It’s a good thing, though, that Polestar gives you the choice to toggle it off if you want to retain the gas-car-like ability to take your foot off the accelerator and just coast.

The suspension is sprung stiffly, which only aids the sharp and responsive handling, but it’s not so stiff as to be jarring. It soaks up cracks and potholes in the road without feeling floaty. Moderate to large road imperfections still register, but they won't rattle you like a hardcore sports car. Braking performance is strong, although a sedan weighing over two tons is still a lot of car to stop, heavier than a comparable internal-combustion sedan of this size.

Large touchscreens that lack the usual physical radio and HVAC buttons are fast becoming a fixture in premium EVs. One of the hurdles with touchscreens is that it's almost impossible to reach over while driving and operate them by feel alone. What stood out most about the Polestar’s 11.2-inch touchscreen was how simple and intuitive it was to use. It’s the first production car with an entirely Google-designed native Android Auto user interface.

Lots of information is thrown at you through car screens, and it’s a big lift for engineers and UI designers to simplify matters enough so that most adjustments are merely a tap or two away from the home screen. Rather than simply port over smartphone versions of software, several apps are tailored for EV driving. Google Maps is integrated with the car, so that when you’re navigating it’ll route you near the most convenient charging stations (based on their current availability and the Polestar’s remaining range) so that you can keep the battery topped up. In the beta version of Group Sessions, any passenger can add tracks to the car’s music playlist from their phone, if they want to relieve the driver from full-time DJ duties. You can also download non-native apps to the car through the Google Play Store.

Integrated Google Assistant voice control is present, too. Just say “Hey Google” and you can send messages, make calls, spool up directions, control music, and more without taking your hands off the steering wheel. Plus, all internet data is included for the first three years without any data cap. And despite being a Google product, it also works with iOS devices, not just Android.

The cameras used for overhead-view parking are better than most. There's minimal distortion and no unsightly seams where multiple camera views meet to form the complete picture. The cameras toggle on automatically when you put the car in reverse, like in most cars, but there's also a physical button to toggle them on and off when you aren't going backward. I used it often as I squeezed through tight openings between double-parked cars in New York City. The few physical buttons that exist are tucked out of the way in front of the center console and are well-positioned and easy to reach without looking.

Purely electric cars—that is, non-hybrids—have mostly been focused within the premium part of the market, like the Tesla Model S, or the small city-car part of the market, like the Chevy Bolt EV and Nissan Leaf. The Polestar 2 strikes the ripe middle ground between them, where there haven't been many all-electric options. But you can expect that to change rapidly in 2022.

This year, the Polestar 2 will see a lot more competition as a bunch of new EVs compete with it in the $40,000–$55,000 slice of the market, such as the Kia EV6 and BMW i4 eDrive40. But with its sports-sedan driving chops and its impressively intuitive interior design, the Polestar 2 is ready to make life difficult for the newcomers.