[SKuggemannen]

this post was posted earlier, but have been in approval limbo for more than 2 days now, so I'll post it again in a slightly updated version with some of the previous questions answered

I had the pleasure of driving from Oslo - Trondheim Airport - Oslo these last couple of days with my P2 Performance. 1078,1km in total. (669,9 miles)

From Oslo to Trondheim I took the Dombås route, and Østerdalen back (for those Norwegians that know those routes)
The Dombås route have a fair bit of more high speed roads, 110km/h (68mph) an 90km/h (56 mph) speed limit and will reach around 1000m above sea level, while Østerdalen is 733m above sea level at maximum, and most of the way is 80 km/h (50 mph) speed limit.

I had a 12v cooling box connected all the time, a fair bit of luggage and a passenger both ways. Most of the time driving on autocruise on the exact speed limit (GPS). Normal driving all the time, no attempts to save anything as far as AC, or heat goes etc.
The trip also involved some steep climbs and gravel roads at times. I would say a god real world test of the power consumption.

The trip counter in the car say 1078,1 km, 20.2 kWh/100km, 15:06 hours, 74 km/h average speed. 12-18 degrees C.

I charged about 20kwh from a basic house plug, 3.6kWh boosting from 25% to 50% (stayed overnight) , the rest was in total 176,907 kW according to the apps.
I had 100% when I started and returned with about 25%.

Total time spent on roadside chargers was 211 minutes, but only 163 minutes was along the road. (attended a meeting in the city and charged on a nearby charger) Of that 90 minutes was spent for food brakes, perhaps 30 minutes on random stops for restroom etc, so actual wate time for charging was about 45 minutes in total. I charged more than I needed also so this could have been lower if I knew the car and the limits better. I brought a drone to fly around to kill time anyway, so it was mostly good times. I only used 50kW chargers. (no need for those expensive 150kW). Of the 5-6 timers I charged, I found 1 defect charger, and one charging really slow, but I just moved the car to the next one both times. I never saw 50kWh on those chargers anyway. I think you rarely see those numbers.

I did absolutely no route planing ahead, Just used the car. I started by telling it the end destination. It suggested I should add x amount of minutes at a charging station so I just followed the cars advice. As the trip went on and the plans changed a bit, I just repeated that process. Also if we agreed to take a break for some reason I would say "nearest charging point", and we just stopped there for a brake to top up the battery a bit when we had the chance for some minutes. I'm not sure this is the most cost effective solution, as you pay by the minute on some of those chargers and they use quite a bit of time to get up to peak charging power. Either way the total cost of this trip ended up 1/3 of the cost from previous trips with a diesel car so I don't mind.

I had not much clue what to expect and I had a steep learning curve here, so this is some of my thoughts:

• 110km/t eats away the battery fast indeed. I knew that but I really see the difference myself now. Scared me a bit since the first leg of the trip is a fair bit of 110kmh speed limit.
• Finding a charger in these parts of Norway is really easy. It seems to me they are everywhere at least on these roads, and I charged 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there just because I randomly stopped for different reasons. I understand this is not representative or anything for many areas, but this was just so much easier than I thought it would be, and I didn’t really feel I spent much time charging at all.
• The seats in the P2 for longer trips like this, Excellent! I adjusted the support for lower back a bit and after that it was superb
• The infotainment system was a bit funky. 4G data connection was lost for the first hour resulting in a very weird and slow system. Suddenly it worked again. Also Google voice stopped working at a very critical point. I had to restart the system completely 2 times during the trip because of weird behaviour. This was in an area with good 4G coverage and both our phones had a good reception meanwhile.
• The Østerdalen route was a fun experience as there are a fair bit of sharps turns in 80kmh here. The cars just grabs the road and flows through like a train, just with less noise.
• Range does not bother me nearly as much after this trip. Also the estimated consumption from the Google system was very good, perhaps a bit on the conservative side
• The car performed fantastic and both me and my passenger enjoyed the ride very much and agreed this was the smoothest ride we had ever done on these roads.
• Even on some rough gravel roads the car didn't feel too firm with the performance pack. Worked surprisingly well.
• 3 times cargo trucks blinked with the lights to me, like indicating I should turn off the high beams. But I didn't use them, only the low. I am a bit puzzled by this.

 

[ProfessorCook]

• 3 times cargo trucks blinked with the lights to me, like indicating I should turn off the high beams. But I didn't use them, only the low. I am a bit puzzled by this.

