Living with a... Polestar 2 (Month 4)

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Month 1 | Hello again Polestar 2, it's been a while Month 2 | I lost a whole car... thanks, Polestar Month 3 | Sooooooooo close to greatness Month 4 | Top hat and fails

I'm a Geordie with a wife and teenage kids and a dog and a mortgage and other responsibilities. But I'm also a man desperately trying to maintain the facade of being young and interesting... yep, that's a box-died blonde fauxhawk. I'm 44. At weekends I use my car to take the kids to their social engagements, or to take parts of my drumkit to band practice, or to take myself to places like the Metty in Gateshead. Sometimes I drive to the AT offices, too (Manchester/London), which means I can enjoy getting vexed about the truly atrocious standard of driving on the UK's motorways. Like any young and interesting person would.

Mark says: "In 2021 I drove 1200 miles around the Scottish highlands in one of these. Hated the trip, loved the car. Let’s see if I still love it in 2025. There are a lot more EVs these days."

How much has it cost you?

It’s funny, but because cars are getting so expensive now – including the newer Polestars – the 2 here feels like better value with every year that passes. So this one here is basically £56k. A lot of money, aye, but it’s got almost 500 horsepower, is genuinely RAPID, has special chassis tuning, good battery range (352 miles, officially) and won’t cost too much to run. By comparison, it’s £62k for a BMW M340i these days. That's a 3 Series with 100 horsepower less than this and 30mpg running costs.

Where have you been?

Not that far, yet. Mainly just doing the normal rounds (Starbucks and Maccies drive-thru, train station runs, the shops and that) and introducing the kids to “their new car”. They both like it, unlike the last one – our bright green Skoda, which my son liked but my daughter was embarrassed by. This one’s cool, apparently. They like the colour. As do I. It’s the only Polestar 2 colour I actually like, tbh, because if there’s one thing more vexing than Polestar’s touchscreen, it’s the utter dullness of the paint colour selection. It's called Vapour. If you need to remember the name, just think about every teenager you ever saw with an Elf bar hanging out of their gob.

What have you been carrying?

People, dogs, Starbucks lids, empty Greggs bags... standard. Nothing that the Polestar can’t deal with. And even though it looks like a saloon, it’s actually a hatchback, so we’re expecting it to be very drum-friendly. It even has a small front trunk; it’s a little frunky, you might say. If you need to remember that, just think about Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.

Delights?

Yeah, it’s really quick. When Polestar asked which Polestar I wanted, I said I wanted the fastest Polestar. So here we are. Anyone would do the same, right? The good thing is, unlike some fast electric cars, the wheels and suspension can actually handle all the torque very non-dramatically. There's 740Nm of it, which to give you a reference point is 150Nm MORE than a Porsche 911 Turbo has. Yikes. It follows that this is genuinely one of those cars that’s probably very easy to go too fast in, because it gets to high speed so effortlessly, and feels so relaxed when it gets there. Probably.

Frustrations?

Is it so good that it’s boring? I’m, still figuring that out. My own car, an SUV, has 360 horsepower – a lot, but a lot less than this – and it’s nowhere near as quick, but the noise and the drama make it feel much more exciting than the Polestar is. We’ll discuss this more when I’ve made my mind up. We’ll also discuss the touchscreen a lot, because I’m 76 percent certain I hate it.

This month in a nutshell

Fast Polestar is flawed but I like it a lot. The next 6 months will be interesting. Back to top

Mark says: "I nearly crashed into a BMW iX that I couldn’t see. It was mostly the Polestar’s fault. I'll explain...”

How much has it cost you?

*checks Pod Point app* Car charging during the month of April cost me £87.89 for 394kWh. That’s 22p per kWh, and the car’s giving me about 2.5 miles per kW, so about 9p per mile. For reference, an Aston Martin DB9 V12 has 470 horsepower – same as the Polestar – and returns 17mpg, officially. Let’s be generous and say that’s 15mpg IRL. Today, a gallon of fuel costs £6.30. Therefore, the Aston costs 42p per mile. Oof.

Where have you been?

Here, there and everywhere. The 2 is our family car, so it’s doing daily commute for Nicola Nichol (about 20 miles), evening trips to Starbucks (it’s weird that it costs way more to buy an unpronounceable beverage at Starbucks than it does actually getting there in a 470-horsepower car)… the usual. Apart from nearly sideswiping a BMW. Oh damn.

What have you been carrying?

A sense of relief. Relief that I didn’t actually hit the BMW.

Delights?

It’s delightful that I didn’t hit the BMW. (Did I mention I nearly hit a BMW.) Alright. I’ll get on with it now…

Frustrations?

To explain the incredible artwork above (prints available soon from the Tik-Tok shop), #1 is where I started, #2 is where I ended up after a U-Turn, and #3 is the BMW iX that was in the absolutely enormous over-the-shoulder blind spot that the Polestar’s tiny rear screen and massive c-pillars produce. I hastily pulled out, right in front of the BMW. Oops. It just ploughed on, nonchalantly, leaving me to drive on the wrong side of the road for a few yards before I could speed up and pull in front of it. In fairness, it wasn’t actually that dramatic. And the BMW driver was very nonplussed about the whole thing (surprised, eh?). And I was very arm-wavingly apologetic, instead of doing that man thing where the man in the wrong swears a lot and speeds off, blaming everyone but himself. Even though I've kind of blamed the car for all this. It was my fault, really – I know this. I went too soon. But I did genuinely lose the whole massive car in the blind spot, and it’s frequently vexing just how poor the Polestar’s rear visibility is. Maybe Polestar did it on purpose as low-key priming for the Polestar 4?

