Polestar 3 Prototype 2024 Review – International

First deliveries of the 2024 Polestar 3 from the factory in Chengdu, China, will start in Australia from June, with two ‘launch editions’ available initially.

These are the Long Range Dual Motor, priced from $132,900 plus on-road costs, and the Long Range Dual Motor with Performance Pack, which pushes up to $141,900 plus ORCs.

So you’re looking at around $150,000 to get one of these silent Swedish scorchers on the road.

Alternatives in the large luxury electric SUV space include the Audi Q8 e-tron (from $154,600), BMW iX (from $130,900) and Mercedes-Benz EQE SUV (from $134,900), but there is every chance it could be cross-shopped against non-electric Euros like the BMW X5 (from $134,900), Mercedes-Benz GLE (from $144,900) and even the Porsche Cayenne (from $140,200).

Warranty provisions are typical for an EV, with a five-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty for the car and an eight-year/160,000km warranty for the battery pack.

Servicing is class-leading both in terms of price (complimentary for five years/100,000km) and intervals, set at 24 months/30,000km. Simply put, this means your car won’t be off the road as often.

This intriguing European-bred SUV is based on the same new platform architecture (SPA2) as the upcoming Volvo EX90 large luxury SUV, and they share many components, switchgear, screens and so on.

But unlike its cousin, the 2024 Polestar 3 will only ever be offered as a five-seat vehicle, eschewing a seven-seat, three-row layout because that would scream ‘family car’.

According to Polestar, the 3 is a performance vehicle designed to appeal to one’s desires, not necessity, and that’s reflected in the exterior design too, which has a whiff of shooting brake and hot hatch DNA.

Furthermore, the Polestar 3 comes with plenty of go-fast equipment, including front sports seats with adjustable side bolsters to hold torsos tight during high-gee driving. The seats are tremendous: comfortable and supportive, available with Nappa beef or vegan cheese upholstery and equipped with heating, cooling and massage functionality.

The flat-bottom steering wheel is a nice touch, too, while the dash displays include a large 14.5-inch central touch-screen (running an Android operating system) and a slim but very pretty 9.0-inch digital instrument display.

Launch editions also come with a Bowers and Wilkins stereo complete with 25 speakers, including a pair in the front head restraints and a subwoofer.

On the outside, the Polestar 3 gets a motorsport-inspired (but cleverly hidden) front wing at the leading edge of the bonnet, which helps generate a smidge more downforce over the front-end by channelling incoming air upwards.

Big 22-inch forged alloy wheels are normally shod with high-performance Pirelli P Zero tyres (studded Michelin rubbers for ice driving in this instance), hiding jumbo 400mm cross-drilled and ventilated front brake rotors with gold-painted four-piston Brembo callipers and 390mm rear brake discs with non-Brembo single-piston gold callipers.

Dual-chamber air suspension can modify the Polestar 3’s ride height from 250mm in off-road mode to 190mm in performance mode and are linked with Sachs high-performance adaptive dampers.

But the star of the show is undoubtedly the new Borg Warner-developed dual-clutch torque-vectoring module married to the rear e-motor, its half-shaft set-up capable of pushing up to 100 per cent of torque to either rear wheel in milliseconds.

Polestar’s head of chassis development, Joakim Rydholm, explained that the TVDC (torque vectoring dual-clutch) module was developed by Borg Warner “but tuned by us” for over two years. The verdict? It’s a very savvy chunk of auto technology, but more on that in the drive section below.

It’s no surprise the 2024 Polestar 3 is brimming with safety technology. The athletic SUV does, after all, share DNA with the upcoming Volvo EX90.

ANCAP/Euro NCAP testing had not been carried out at the time of publication, but we’d be surprised if this wasn’t a five-star car.

There are five external cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors and five radar modules fitted to the car, all of which talk to an NVIDIA graphics processor to facilitate Level 3 autonomous driving. We’re talking no hands, feet and eyes. But only on the freeway – and only where regulations allow (not in Australia).