Others have reported this issue. The good news is the low beams are bright. The bad news is that they bother oncoming drivers. More good news is that this should be able to be addressed through an OTA update.

So I'm not too worried about this in the long run.

 

[HVS84]

thank you for sharing your experience ... such posts are immensely helpful!

Yes, the light from what I have read is a little on the brighter side....it seems some customers are getting it re-calibrated as the low beam is pointing a little higher...Bjorn mentioned this in his video

can you please elaborate a little on following doubts...

1) how was your experience with the pilot assist? likes/dislikes...also, your experience using it during night time...

2) The 4G connectivity issue is a little worrisome to me....is there an option to download maps offline (the way we do it on our phones)?

 

[GDank]

1. Finding a charger in these parts of Norway is really easy. It seems to me they are everywhere at least on these roads, and I charged 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there just because I randomly stopped for different reasons. I understand this is not representative or anything for many areas, but this was just so much easier than I thought it would be, and I didn’t really feel I spent much time charging at all.
2. 3 times cargo trucks blinked with the lights to me, like indicating I should turn off the high beams. But I didn't use them, only the low. I am a bit puzzled by this.

Thanks for the update!


1. Thanks for making all the Brit's here green with jelousy!

2. Others have mentioned this. Can you please check deep in the settings somewhere that you can switch between left and right hand driving (so you can go abroad and drive on the other side of the road). It wouldn't shock me that this has been left on wrong setting for your country. If not it's either a software update (as they are controllable LED's) or a trip to a service centre to get these lowered a fraction. Finally you cold try with the full beam ... in that mode it's meant to autoblock oncoming drivers - could be worth a test.

 

[ProfessorCook]

Can you please check deep in the settings somewhere that you can switch between left and right hand driving

Lol... Uhm, GDank... we should have a little talk...

 

[GDank]

Lol... Uhm, GDank... we should have a little talk...

I mean right or left hand side of the road obviously 🤣 There is no batmobile mode that moves the steering wheel!

 

[ProfessorCook]

I mean right or left hand side of the road obviously 🤣 There is no batmobile mode that moves the steering wheel!

Oh good. For a moment there I thought you were giving our Swedish designer pals a bit too much credit.

 

[SKuggemannen]

Can you please check deep in the settings somewhere that you can switch between left and right hand driving (so you can go abroad and drive on the other side of the road). It wouldn't shock me that this has been left on wrong setting for your country. If not it's either a software update (as they are controllable LED's) or a trip to a service centre to get these lowered a fraction. Finally you cold try with the full beam ... in that mode it's meant to autoblock oncoming drivers - could be worth a test.

I found this setting indicating temporary left hand driving is off.

I will definately try the full beam one of these days.

 

[SKuggemannen]

thank you for sharing your experience ... such posts are immensely helpful!
1) how was your experience with the pilot assist? likes/dislikes...also, your experience using it during night time...
2) The 4G connectivity issue is a little worrisome to me....is there an option to download maps offline (the way we do it on our phones)?

1: Pilot assist I like quite alot. It's far from auto pilot like the Tesla, and naming it "assist" is very to the point. At times it is a bit "nervous" like adjusting the direction more often than you would yourself. Also I feel it positions the car a bit too close to either the right or the left line at times. Depending on the road and the position of the cars you meet this is details that will make you not quite thrust the assist 100%. But that was perhaps never the point with it either. I found myself using it when I try to open a bottle, or briefly check something on the infotainment screen just for extra safety. Also on long roads when I felt like I needed a brake, just resting my hands on the wheel and let the assist do the job for a while was very nice. I thought It worked best when driving on roads with not too many sharp turns and moderate to little traffic. I feel this is the right amount of "assist", and I don't think I would spend alot of money on getting a car with autopilot. I think there are several other areas one should focus on perfecting on a car before that. On that note I imediately felt the usefullness of the assist feature, and I didn't feel I needed t get used to anything, like how hard I should hold the steering wheel or anything. Everything just felt intuitive. Trying autopilot on the Tesla was a very different story for me.

2: I would not worry too much. When 4G was out, the voice assist didnt work very good (extremely slow and not very impressed by my norwegian dialect), but searching the manual way worked just as good as any other existing map system out there. So you are back to 2010 mode, but everything works, you just can't have a conversation with the car about it. I have adjusted to the Idea of using voice so fast that the dissapointment of actually having to search by text was like.. "This is sooo 1997" . I imediately also missed the live traffic update because that was important at the time I didn't have connection. Radio and DAB radio still worked, and going back to playing Spotify from the phone via bluetooth also worked. Perhaps a factor was also that I havent really learned how to use the system offline, so it was a bit distracting because I went all "I don't know what buttons to push" here.

