Polestar 3 review: a funked-up electric SUV with an annoying little sibling

For people unfamiliar with Polestar, it’s an all-electric, slightly funkier cousin of Volvo — that of sober safety and Swedish blond woods. Both are now owned by the Chinese megacorporation Geely. When Polestar arrived as a standalone brand a few years ago, everyone got very giddy about its new car — the “1” — a high-end, carbon-fibre, plug-in hybrid that looked as though it had been designed by very serious, very chic people in poloneck sweaters. Customers got less excited about the £140,000 price, and bought very few. Then came the “2” in 2019 — Polestar being intensely practical when it comes to naming strategies — a mid-priced, mid-sized pure electric saloon that sidestepped the thrusting image of the usual German mid-level executive perk. Stylish and eco-aware, the 2 has been doing the heavy lifting for Polestar for the past few years. Now two siblings have arrived: Polestars 3 and 4.
The 3 is the more conventional, being a large SUV based on the same bones as Volvo’s new EX90 seven-seater, although the Polestar version will carry only five. It’s relatively low-slung for this kind of thing, manages to look interesting without the big SUV sense of visual arrogance, and features one of the most recycled interiors in the car industry, according to Polestar. Fear not, though, instead of being made from rewoven teabags, it feels cosy and quite elegant. There’s a big portrait touchscreen in the middle of the dash — Tesla-style — and very few physical buttons. This is not always a good thing, but once you’ve programmed a few shortcuts as you might with a mobile phone, it all kind of works.
The 3 is also reliably fast. The first cars we’ll see are all long- range, dual-motor Launch Editions, preying on the wallets of early adopters, brimming with options and gadgets. There’s a huge 111kWh battery, good for up to 390 miles of range — which means you’ll probably see high 200s — 483bhp and 0-62mph in five seconds. If you need a little one-upmanship you can opt for the 510bhp “Performance pack”, which drops the sprint time to 4.7 seconds and gives you a variety of “Swedish gold” trimmings (seatbelts, brake calipers and, bizarrely, tyre valve caps) as well as special 22in wheels and more dedicated suspension settings.
Generally, though, the standard car is more than enough. Both get air suspension that can be either soft or less soft — this isn’t a car that ever becomes overly harsh — both get a torque vectoring system for the rear axle that pushes the car more neatly into a corner. Generally, the Polestar 3 feels like a remarkably sporting car without trying to be something it’s not, and that’s refreshing. It’s not cheap, starting at £75,900 for the Launch Edition, but cheaper cars are on their way, Polestar says.
A word about the Polestar 4, which is more, um, polarising than its sibling. It’s another SUV but smaller, with a 100kWh battery, and billed as an electric “SUV coupé”. A coupé traditionally has only two doors, remember, and this has four, so Polestar is stretching the definition. It’s also a five-seater and Polestar’s fastest car to date: the cheaper version (£59,990) has a single-motor, rear-wheel drive and manages 0-62mph in 7.1 seconds, but the dual-motor, all-wheel drive version clocks a startling 3.8 seconds for seven grand more. It’s handsome, restrained and in keeping with the general Polestar aesthetic, as you might expect. What’s less expected is that it does without a rear window. This apparently results in better aerodynamics and improved headroom for rear passengers by enabling the back of the car to arc further back before dipping. Rear vision is maintained via a high-definition camera in place of a rear-view mirror. The problem is that it’s solving an issue that doesn’t really need to exist — fish-eye cameras are not as effective or intuitive as mirrors, and an extra couple of inches of rear headroom or marginal aerodynamic gains really aren’t worth it. You get used to it, but it’s not “better”. It also doesn’t help that a manufacturing seam around the missing rear windscreen means it looks like someone’s filled in the hole, even though the 4 was designed from the outset without rear glass.
Of perhaps more concern was the fact that the car I tried had a touchscreen that simply didn’t want to be touched. It failed to register three out of four presses, which made operating the vehicle frustrating. Licking one’s finger is meant to help, but that’s not a very satisfactory solution. Polestar insists the issues will be sorted by the time the cars get to customers, but there is clearly still work to do.
So what do we have? Well, the Polestar 4 feels like a little bit of a side note. It’s interesting and different but perhaps not convincing. The Polestar 3, though, is much more appealing. It’s an antidote to more macho full-sized SUVs and a welcome expansion of Polestar’s one-note line-up. If you’re in the market for something like a BMW iX or Porsche Cayenne, it’s definitely worth a try.