Polestar 1 Road Tests: Spain. 8493

The Hällered Proving Ground offers a wide variety of roads for all sorts of vehicle testing. Steep inclines, hairpin turns, extreme off-road conditions, Hällered has it all. They’ve even recreated roads from around the world, down to the smallest detail: a country road in England, a Los Angeles highway, and more.

But as thoroughly designed as it is, it can’t replace the real world. That’s why Polestar engineers and technicians are taking the Polestar 1 verification prototype (VP) cars throughout Europe, to get the best results possible.

Jokkmokk and Arvidsjaur in northern Sweden provided the perfect conditions for testing different drive modes, brake sensitivity, oversteer/understeer, steering software, and driving in deep snow. Steering software was also calibrated in sunny Barcelona, from which the Polestar 1 headed to Frankfurt for public road testing and CarPlay app optimisation. The Polestar 1 was also driven from Sweden to northern England (via Germany and Holland) in order to test suspension, bringing along Öhlins to perform on-site adjustments and measurements.

All in all, the Polestar 1 VP cars have driven a total of 10,000 km throughout Europe this year alone. The upcoming trip from Sweden to St. Moritz (via the autobahn) to test engine software will see the Polestar 1 accumulating even more kilometres, and invaluable real-world experience.

Polestar 1 road tests – Spain

It wasn’t easy leaving the Arctic Circle for the Mediterranean, but the Polestar 1 steering software won’t test itself.

Therefore, the Polestar engineers and technicians traded pine trees for palm trees, traded their boots for flip-flops, and left Jokkmokk (with its May temperatures of 9 degrees) for Barcelona. We made sure to document the process, which you can see in the gallery.

View the Pre-prodcution.