Electric 2021 Polestar 2 arrives as one of the year’s best, most advanced new cars "Detroit Free Press". 9043
Mark Phelan Detroit Free Press
Published
3:59 PM EDT Aug 26, 2020
There’s a
surprising new contender for 2020's best and most advanced new car: The
Polestar 2.
The
handsome four-door fastback from Volvo’s performance and technology brand is
loaded with useful features and accelerates and handles like a first-rate sport
sedan.
Don’t feel
bad if you’ve never heard of Polestar. The brand’s a baby, founded by Volvo and
its Chinese owner, Geely, in 2017. The Polestar 2 goes on sale in September,
but the brand’s total presence in America so far is about 150 units of the
Polestar 1, an expensive carbon-fiber plug-in hybrid.
The 2021
Polestar 2 is the brand’s bid for wider awareness, but it’s not exactly
mainstream. True to its Scandinavian roots a “vegan” interior — no
leather and no wood — is standard on the $59,900 base model. Leather is not
exactly disapproved— Swedes are practical people; hand them a check,
they’ll cash it — but it is a $4,000 option.
The
Polestar 2’s features include all-wheel drive with a motor on each axle, and
the first production use of Android Automotive. Not to be confused with the
Android Auto smart phone — right, that’ll never happen — Android Automotive
provides voice recognition, navigation, music, control of some vehicle
functions and more through Google computing.
You can
also set it to provide information about road conditions to Google, making it a
precursor to the connected vehicles expected to reduce traffic congestion in
the future.
The car can
even connect to your Google account for full access to addresses, calendar and
more, but that’ll be a bit Big Brotherly for some, so it’s optional.
I spent a
recent afternoon driving a Polestar 2 around lakes, highways and cities in
southeast Michigan. I barely scratched the surface of its features, but it was
fun to drive and the features seemed reasonably easy to use.
Driving
impressions
The
Polestar 2 has all the best driving characteristics of an electric vehicle —
instant torque, low center of gravity, regenerative braking that can virtually
replace the brake pedal — but it takes remarkably little time to adjust
from a conventional vehicle.
Acceleration
is immediate and satisfying, as you’d expect with 487 pound-feet of torque
available at all times.
Polestar
claims a 4.45-second 0-60 mph time, and 12.76-second time in the
quarter-mile because you just know EV drag racing will be a thing.
The 51/49
weight distribution and low center of gravity — both thanks to locating
the heavy batteries low and in the middle of the floorpan — keep it
planted on the road. Direct tuning and a slight rearward bias in power delivery
mimic the feel of a well-balanced rear-drive performance car.
You can set
the brakes to mimic the feel of a conventional car but why bother, when you’ve
got the "one-pedal driving" setting in the portrait-style touch
screen? The setting maximizes regenerative braking, the amount of power
recovered and fed back to the battery when you release the accelerator pedal.
The vehicle slows so quickly that I had almost no need for the brake pedal
after a quick learning curve. Because it charges the batteries, the feature
also extends driving range.
The
steering is also adjustable. I usually prefer the "sport" setting,
but it seemed to deliver higher effort and less feedback in the 2. I found the
base setting for steering most satisfying.
Mark
Phelan/Detroit Free Press
The 2 is
very quiet on the road. Even with summer tires, frequently on rough country
roads, wind and tire noise are minimal. When it’s moving, the 2 generates an
unobtrusive but noticeable sound to alert pedestrians and animals to its
approach. It sounded a bit like an approaching Roomba, the stealthy little
autonomous vacuum.
The front
seat has plenty of room, but there’s no sunshade for the fixed sun roof. The
glass panel has a mild tint, but I’d still like a shade for particularly hot
days.
The
Google-powered voice recognition is excellent. It executed every command for
audio tuning, climate and navigation correctly on the first attempt.
It’s hard
to be sure after a brief drive, but I think the touch screen’s command
structure will feel natural after a few days driving the 2.
I
thoroughly enjoyed my afternoon driving the Polestar 2 on city streets,
highways and winding country roads.
Safety and driver assistance features
- Adaptive
cruise control
- Blind spot alert with steering
support
- Cross traffic alert with
automatic braking
- Lane
keeping aid
- Fordward
collision alert
- Rear collision warning and
mitigation by steering and braking
- Front
and rear parking assist
- Hill
start assist
How much?
Prices for
the Polestar start at $59,900. All-wheel drive, twin motors and a battery pack
projected to deliver 275 miles of range are standard. As with most electric
vehicles, the transmission is a single-speed automatic.
The company
expects to sell about 2,000 2s in the U.S. through four outlets this year. It
plans to have 10 U.S. dealers by mid-2021 and about 30 U.S. dealers by the end
of 2023. Polestar aims for around 50,000 sales a year eventually, probably with
four or five models. They’ll all be electric. Next up, a sporty SUV, probably
in 2023.
The
Polestar 2 is based on the same CMA (compact modular architecture)
underpinnings as the Volvo XC40 small SUV. Polestar is a separate brand and
will have separate showrooms from Volvo, but it will take full advantages of
the engineering, purchasing, sales, distribution and service networks the older
brand has as part of Chinese automaker Geely.
Visually,
the Polestar 2 is clearly related to Volvo’s styling theme. The headlights even
share the brand’s "Thor’s hammer" look. The fastback has 5.9
inches of ground clearance, enough for good visibility and easy step-in, but
unlike many new vehicles, the 2 is not a car trying to pass as an SUV.
Source:
Detroit Free Press.
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