Polestar 3 review

Performance is quick, if just short of EV-blistering. The Long Range Dual Motor has 483bhp/620lb ft and can hit the 0-62mph benchmark in 4.8 seconds; the Performance Pack car with 510bhp/671lb ft shaves that to 4.5s. Off-the-line traction is no issue of course.

And they keep going at high speed too, rather than hitting an apparent wall at 65mph-odd as some EVs do. Accelerator response is not too knife-edge at the top of the pedal travel, so you can be smooth.

The chassis, tuned by people who worked on the excellent old souped-up Volvo Polestar Engineered cars, is surprisingly responsive and engaging when you've switched the dual-chamber air suspension and active dampers to their awakened settings. There are several parameters of damping and steering, but you have to dig deep into menus to find them so you'll probably do it as a set-and-forget at the start of a trip.

The rear torque vectoring works the same way as a Focus RS's, deliberately over-torquing the outside wheel using independently controlled clutch packs for each halfshaft. It really does add agility, making it rotate out of a corner like something much lighter. The accurate steering and well-sorted geometry mean it goes where it's pointed even on bumpy UK roads.

So it's actually a pretty lively thing, not the soft and tranquil pod the cabin design might have you expecting. The ride is always a little firm and can get mildly juddery at times on the shallow tyres.

What about the helper systems and tech?

As with any Polestar, you’re getting ALL the advanced driver-assistance systems you want, and quite a few you can pretty much do without. The speed limit warning threw up all sorts of fictions, so we had to take a deep-dive into the menus to kill the bonger.

Sounds like fun… but is it really? It’s still a big SUV.

The point here is really that the Polestar has started to carve out a recognisable niche in the way that the cars handle and deliver. Porsche and BMW tend to stray too far down the ‘sporty’ route, tying their chassis down with stiff damping and short springs, and something like a big Volvo will always be on the armchair side of relaxed. The Polestar is somewhere in-between; sporty enough to be fun, relaxed enough to just potter if you want it to.

What’s the range, efficiency and charging like?

From the 107kWh (useable) battery the WLTP range is 390 miles for the standard car, 348 for the Performance Pack. Experienced guess as to the real range? Between 260 and 300 miles in most conditions and speeds at around 3mi/kWh. Which isn’t bad at all.

There’s 11kW AC charging - useful rather than stunning - and that's only if you can find a three-phase post. Most public AC posts and home wallboxes are 7.4kW single phase so that's what you'd get here too. With a battery this big, 7.4kW means 17 hours flat to fill.

On a journey where you've used all the range and need rapid charging, it'll accept a peak 250kW on an ultra-rapid DC charger. You’ll be able to charge that big battery in just 32 minutes 10 to 80 per cent, at a 150kW average.