This month in a nutshell

I sort of nearly crashed a bit, but otherwise, Polestar is brilliant… apart from ride quality. But we’re going to fix that soon. See you next time. Back to top

Mark says: “I’m starting to appreciate just how good the Polestar 2 is… and just how easy it would be to make it better.”

How much has it cost you?

We’re still at 22p per kWh, which is about 9p per mile, which is about 20 percent of what a petrol car of this performance would be. The frustrating thing is, Octopus has just put my electricity bill up by about £100 a month, even though I’m £250 in credit. I’m thinking about switching suppliers. That’ll learn them.

Where have you been?

Are you that bothered? I know that you think this job is all track days and drag races, but really, it's mostly sitting at a laptop. It's still mint, like. Anyways, there have been no adventures, no road trips, nothing remotely treacherous or even vaguely interesting. Just... going to work and the shops and that. A general runabout. A lovely one, but runabout all the same. But because we’ve had it for a while now…

What have you been carrying?

…it’s starting to look less like a press car and more like a student flat. It’s filthy. I’m not bothered about that – well, I am, but I can fix it easily – but the passage of time is demonstrating the Polestar’s particular proneness to attracting scuffs. It’s weird, but any contact with the dash materials and they mark up like a teacher during GCSE season. Ideally I'd pack a wet cloth at all times, if it wasn't so non-ideal.

Delights?

My job means I’m driving one or two new cars per week, usually, and because of the times we're in, most of them are electric. What that means is that the novelty of electric in itself ("ooooohhhhhh, isn't it quiet, and quick, and weird") is wearing off, and it’s getting easier to distinguish the nuance between them. (Rather than clumping all electric cars together into one broad category in a sort of “all metal music sounds the same” sort of way.) Every time I get back into the Polestar I’m like, “this is just brilliant, innit.” It’s astonishingly quick and astonishingly easy to drive quickly, making it fun in the same way as sledging on a snow day was back in the '80s, when you were just expected to do near-death things on a Tuesday afternoon in December.

Frustrations?

Apart from a dashboard that reacts to your fingers like a blackboard does to chalk, I WISH the infotainment system was better. It’s the only real gripe I have with the car, apart from maybe the ride quality being too hard… but I’m gonna fix that shortly. It’s just… lacklustre. The screen is laggy, there’s loads of wasted space on the massive screen (why are the icons so small?) and it just takes that little bit too much thought to do simple things. Mind. Volvo’s just done a massive software update, so maybe they’ll email the code to Polestar soon. That would be mint.

This month in a nutshell

A software upgrade and a wet cloth away from being one of the very best electric cars on the planet. Back to top

Mark says: “The Polestar took us to Royal Ascot. Way there: jolly good. Way back: not jolly good.”

How much has it cost you?

Quite a lot. I’ve said this many times: the cost of public rapid charging is a disgrace. The combination of that (89p per kWh FFS) and the Polestar not being that efficient of the motorway (not many electric cars are, in fairness) meant that it would have cost less in fuel to go to Ascot in a petrol car. The Polestar was showing 3.6 miles per kWh on the motorway. At 4 miles per kWh, even, every mile is costing 22p, which means the 350 miles-or-so that I did using public energy (I left home with a full battery) cost at least £77. So let’s say that instead I’m in a car that does 50mpg on a motorway (not unreasonable). Those 350 miles would use seven gallons of fuel. At service station prices (£1.35 per litre), seven gallons (26.5 litres) is £35.78. Less than half the price. The narrative flips if you’re charging at 7p per kWh at home, of course. But it’s another good reason to avoid service stations whenever you can. Also because when you’ve got half an hour to kill in a service station, spending £8.75 on a bag of Wine Gums seems reasonable.

Where have you been?

Royal Ascot. Royal Enclosure. What what what.

What have you been carrying?

Top hats and that. Boot did a good job. See below.

Delights?

It’s such a lovely thing to drive. I’m even getting used to the over-firm ride quality, although I think that’s because we’ve done so many motorway miles of late, and on the M1 there are far fewer things underneath the tyres to upset the chassis than there are on the average pothole-y street.

Frustrations?

On the way back from Ascot the screen had a fit. It locked onto the charge screen just after a charging session, about 200 miles south of home. And that meant no radio, no air con and no heated seats for almost four hours. No amount of jabbing at the screen was going to fix it. The whole long-distance charging thing is still a proper lottery. On the way down to Berkshire, no bother. We set off with a full charge, topped up once… 280 miles. Done. But on the way back. Nah. First we plugged the car into a 350kW BP charger and watched in amazement as the battery started to fill quicker than a queue for free Labubus. So we left to kill half an hour in TK Maxx. More than enough time. We returned to find that the car had stopped charging after 4%. “Communication error.” FFS. We tried again, and watched it this time. It failed after 2%. We tried again. It failed after 42 seconds. We moved to the adjacent unit. It worked fine. We sat in the car for a bit. We left. 80 miles north, we tried to charge again. Both EV chargers at the service station were full. We moved on. Ten miles further north, a charger is available and it’s advertising 180kW speed, yet it never gets beyond 62kW. That’s when the car’s software crapped itself. No more radio or air con for us. As the great philosopher Richard Richard from Bottom once said, "started off in Berkshire, ended up in [redacted]."

This month in a nutshell

Long distance in an EV is still a lottery. You’ll feel like you’re throwing a lot of money away, but at least in the Polestar, the ticket is...erm... this analogy has failed. We still love the Polestar. Back to top