Polestar 3 Review

If you want a huge, luxurious high-performance electric SUV with a premium badge and bags of cutting-edge technology, but you also want something a bit different from the Audis, BMWs and Mercedes-Benzs that other people drive, then the Polestar 3 will be a good choice for you.

So far, we’ve only tried one version of the Polestar 3, the mid-range Twin Motor model without the Performance Pack fitted. It has all the pace and power you could ever want, so we see no need to upgrade to the Performance Pack version. The only question is whether the cheaper Single Motor variant is fast enough and sporty enough to convince as the high-performance machine Polestar wants the 3 to be. Time will tell.

As a large, luxurious five-seater all-electric SUV, the Polestar 3 isn’t short of rivals. The Audi Q8 e-tron and BMW iX are both similar in size and stature, while Mercedes-Benz also has a couple of similar offerings in the shape of the EQE SUV and the EQS SUV. The electric Range Rover will arguably be in the mix for your money, too.

The clean, minimalist design of the interior is followed through with a standard of fit and finish that’s as high as you expect - nay, demand - of a car costing this much. The big glossy screens and metallic trims lend some razzamatazz, while a mixture of colours and textures keeps things look interesting, not to mention achingly trendy. Most of the surfaces you come into contact with are as pleasing on the fingertips as they are on the eyes, and you get plenty of choice over colour scheme and upholstery type.

It’s also worth mentioning Polestar’s dedication to sustainability when selecting cabin materials. Many of the plastics and textiles used have come from recycled sources, while the leather options are animal-welfare-certified, and the wool textiles are fully traceable. We wouldn’t be surprised if we were told that Polestar had personally ensured the health, happiness and spiritual enlightenment of all the livestock involved in the production of its cars, and that the animals only died of old age, surrounded by loved ones.

As is becoming increasingly common these days, Polestar sees infotainment as a major reason for buying its products, so has piled a lot of time and effort - not to mention cash - into coming up with an all-singing system. 

It’s centred around a massive 14.5-inch portrait touchscreen mounted on the middle of the dashboard, and the operating system - named Android Automotive OS - has been co-developed with Google. This means you get Google Assistant voice control, sat-nav powered by Google Maps, and access to a large variety of apps on the Google Play store. As standard, the system has all the functionality you expect - Bluetooth, DAB radio, wireless phone charging, four USB-C connectors (two front, two rear), 5G internet connection - plus a whole bunch you don’t. More on that in a moment. What’s more, the whole thing is kept fresh and state-of-the-art with over-the-air updates.

That’s not it on the screen front, either. There’s a 9.0-inch LCD driver display behind the steering wheel showing all your important driving information, plus another touchscreen in the back with climate and seat heating controls for the rear passengers.

First, the good bits. The main screen looks fabulous with its sharp graphics and slick animations. And, considering how ridiculously complex the system is, it’s not quite as user-hostile as it might be. Polestar has made sure that you don’t scroll up and down menus, or swipe side-to-side between them, and that does make life a bit easier.

However, that does mean that there need to be more menus as a result, and the sheer number of them is utterly bamboozling. Try and search out a minor function, and you could easily try four or five different menus before you find it.

More frustrating, though, is the needless exorcism of almost all switchgear from the cabin, making the touchscreen your only source of control for pretty much every function, and it’s worse here than the normal screen-based air-con controls that we usually bang on on about. Even a task as simple as opening the glovebox requires seeking out an on-screen icon concealed somewhere within the system. 

And that’s before you’ve even set up your driving position, which takes a frankly ridiculous amount of time. You don’t get switches or buttons to do this, of course. No, you seek out the correct menu from the gazillion on offer on the touchscreen, press an icon to tell it whether you want to move your seat or your steering column, and then use the joysticks on the steering wheel to govern the movements. It’s bonkers, time-consuming, distracting, and utterly unnecessary.

Ahem. Rant over.

A powerful 10-speaker audio system is included in the standard equipment, but pay another £5,000 for the optional Plus Pack (it’s actually standard on Launch Edition cars, thankfully), and you get - amongst other things - an upgraded Bowers and Wilkins system with no fewer than 25 speakers and Dolby Atmos Surround Sound. Even for those with unsophisticated eardrums, the sound quality really is something to behold.

