Joined
·
327 Posts
It's been quite the long and winding road ordering my first EV in 2020 and it finally culminated today with getting the keys to my very own Midnight PP Polestar 2. You know it's an adventure with ups and downs when that first EV ordered was a 2020 IPace back in the spring!
I submitted the order to LeasePlan, played the waiting game and eventually was told they couldn't fill it because they were about to announce the 2021 model, which they did, and while it has a new infotainment system, they pulled features from the SE model and generally made it even more expensive. So I went looking for options, and that's when the Polestar 2 showed up as the car of the week on the Leaseplan site. An invalidated quote later, months of delays while Leaseplan failed and failed again to get the car re-added properly in a condition where the car could actually be ordered and finally on August 17th the order was placed. It was approved by my company car scheme and confirmed by Polestar on August 20th. ....and then nothing....and then estimated delivery of October...and then suddenly little more than a week ago, the email and selection of Sept 30th as my delivery date.
Two days ago an email saying my delivery was confirmed for 2pm today....and then nothing. 2pm came and went. Sat by the window watching the minutes tick by, after an hour I did an online chat with customer services. They were very apologetic but the afternoon slot is 2pm to 6pm and they call an hour before they arrive. The email sent should REALLY have said that. Anyway, just before 4pm, Mike rang to say he was on his way but would be just after 5pm.
After seeing everyone getting their cars offloaded from a flatbed truck...this pulled up just after 5pm
Excited that it's actually arrived, I go out and meet Mike. Seems a good guy. Turns out he's been told this is dropping off a demo car, I assume a multi-day test drive. I assure him this is definitely my car, ordered through leaseplan and someone will be prying the keys from my cold dead fingers. Poor guy, seemed to know enough about the car but not sure he'd done an actual owned car handover before, didn't have the app to go through the signing process and all that. Took a picture of my drivers license and headed down the road...on foot.
Long story short, we gave him a lift to the nearest town with a train station as trying to get a taxi without pre-booking in our little village wasn't a great position to be in.
Car drives, handles and feels just like I remember the test drive, which is to say amazing. Unfortunately it only had 62% charge (side effect of the demo car mix-up) and because the notification of car delivery happened so fast, the electrician didn't have availability to install the commando socket for my Ohme cable until October 16th so I'm three pin granny cable charging it for the next few weeks.
Initial observations:
She's all tucked up in the drive for the night, sipping on Economy7 power
I submitted the order to LeasePlan, played the waiting game and eventually was told they couldn't fill it because they were about to announce the 2021 model, which they did, and while it has a new infotainment system, they pulled features from the SE model and generally made it even more expensive. So I went looking for options, and that's when the Polestar 2 showed up as the car of the week on the Leaseplan site. An invalidated quote later, months of delays while Leaseplan failed and failed again to get the car re-added properly in a condition where the car could actually be ordered and finally on August 17th the order was placed. It was approved by my company car scheme and confirmed by Polestar on August 20th. ....and then nothing....and then estimated delivery of October...and then suddenly little more than a week ago, the email and selection of Sept 30th as my delivery date.
Two days ago an email saying my delivery was confirmed for 2pm today....and then nothing. 2pm came and went. Sat by the window watching the minutes tick by, after an hour I did an online chat with customer services. They were very apologetic but the afternoon slot is 2pm to 6pm and they call an hour before they arrive. The email sent should REALLY have said that. Anyway, just before 4pm, Mike rang to say he was on his way but would be just after 5pm.
After seeing everyone getting their cars offloaded from a flatbed truck...this pulled up just after 5pm
Excited that it's actually arrived, I go out and meet Mike. Seems a good guy. Turns out he's been told this is dropping off a demo car, I assume a multi-day test drive. I assure him this is definitely my car, ordered through leaseplan and someone will be prying the keys from my cold dead fingers. Poor guy, seemed to know enough about the car but not sure he'd done an actual owned car handover before, didn't have the app to go through the signing process and all that. Took a picture of my drivers license and headed down the road...on foot.
Long story short, we gave him a lift to the nearest town with a train station as trying to get a taxi without pre-booking in our little village wasn't a great position to be in.
Car drives, handles and feels just like I remember the test drive, which is to say amazing. Unfortunately it only had 62% charge (side effect of the demo car mix-up) and because the notification of car delivery happened so fast, the electrician didn't have availability to install the commando socket for my Ohme cable until October 16th so I'm three pin granny cable charging it for the next few weeks.
Initial observations:
- Not sure I'd recommend the full Pilot assist on winding country roads, think I'll save that for motorway driving, it just didn't instil confidence during the initial trial run.
- Trying to work out how to enable the Auto wipers when it's already raining is a nightmare, even though I had read a thread about it a week or two ago. The 'button' on the stalk just does not look like a button at all.
- Some of the Android Automotive interface stuff isn't very obvious. Hunting down the settings menu, finding the Parking menu even after seeing Bjorn use it for doing pre-conditioning, etc. Not that hard to remember once you work it out, just not what I would call intuitive at first.
- While turning radius is good, coming from a smaller car, it still takes some getting used to
- Had no issues connecting the car to my Orbi guest network even though there isn't a way to specify only 2.4ghz on the guest network, but it couldn't see the main non-guest wifi at all
- Adding Google account if already using Android based phones is a breeze
- Rain + New car lead foot = a thirsty thirsty car
- Because of the above and my granny charger situation, I stopped at a 50kw Instavolt charger at a shell station. Despite having to pay a little over £7 for 21.2kw, it couldn't have been easier for a first charge. Contactless tap, plug the cable in and away it went.
- The headlights are really great, but like I shared in the Matrix headlight thread, they had problems with the reflective back of an Ambulance in front of me, causing them to appear to be flashing and so they pulled over in a lay-by thinking I needed help.
I was slow to realise what was happening and with cars behind me, not in a position to stop and explain the mix up, so if you find yourself in a similar situation I'd turn the auto lights off!
- I didn't get flashed at first by anyone, but once on more hilly roads, cars meeting you as they come over a hill sometimes think your brights are on. I don't think you can flash the brights when in auto which is sort of annoying as it would be nice to be able to correct those who think you have full blown brights on.
- Seems to have come with updated software installed
- No scratched piano black so far
- No jack, haven't confirmed the first aid kit yet
- Rear tyre pressure was set to 41, can't check the front because my 12v tyre pump with gauge doesn't have a long enough cable to run from the boot!
- Speaking of 12v socket, it seems to be sitting around 13.3 volts
- Granny cable works but seems to sit around 10 amps even though I've raised the limit to 14 (in the hopes of maxing out all 13amps
- Still need to check glove box, manual, plugsurfing card and any play in the rear windows
- Sound system is great, though I find the highs a little fatiguing so will be dialing the treble down a few notches and signing the request to get Spotify to up their bitrate
She's all tucked up in the drive for the night, sipping on Economy7 power