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I'm ridiculously excited about my Polestar 2 Void Performance, also after 10 days driving around in the Oslo area of Norway.
I’ll share some of my thoughts and experiences so far.
It drives so smooth and firm that I keep smiling constantly. I want to drive somewhere all the time, even If I have no real purpose of going places. I have the Performance pack, and I do not at all share the view of those who feel the standard setting is “too firm”. It is exactly as I would like it to be in the standard setting. One pedal driving is fantastic, and after 1 hour I already felt that this is a huge step up. Smoother driving, more consistent speed, and I realized how much time is lost by moving my foot between the pedals. Right now I’m trying to get used to the switch you sometimes need when going from autocruise to brake. As I don’t use the actual brake to deactivate autocruise as I’m used to. It demands a technique of pressing the accelerator pedal some way and then deactivate autocruise with the button on the steering wheel. This is no issue at all but braking by using the accelerator pedal feels slightly counter intuitive and making this smooth is a new minor challenge. This is not really Polestar 2 specific, just a new experience to me that I actually enjoy trying to perfect.
The car looks so much better in real life than on pictures! It just seems so thoroughly well balanced and thought through. I can’t help myself turning around to admire the way it owns the parking lot with confidence every time I park somewhere. And people are curious as many stop to look.
The infotainment system sure needs some tuning, but Google voice control with google maps feels like a huge game changer as far as car navigation goes. It works really well in real life scenarios, especially the way you can ask by name of a store or place, or a store in the general area if you don’t remember the exact location name etc. That I can do this in my somewhat exotic Norwegian dialect and be understood without problems, is awesome. And it works! It will add a location along the route automatically it seems if you don’t cancel the current navigation. I haven’t quite figured out how I can cancel the last or remove some of the navigation points along a complex route by voice, but usually I just say “cancel navigation” and state the next point again. I guess the reason why I want to have this under control is the battery consumption estimates that the map automatically gives you.
The car seems to be overall a bit more battery hungry than I was hoping for, but I usually do better than the estimated consumption in Google maps by a 1-3%. I haven’t actually charged the car on a charging station yet. There hasn’t been a need for it even if I have been driving quite far. Looks to me the battery discussions is a bit like the “who will accelerate fastest” game. In real life and in everyday scenarios this is usually not a concern for many of the new 400km+EV’s anymore for most people it seems to me. That seems much clearer to me now after owning the P2 for 10 days. To sum that up, I don’t think I can do 470km on one charge with this car from what I can see, but the importance of that is not the same to me now. When this Corona situation goes away I’ll try some bigger adventures. The acceleration feels ridiculous, but after testing 4-5 times it seems to me the purpose is more for show and fun. Right now it's just nice to just know the car can do "crazy" acceleration if needed for some weird reason. I know some cars out there is faster, but I’m very glad Polestar focused more on what actually counts. And It feels like they do indeed know what they are doing in that regard.
Noise levels in the car is good, the seats are very comfortable and easily adjusted in all directions. It remembers the settings so it’s easy to switch between drivers. Different EVs have a slightly different signature sound, and this one is like.. a very mild version of taking off with a plane type of sound. I didn’t think I would, but I like it a lot actually. I was suspecting Volvo sound on the blinkers (and I love the Volvo blinker sound), but these are slightly thinner sounding, like Volvos smaller sister kind of sound or something. Perhaps not important to most but there you go.
I have not had the pleasure of test the Matrix high beams yet. Frankly, the thought is a bit scary because I read somewhere that this functionality was not working. I find myself having a hard time testing this on some random unexpecting car out there in the wild. Would appreciate if somebody could post their experiences. The low beams are very powerful at least, and it seems they are among the best out there like we are used to from Volvo.
Some less or more important things I would like to note.
As soon as I step out of the drivers seat, the music stops and the car seems to turn of. This is a bit annoying at times, when I just want to step out to get the mail from the mailbox or something. What makes this even a bit more annoying is that I have to press “OK” to confirm, like a box showing that, yes the car is ready, all seatbelts are on etc..the purpose escapes me as of yet. In addition there is a bug in the SOS system (perhaps only in Norway) so there is another box I have to say “OK” every single time I step out from the drivers seat. So a quick mailbox check involves pressing OK twice and starting the infotainment system all over. I hope this will be tuned and that the SOS button issue will be fixed soon.
I have not been able to get hold of a PIN code to activate the Connect app. Nobody seems to know how this works here in Norway, Polestar support least of all. The app is essential to see status from the charger and alarm etc so this is a bit annoying. Also the fact that nobody knows, and no info is given. Pressing the Connect button in the car have so far just resulted in confusion from Polestar support.
The Audio system is adjusting the volume as I drive over speed bumps etc. This is just like the Volvo XC40 or newer Volvos I’ve heard. The weird thing is that I haven’t found any information about this feature, and no settings to turn it on or off. Strange indeed, and I’m not quite sure if I like it yet. Also the sound system is good but not quite as good as I had hoped compared to other premium cars in this segment. Also I cant find a way to adjust the sound balance in the car (front/back). Might just be a matter of tuning etc in the future.
Regarding charging, The car will not stop charging even if I set it to max 80% for some reason. It goes to 100% every time. I’m sure this is something they will fix in a software update soon, but still..
When I first got the car the infotainment crashed several times and needed a reboot, but I soon saw that a few updates from Google was waiting. After installing those everything worked much better. Camera was “not available” on a few occasions when starting the car, but I haven’t seen that for some days now.
I’m sure I have forgotten many details, but this roughly sums up my first 10 days with the Polestar 2. I am even more exited about the car now that before I got it, and that must count for something.