It probably won’t escape you once you set eyes on the Polestar 3 that it’s a truly enormous car. Dimensions-wise, it measures 4,900mm long, 2,120mm wide (including mirrors) and 1,614mm tall, with a wheelbase of 2,985mm.

Happily, those gargantuan proportions translate into similarly gargantuan interior space. Legroom is simply massive in any of the five seats, and while headroom is slightly less so, there’s still lots of it, enough for very tall passengers to be very happy. 

The width of the cabin, in particular, is what marks out the Polestar 3’s interior, though. Those in the front will have no danger whatsoever of bashing elbows, while in the back, we can’t think of many cars that carry three people across the rear bench so comfortably: there’s ample room for three sets of shoulders, the middle seat is as wide and as comfortable as those either side, and the rear of the cabin has an entirely flat floor, so there’s lots of foot space for everyone.

The Polestar 3's boot is also pretty big at 484 litres when measured to the top of the rear seatback, or 597 litres when measured up to the roof. That includes a large 90-litre storage area under the floor, which is easily big enough for carrying your charging cables, but you’ll probably want to stash those in the 32-litre ‘frunk’ compartment under the bonnet instead.

Fold down the rear seats, and you get a total of 1,411 litres of cargo space in the Polestar 3. The seats drop in a 60/40 split, which isn’t quite as versatile as the 40/20/40 arrangement in some rivals, but at least the folded seatbacks lie perfectly flat, and sit flush with the boot floor, leaving you with a totally level load area with no steps or slopes. There is a small lip at the boot entrance, though, which could get scuffed when loading heavy items.

All versions of the Polestar 3s are fitted with the same enormous battery pack that has a nominal capacity of 111kWh, which equates to 107kWh of usable capacity.

The entry-level Single Motor version, when it arrives in 2025, will have a rear-axle-mounted motor delivering 299PS, giving it an official 0-60mph time of 7.5 seconds.

Until then, you choose between the two Twin Motor variants, both of which have an additional motor on the front axle, giving you four-wheel drive. The standard Twin Motor has a combined output of 489PS and a 0-60mph time of 4.8 seconds. In the Performance Pack version, meanwhile, the output is cranked up to 517PS, while the 0-60mph time falls to just 4.5 seconds.

Like we’ve already said, we’ve only had the opportunity to drive one version of the Polestar 3 so far, a Twin Motor without the Performance Pack. The powertrain has two selectable settings, one for maximising the range you get from your remaining battery charge, and one for maximising the performance on offer. 

Select the former mode, and the initial level of acceleration you feel is undeniably brisk, but also a little bit restrained. Press the accelerator pedal with more purpose, though, and things become rather less restrained, and you can build speed devastatingly quickly.

The latter mode, meanwhile, doesn’t ultimately serve up any more power, but it does serve that power up a lot more readily, transforming the character of the car. The accelerator pedal needs far less provocation before the motors deliver their full force, and when they do, the acceleration you feel is truly explosive, perhaps even more explosive than the already-impressive numbers suggest. The car’s on-the-move acceleration feels just as strong as its off-the-mark acceleration, too, so there’s never a situation in which you don’t have an overabundance of power on hand.

When it arrives next year, the Long Range Single Motor version will have the longest range of any Polestar 3, with an official WLTP figure of 403 miles. That’s pretty impressive. That said, the Twin Motor car isn’t all that far behind with an official range of 392 miles, but that drops to 348 miles when fitted with the Performance Pack.

As ever, take these figures with a pinch of salt and don’t bank on getting anywhere near them in the real world. Cold temperatures will slash the mileages your car can achieve on a single charge, as will long motorway journeys.

Electric cars are often very refined, and so are premium-badged cars, so premium-badged electric cars tend to be some of the most refined around. And so it proves with the Polestar 3. The electric motors barely make a sound, and other sources of exterior noise are also extremely well suppressed, so the car unleashes its savage pace with almost nothing in the way of aural accompaniment. On any type of road, and in any given driving situation, this is a supremely peaceful way of getting around.