The semi-autonomous driving system is dubbed Pilot Assist and comes standard on all models for now, with “acceleration, braking and steering support up to 150 km/h”, according to Polestar.

An optional Lidar suite will be made available to Aussie buyers at a price of $6000, which also adds more cameras and ultrasonic sensors and should improve the vehicle’s driver-assist functionality via improved laser-based imaging.

Other advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) include adaptive cruise control, lane keeping with steering support, autonomous emergency braking (AEB) with steering support and cyclist/pedestrian detection, post-impact braking, blind spot information system, cross traffic alert (CTA) with brake support, plus road sign recognition.

The reversing camera comes with a self-cleaning water squirter, and the Polestar 3 even gets radar sensors inside the cabin. These can detect kids or pets that may have been left in the car, at which point the Swedish computer on wheels can heat or cool the cabin (depending on the circumstances) to avoid harm to occupants.

The big Swede comes with nine airbags as standard, LED lights fore and aft, with optional 1.3-megapixel HD LED headlights ($3000).

The most conspicuous tech feature in the 2024 Polestar 3’s cabin is the 14.5-inch central touch-screen, whose Android Automotive operating system delivers an intuitive and very attractive interface.

The menu system is sound and easy to navigate, has several pre-loaded native apps, features Google built-in (including Google Maps, Google Assistant and Google Play Store), but also has Apple CarPlay compatibility if you’re an iPhone user.

The whole shebang looks tremendous too, using large, legible fonts and sensible menu structure. When you drill into the car functions – such as suspension, steering and powertrain settings – there’s beautifully rendered animations along with explanations of how the changes affect the vehicle.

Climate controls are hard-coded at the bottom of the 14.5-inch screen, which is handy, and speaking of regulating cabin temperatures, a heat pump takes care of controlling the climate and has a secondary role of preconditioning the battery.

Polestar’s ultra-slim 9.0-inch digital instrument cluster is also a good unit, and although it doesn’t occupy as much visual real estate as some rivals, it provides all the important stuff – road speed, battery charge, distance to empty, etc – all in super-high-definition.

Another nice touch is the way the digital instrument panel is fixed to the steering column, so whichever angle it’s set to you’ve always got a clear view.

The digital triumvirate is made complete with a 9.5-inch head-up display that doesn’t do anything new or innovative but is a welcome addition to be sure.

The 2024 Polestar 3 is propelled by dual electric motors of the permanent magnet synchronous variety, and together they belt out reasonably high levels of power and torque from almost zero revs, funnelled through a single-speed automatic transmission.

The Polestar 3 Long Range Dual Motor version pumps out 360kW/840Nm, which is a pretty hefty wallop in anyone’s book.

Its 0-100km/h sprint of 5.0 seconds is nothing special for an EV, but consider its kerb weight of 2670kg (close to 2.8 tonne with a couple of people on board) and it ain’t bad.

We spent most of our drive time in the more expensive Performance Pack model, which ups power and torque by 20kW/70Nm to 380kW and 910Nm respectively, improving acceleration from 0-100km/h to 4.7 seconds… but let’s remember the Tesla Model X Plaid can do it in 2.6 seconds.

Both Polestar 3 variants have a top speed of 210km/h.

As mentioned earlier, the rear axle gets a clever torque-vectoring dual-clutch (TVDC in Polestar-speak) half-shaft set-up. In normal operation the torque split is rear-biased, but when it detects the driver turning up the heat while cornering it responds by shuffling torque to the outside wheel, in turn generating an assertive level of oversteer… to put it mildly.

The TVDC also introduces a rear motor disconnect or decoupling function, allowing the SUV to run as a front-drive vehicle when cruising with no magnetic or frictional losses, all of which reduces battery drain and maximises range.

Both 2024 Polestar 3 model grades come with the same 107kWh (111kWh gross) lithium-ion battery that gives the Long Range model an impressive claimed range of 610km and the Performance Pack 560km – both WLTP ratings.

