Polestar 2 review

The 2’s simplicity is a joy. There aren’t any powertrain modes. You can put the traction control in a halfway house ‘Sport’ mode, and toggle steering weight, but that’s about it. There isn’t even a starter button. Just climb in (the keyless entry is flawless, though the key itself is a naff shard of lightweight plastic), prod the brake and the car’s awake and ready to set off immediately. At journey’s end, select Park and exit the car as it puts itself to sleep. After you’ve driven a 2, everything else will seem utterly Victorian.

Can it go round corners?

The Polestar 2 has easygoing, accurate but synthetic-feeling steering, and it deals with corners in a typically ‘modern EV’ sort of way. That is to say steady and predictable, but never quite engaging. The BMW i5 is still in a league of one in that respect.

There’s a big reserve of grip in either four- or rear-wheel drive versions, and though you sense there’s a lot of weight being asked to change direction, you don’t get seasick from body roll. Because there’s barely any. The 2 tracks flat and steady all the way through a corner.

So it handles like a properly developed car, not a straight-line dragster. Better than a Model S? Certainly. Better than a Model 3? Different – the Tesla has been set up as more of a motorway cruiser, so it edges the Polestar there. But the 2 is a better all-rounder. Given that it’s actually based on a Volvo XC40, it’s a very creditable effort.

Numbers. I need numbers!

Coming right at you. The Standard Range Single Motor produces 268bhp and 361lb ft, hitting 0-60mph in 6.2 seconds. You don’t need us to tell you that that’s plenty quick enough.

Then there’s the Long Range Single Motor, which ups power to 295bhp and shaves three tenths off the headline sprint. What about the Dual Motor? Now we’re talking: 416bhp, 546lb ft and 0-60mph in 4.3s. The top speed of every 2 is 127mph – curiously more than Volvo’s 112mph limit.

Oh yeah, and finally there’s the Performance Pack. A £5,000 uplift over the Long Range Dual Motor, it boosts power to 469bhp for 0-60mph in 4.0s, and feels every bit as quick as you’d expect.

So it’s a YouTube sensation after all?

It hasn’t quite got the kick the Teslarati thrive on – the roll-on performance is ever so slightly less aggressive – but that makes the 2 easy to drive smoothly, both in town and when you spot an overtaking gap.

The brakes are adequate, given they’ve got such a pudding to rein in, but the pedal feel isn’t the best – it’s a bit dead underfoot. Happily, the regen effect is so well judged in its ‘Normal’ setting that the 2 becomes a one-pedal car. You can turn down the regen effect (or delete it completely) via a vivid touchscreen menu.

You haven’t mentioned range…

We were coming to that. You have a choice of a 69kWh battery in the Standard Range Single Motor that’s good for 339 miles of range between charges, or the Long Range’s 82kWh unit that promises 406 miles in Single Motor guise. The LRDM (can you tell we’re getting fed up with writing it out again and again?) and Performance Pack models only offer 368 and 352 miles apiece on account of being AWD and more powerful. But those numbers are still more than adequate. 

Of course, those are the lab figures. In the real world you will get… less. Our most recent go in the LRSM suggested 330 miles of range from full, but 150 miles of cold motorway running later and the trip computer was less optimistic. Still, efficiency of 3.6mi/kWh still amounts to almost 300 miles in sub-optimal conditions, which is very good if not quite groundbreaking.

It was a similar story in the LRDM Performance Pack, with the trip computer suggesting 300 miles compared to the 250 and 3.1mi/kWh we were actually tracking for. Not too bad when you factor in the cold.

Anything you're not so keen on?

The trade-off for the handling is the firm ride – something Polestar claims to have addressed with the 2023 update but which still verges on the harsh. The standard suspension is supple, but still a little too firm for our liking. While this means there’s little roll over uglier lumps and dips, the general agitation and jitter is annoying around town. Still, the smaller 19-inch wheels help, and the standard brakes are fine too.

A bizarre design decision on the Performance Pack is the 22-way manually adjustable household name dampers: seriously, how many Polestar owners are truly going to spend their Sundays armed with Allen keys, adjusting each turret to find a sweet spot? No, us neither.

And that’s really the overall story: the Performance Pack doesn't really take advantage of its posh dampers or brakes or 20-inch wheels, which do the ride no favours. So they're not missed on the standard car. Just get the cheaper one and spend any saved cash on interior options. Or a holiday.

How's the refinement?

There’s no discernible motor whine at speed, only a little wind flutter around the door mirrors. They’re worth a mention – the mirror is ‘frameless’, because the whole mirror housing moves to adjust the view, instead of just the pane. Another simple slice of clever thinking, and one we prefer to look-at-me door cameras. It’s a good thing the mirrors are useful, given rear visibility is hemmed in by the thick pillars and cramped back window. Inheriting surround-view cameras from Volvo helps when it’s time to park.

Is there a performance flagship?

You're talking about the BST edition 270, aren’t you? A rare groove choice, that. It began life as an ‘Experimental’ Polestar 2 one-off that made silent-but-quick runs at the Goodwood Festival in 2021. And guess what? The boss (and enough Polestar fans) liked it, so it went into limited production. Very limited, in fact. Only 270 of these will ever exist, of which 40 came to the UK. And they’re all sold.

What was it all about? Even geekier suspension, in a nutshell. And a £1k optional stripe. We've got a standalone review for the BST and you can read it by clicking this timely hyperlink.