What with Polestar’s relationship with Volvo, you’d expect safety to be pretty high on the agenda with this car. And in terms of preventative safety tech, there aren’t many stones that have been left unturned with the Polestar 3. The standard roster of safety kit includes various semi-autonomous driving functions including automatic emergency braking and adaptive cruise control, and there’s also blind spot monitoring with steer assist, a driver monitoring system, intelligent speed limit assist, lane departure warning, a lane keeping aid, road sign information, plus rear collision warning and mitigation. Stability control and torque vectoring are also on hand to help keep you out of trouble, and if trouble becomes unavoidable, there are nine airbags to keep you from harm, plus a post impact braking system, which locks on the anchors in the event of a shunt to help prevent further collisions. The Polestar 3 hasn’t been crash tested by Euro NCAP yet, but with that little lot on board, you’d expect it to perform pretty well once it has.

You’ll see the word ‘SmartZone’ etched into the panel on the nose of the car, and behind this is where many of the car's myriad cameras and sensors are located, which facilitate much of the safety functionality we’ve just talked about. Sounds expensive if you have a prang on your front end, but it’s got to go somewhere.

A couple of grand extra buys you the optional Pilot Pack, which adds a bit more semi-autonomous functionality plus lane change assist and 360-degree cameras. Some time in 2025, another optional pack will be offered called Pilot Pack with LiDAR. This will add yet more sensors and cameras to read the surroundings in even greater detail, and will eventually enable fully autonomous driving once it finally becomes legal (this will be switched on via over-the-air updates when the time comes). Be warned, however, that these extra sensors are housed in a small bump in the roof, just above the centre of the windscreen, rather than in the SmartZone. This rather ruins the aesthetic of the car, making it look a bit like a very large, very posh taxi.

The Polestar 3 is too new to have featured in our go-to source of reliability data, the latest HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index. In fact, Polestar as a brand is too new to have featured at all, so we can’t even give you an idea of the company’s performance in general.

It’s true that Polestar’s cars share a great deal with Volvo, a company that placed 14th out of 29 carmakers in the latest study, a very middle-of-the-road performance. However, it’s unlikely that this result is based on the all-electric Volvo models with which Polestars share their bits and pieces, so you can only draw so much from that piece of information.

While Polestar’s reliability may be something of a dice-roll at this stage, the picture is much clearer on the firm’s warranty arrangement. You get bog-standard three-year, 60,000-mile cover on most of the car, with the battery being covered for eight years or 100,000 miles, whichever happens first. If the battery falls below 70% of its original capacity within that timeframe, it’ll be replaced free of charge. Again, that’s all pretty standard.

What’s not so standard, though, is that all scheduled maintenance for the first three years or 31,250 miles of ownership is free. That’s a nice little perk.

Regardless of the version you choose, your Polestar 3 will sit in group 50 for insurance, the most expensive group there is. That’s not really surprising given the car’s price and power levels.

Because the Polestar 3 is an EV, you pay zero VED road tax on it. For now, that is. As of April 2025, that tax laws are due to change, and you’re very likely to be lumbered with the same - or similar - tax liability as owners of petrol and diesel cars.

Initially, the Polestar 3 is available only in a single Launch Edition trim level, which automatically ticks many of the boxes that would otherwise be left unchecked on the options list. That means that these first Launch Edition cars are properly tooled-up. Standard equipment includes LED exterior lighting, heated and electrically adjustable door mirrors, a panoramic roof, a rearview camera with automatic cleaning function, three-zone climate control, a heat pump, plus all the myriad infotainment and safety kit we’ve already talked about. Then again, with the amount of money the Polestar 3 costs, you’d jolly well hope it’d come with plenty of kit.

Two of the boxes checked by the Launch Edition cars are those for the Pilot Pack and Plus Pack. The former adds pilot assist, lane change assist, 360-degree cameras (but not the the LiDAR, the Pilot Pack with LiDAR option will become available next year), while the Plus Pack adds the insane Bowers and Wilkins sound system, active road noise cancellation, headrest speakers, head-up display, heated rear seats, heated steering wheel, heated wiper blades, power-adjustable steering column, soft-close doors. Ordinarily, those packs would cost £2,300 and £5,000, respectively.