During this first drive it was impossible to test the accuracy of that claim, but the 23.1kWh/100km energy consumption looks to be achievable.

Chinese battery giant CATL supplies the battery packs, the chemistry of which is nickel manganese cobalt (NMC).

The SUV is compatible with vehicle-to-load (V2L) charging, allowing owners to use the battery to recharge larger devices or even provide power to appliances, for example. It’s also capable of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging where available.

The Polestar 3’s 400-volt electrical architecture delivers a maximum battery charging bandwidth of 250kW on a DC ultra-fast charger, which is lower than the likes of the Porsche Taycan and Kia EV6 – both 350kW.

However, it’s far from slow to recharge the 107kWh battery, taking 30 minutes to go from 10 to 80 per cent charge.

Using an 11kW AC wallbox to charge the battery from zero to 100 per cent takes a claimed 11 hours, and if you use a household power point (2.2kW) it will take… a very, very long time.

The answer to this question will have to wait a couple of months for the road drive… buuuut on a frozen lake covered in snow, the 2024 Polestar 3 is a celebration of car control.

The 2024 Polestar 3 does the term ‘Scandinavian flick’ proud and feels like it was tailormade for painting perfect powdery arcs across vast snowy plains, and it’s heartening to see a Swedish brand grab the bull by the horns and just send it.

Direct steering, shrewdly-tuned adaptive suspension and more muscle than a 25-year-old Sly Stallone help mask the big SUV’s colossal kerb weight. Tipping the Polestar 3 into a corner for the first time resulted in equal parts shock and elation – it’s incredibly agile but also tremendously lively.

Revisiting my drive notes that read “it handles like a sports car” and “has more in common with a Ford Focus RS than a Swedish luxury SUV” sounds outlandish at first, but that’s honestly how it feels.

The chassis tune delivers excellent response to all driver inputs, with plenty of front-end grip, but it’s the torque-vectoring dual-clutch rear axle array that provides the fun factor, turning mere mortals into drifting gods by adding exacting control of the rear-end.

The way the Polestar 3 proactively power slides is extraordinary, shifting torque between the rear wheels with progressive grace, in turn flooding the circulatory system with endorphins.

The AWD system is so good it’s actually pretty hard to spin the vehicle, the active chassis and powertrain dynamics conspiring to catch even the most flamboyant of fishtails before the point of no return is reached.

Perhaps that is the car’s only dynamic downfall: it’s almost too easy initiate, maintain, then conclude a drift.

Joakim Rydholm, the man who oversees Polestar’s chassis development, explained that the team wanted to make the Polestar 3 fun to drive but also very accessible and approachable. By those measures, it is a resounding success.

The dextrous electric SUV can be driven on the throttle, where it exhibits a wonderfully precocious attitude that fosters dabs of opposite lock during big drifts, but by the same token the Polestar 3 can be driven quickly, decisively and without breaking traction.

Whichever way you drive it, there’s always a mammoth amount of instant thrust available, with excellent throttle response that can be smoothly dispensed and easily modulated through the accelerator pedal.

I’ve tested my fair share of vehicles on snow and ice and this Swedish colossus is certainly one of the more tenacious specimens, yet it still feels very predictable at the limit.

Simply put, the Polestar 3 feels far nimbler than an SUV of this size should… and suggests the cheaper and more powerful Polestar 4 set to arrive here from August 2024 could be an absolute humdinger.

A trio of active damper/air suspension settings deliver distinctly different approaches, with Standard being the softest (and best for drifting on frozen lakes), Nimble a nice blend of comfort and grip, while Firm is almost too stiff on the bumpy 70cm-thick layer of ice covering the lake.

Big 400mm front brake rotors and four-piston Brembo callipers work surprisingly well on the slippery surfaces, and the SUV’s ability to hold its line through corners – while riding the brakes – points to the deftly-tuned chassis, brakes and ABS software.