As I sidenote I found the storage specs at stating it has 36GB of storage available. Andre apper (other apps) using 1.7GB data must be offline maps mostly as there are not much else that could be right now with just the few apps we have.

 

[GDank]

Thanks for all the info!

One last question from me... Can you set a pin number you need to enter before you can drive away?

 

[SKuggemannen]

One last question from me... Can you set a pin number you need to enter before you can drive away?

I have not seen anything like that so I don't think so.

 

[Jonno]

I have not seen anything like that so I don't think so.

Shame as this would be VERY useful. Reminds me of my very first Peugeot 306 (1996) where you had a keypad to enter a number before starting. I would have thought the PIN facility would help to lower insurance premiums. Another question for a test drive.

 

[GDank]

I was told on the test drive a pin can be added but not seen anyone mention it hence the question.

 

[Lowrent]

In the emulator, I found the screen lock in :
Profile (top right button) -> Screen lock -> PIN

 

[SKuggemannen]

In the emulator, I found the screen lock in :
Profile (top right button) -> Screen lock -> PIN

Yes, you are right. It's there in the actual car also

 

[thewallaby]

Great post. Good to see that it is comfortable on long rides in Norway as i will be using mine for trips Oslo-Kristiansund
I havent got mine yet but i read from many that the app still isnt working and the phone/keyless function is still not activated. So basically you can only manually check from the inside of the car if the car is charging and the status and you can only use the dinosaur key (sorry but on the test drive i saw that thing and it is the ugliest and cheapest hardware ever...) to enter the car. Can you confirm? Have you heard anything from the Polestar support?

 

[SKuggemannen]

So basically you can only manually check from the inside of the car if the car is charging and the status and you can only use the dinosaur key (sorry but on the test drive i saw that thing and it is the ugliest and cheapest hardware ever...) to enter the car. Can you confirm? Have you heard anything from the Polestar support?

Yes, absolutely correct. For the time being this is how it is, combined with charging not stopping at 80% on any charger. It hasn't been too big of a deal for me. I find myself not even charging the car everyday at home because of this, perhaps every third day or so.

 

[thewallaby]

Yes, absolutely correct. For the time being this is how it is, combined with charging not stopping at 80% on any charger. It hasn't been too big of a deal for me. I find myself not even charging the car everyday at home because of this, perhaps every third day or so.

I heard that the charging stops when using DC. Does that not work for home charging too? At the wall AC charger at home it will not stop and go to 100% despite the setting being lower? Is that what you mean? Have you tried to limit it when charging at a DC charger? From what i read they have only limited that as the rapid DC charge can damage the batteries if charged over 90% sequentially. But a lot AC charge at home it should not be a problem. You also have a 5% dead buffer in the battery that is software locked so you can charge to 100% at home without degradation issues...

 

[SKuggemannen]

I heard that the charging stops when using DC. Does that not work for home charging too? At the wall AC charger at home it will not stop and go to 100% despite the setting being lower? Is that what you mean? Have you tried to limit it when charging at a DC charger? From what i read they have only limited that as the rapid DC charge can damage the batteries if charged over 90% sequentially. But a lot AC charge at home it should not be a problem. You also have a 5% dead buffer in the battery that is software locked so you can charge to 100% at home without degradation issues...

My car has been set to 80% limit since I got it 17 days ago. It always goes to 100% when charging at home. On those 50kWh chargers it's the same story but I usually stop at 85-90%. I think no matter the logic, setting a limit should actually limit the charging in any scenario especially when there is a warning about it in the car.

 

[polerad]

My car has been set to 80% limit since I got it 17 days ago. It always goes to 100% when charging at home. On those 50kWh chargers it's the same story but I usually stop at 85-90%. I think no matter the logic, setting a limit should actually limit the charging in any scenario especially when there is a warning about it in the car.

Does your home charging set up allow you to monitor the charging or set a schedule for it?
I agree this should be one of Polestar’s top priorities to fix. I’m planning to use my home charger to limit the charge to 80% via the chargers control system and wondering/hoping if that should work.

As a silver lining, their battery warranty should cover things if you have accelerated loss of capacity because of this!