By Ewan Kennedy, Marque Motoring
Part two of this week’s motoring feature.
SAFETY
Polestar is closely related to Volvo and that company has had safety built into it’s vehicles for many decades. It has a five-star safety rating . Dual frontal, side chest-protecting and side head-protecting (curtain) airbags are standard. A centre airbag which provides added protection to front seat occupants in side impact crashes is standard on all variants. Autonomous emergency braking (Car-to-Car, Vulnerable Road User and Junction Assist) as well as a lane support system with lane keep assist (LKA), lane departure warning (LDW) and emergency lane keeping (ELK), and an advanced speed assistance system (SAS) are standard on all variants.
DRIVING
When we got into the car we looked in vain for a Start-Stop button. Only to find it doesn’t have one. Put your foot on the brake pedal and select either Drive or Reverse and the Polestar is ready to go. It’s a bit spooky at first because there’s no noise, but you soon adapt the brain to it.
Handling is generally neutral as the centre of gravity is lower than in a petrol- or diesel-powered vehicle. It’s a fairly heavy vehicle because batteries have a lot of mass and it weighs in at 1.9 tonnes. This does give it a slight reluctant to change direction.
Country running on twisty roads is good but you wouldn’t put it in the sports coupe category.
The excellent instant acceleration that we love in all pure electric vehicles is a major feature. It will beat anything off the line that’s powered by a V8 or hot six-cylinder petrol engine.
Around town and in the suburbs there’s little noise inside the Polestar 2. On the motorway section of our road testing the noise did penetrate more and disturbed the serenity. There’s some tyre bump thump when crossing bridges.
Energy consumption is officially rated at 19.4 kWh per 100 kilometres. We averaged 16.8 kWh during our road testing of the Polestar 2 as we did a fair bit of suburban running and the vehicle charges itself when slowing down. Indeed, on our run over the high Gateway Bridge it’s indicated range increased when we freewheeled in on the down slope.
I do drive economically and have a Guinness Book of Records entry for the greatest distance travelled on a single fuel fill. Perhaps I should try for an electric vehicle Guinness Record, let me think about it and get back to you…
SUMMING UP
Polestar 2 gives us a strong insight as to what motoring will be like in the future. It’s low running costs and strong performance are impressive. Will we replace our Volvo XC40 with a Polestar 2? Not at this stage, we will wait until prices come down and charging times are shorter.