Of course, these ultra-positive early impressions are based on an ice drive in Sweden. When we test the Polestar 3 on sealed roads in Australia soon, its Michelin Pilot Sport 4 EV, Continental SportContact 7 and Pirelli P Zero tyres may struggle with its immense weight.

Either way, it’ll be fascinating to see how this corpulent 2670kg power-sliding virtuoso performs on smooth asphalt and coarse bitumen.

Well, the 2024 Polestar 3 has an off-road mode that delivers a whopping 250mm of ground clearance, and with its twin-motor AWD set-up – and especially its savvy rear-end torque splitter – it should be able to tackle off-road trails.

But given that most vehicles will be equipped with 21- or 22-inch alloy wheels with sporty tyres, it would be a brave move to tackle the Gibb River Road in one of these.

The first phrase that comes to mind when describing the interior of the 2024 Polestar 3 is peaceful luxury.

Sure, it’s got plenty of sporty bits – the heavily bolstered heated, cooled and massaging seats, the flat-bottom steering wheel – but the decor and design have the feel of an ultra-modern and very exclusive wellness spa in downtown Stockholm.

The use of earthy fabrics and textiles across the dashboard and doors is refreshingly distinctive and a choice of wool or bio-attributed MicroTech vinyl (read: synthetic leather) seat upholstery is available gratis, while ‘animal welfare’-sourced Nappa leather is a cost option ($7500).

It took a bit of fussing to figure out the seat’s power adjustment, which is done via a single seat control dial with a button in the middle that toggles between the different seat cushions.

But it syncs in with the pared-back control scheme and lack of buttons and dials on the centre console, giving the cabin a clean, crisp vibe; only the gear shifter, steering wheel and window controls are physical. The rest of the car’s systems are controlled through the large touch-screen.

There are plenty of incidental storage solutions through the cabin, but one of the key omissions is a third seating row. Polestar refuses to build a seven- or eight-seat version, instead sticking to five seats because it takes away from its sportiness.

For the record, the back seat is quite comfortable, has plenty of legroom and – oddly – plenty of headroom, which is at odds with its vertically challenged fuselage.

There’s also a touch-screen for rear seat climate controls, reading lights and twin USB-C ports.

The Polestar 3 measures 4900mm long and rides on a generous 2985mm wheelbase, but the boot doesn’t feel particularly large. It’s wide and deep but vertically challenged, and available cargo volume of 484 litres (expanding to 1411 litres with the back seats folded away) is fairly average.

Especially compared to its combustion-engine luxury SUV rivals, for example the Mercedes-Benz GLE with a superior 630 litres (2055 litres with the back seats down).

The all-new 2024 Polestar 3 is a surprise package and far more than just another humdrum family SUV.

With an energetic and eager personality, this Scandinavian SUV begs to be driven at full throttle, rewards the courageous driver and is equal parts engaging and entertaining.

A jumbo version of the wild Hyundai IONIQ 5 N, perhaps?

It could well be, especially given the torque-vectoring rear axle is a thing of mechanical beauty.

One thing is for sure – the Polestar 3 is the sportiest and most engaging Polestar to date, no question, and shows the car-maker is on the right trajectory if it wants to be respected as a genuine performance car brand.

Sure, it’s big and luxurious and full of minimalist Scandi design cues inside and out, and should be an accomplished luxury cruiser.

But it’s the Polestar 3’s compelling dynamics that will really set it apart from its EV rivals.

Early indications are very positive and we’re excited to see how this vehicle performs on the road. If this is a sign of things to come from Polestar, strap in.

It could be a thrilling ride.

2024 Polestar 3 Long Range Dual Motor with Performance Pack at a glance:
Price: $141,900 (plus on-road costs)
Available: June 2024
Powertrain: Two permanent magnet synchronous motors
Output: 380kW/910Nm
Transmission: Single-speed reduction gear
Battery: 107kWh lithium-ion
Range: 560km (WLTP)
Energy consumption: 23.1kWh/100km (WLTP)
Safety rating: Not tested