I’ll share some of my thoughts and experiences so far.
It drives so smooth and firm that I keep smiling constantly. I want to drive somewhere all the time, even If I have no real purpose of going places. I have the Performance pack, and I do not at all share the view of those who feel the standard setting is “too firm”. It is exactly as I would like it to be in the standard setting. One pedal driving is fantastic, and after 1 hour I already felt that this is a huge step up. Smoother driving, more consistent speed, and I realized how much time is lost by moving my foot between the pedals. Right now I’m trying to get used to the switch you sometimes need when going from autocruise to brake. As I don’t use the actual brake to deactivate autocruise as I’m used to. It demands a technique of pressing the accelerator pedal some way and then deactivate autocruise with the button on the steering wheel. This is no issue at all but braking by using the accelerator pedal feels slightly counter intuitive and making this smooth is a new minor challenge. This is not really Polestar 2 specific, just a new experience to me that I actually enjoy trying to perfect.
The car looks so much better in real life than on pictures! It just seems so thoroughly well balanced and thought through. I can’t help myself turning around to admire the way it owns the parking lot with confidence every time I park somewhere. And people are curious as many stop to look.
The infotainment system sure needs some tuning, but Google voice control with google maps feels like a huge game changer as far as car navigation goes. It works really well in real life scenarios, especially the way you can ask by name of a store or place, or a store in the general area if you don’t remember the exact location name etc. That I can do this in my somewhat exotic Norwegian dialect and be understood without problems, is awesome. And it works! It will add a location along the route automatically it seems if you don’t cancel the current navigation. I haven’t quite figured out how I can cancel the last or remove some of the navigation points along a complex route by voice, but usually I just say “cancel navigation” and state the next point again. I guess the reason why I want to have this under control is the battery consumption estimates that the map automatically gives you.
The car seems to be overall a bit more battery hungry than I was hoping for, but I usually do better than the estimated consumption in Google maps by a 1-3%. I haven’t actually charged the car on a charging station yet. There hasn’t been a need for it even if I have been driving quite far. Looks to me the battery discussions is a bit like the “who will accelerate fastest” game. In real life and in everyday scenarios this is usually not a concern for many of the new 400km+EV’s anymore for most people it seems to me. That seems much clearer to me now after owning the P2 for 10 days. To sum that up, I don’t think I can do 470km on one charge with this car from what I can see, but the importance of that is not the same to me now. When this Corona situation goes away I’ll try some bigger adventures. The acceleration feels ridiculous, but after testing 4-5 times it seems to me the purpose is more for show and fun. Right now it's just nice to just know the car can do "crazy" acceleration if needed for some weird reason. I know some cars out there is faster, but I’m very glad Polestar focused more on what actually counts. And It feels like they do indeed know what they are doing in that regard.
Noise levels in the car is good, the seats are very comfortable and easily adjusted in all directions. It remembers the settings so it’s easy to switch between drivers. Different EVs have a slightly different signature sound, and this one is like.. a very mild version of taking off with a plane type of sound. I didn’t think I would, but I like it a lot actually. I was suspecting Volvo sound on the blinkers (and I love the Volvo blinker sound), but these are slightly thinner sounding, like Volvos smaller sister kind of sound or something. Perhaps not important to most but there you go.
I have not had the pleasure of test the Matrix high beams yet. Frankly, the thought is a bit scary because I read somewhere that this functionality was not working. I find myself having a hard time testing this on some random unexpecting car out there in the wild. Would appreciate if somebody could post their experiences. The low beams are very powerful at least, and it seems they are among the best out there like we are used to from Volvo.
Some less or more important things I would like to note.
As soon as I step out of the drivers seat, the music stops and the car seems to turn of. This is a bit annoying at times, when I just want to step out to get the mail from the mailbox or something. What makes this even a bit more annoying is that I have to press “OK” to confirm, like a box showing that, yes the car is ready, all seatbelts are on etc..the purpose escapes me as of yet. In addition there is a bug in the SOS system (perhaps only in Norway) so there is another box I have to say “OK” every single time I step out from the drivers seat. So a quick mailbox check involves pressing OK twice and starting the infotainment system all over. I hope this will be tuned and that the SOS button issue will be fixed soon.
I have not been able to get hold of a PIN code to activate the Connect app. Nobody seems to know how this works here in Norway, Polestar support least of all. The app is essential to see status from the charger and alarm etc so this is a bit annoying. Also the fact that nobody knows, and no info is given. Pressing the Connect button in the car have so far just resulted in confusion from Polestar support.
The Audio system is adjusting the volume as I drive over speed bumps etc. This is just like the Volvo XC40 or newer Volvos I’ve heard. The weird thing is that I haven’t found any information about this feature, and no settings to turn it on or off. Strange indeed, and I’m not quite sure if I like it yet. Also the sound system is good but not quite as good as I had hoped compared to other premium cars in this segment. Also I cant find a way to adjust the sound balance in the car (front/back). Might just be a matter of tuning etc in the future.
Regarding charging, The car will not stop charging even if I set it to max 80% for some reason. It goes to 100% every time. I’m sure this is something they will fix in a software update soon, but still..
When I first got the car the infotainment crashed several times and needed a reboot, but I soon saw that a few updates from Google was waiting. After installing those everything worked much better. Camera was “not available” on a few occasions when starting the car, but I haven’t seen that for some days now.
I’m sure I have forgotten many details, but this roughly sums up my first 10 days with the Polestar 2. I am even more exited about the car now that before I got it, and that must count for something.
