Stylish new Polestar 3 is the Swedish EV brand’s first SUV

This is the new Polestar 3, the adventurously named third model in the EV brand’s portfolio. All cynicism aside, the 3 is a symbol of a car company striving to do the right thing, often in the face of glacial regulatory change and hesitant consumers. The company calls the Polestar 3 the ‘SUV for the electric age’, and while it accommodates preconceived ideas of what an SUV can do, the Swedish company is hoping to push against accepted wisdom and reinvent big cars by giving them a smaller environmental footprint.  

Polestar 3 is far from being the first electric SUV, but it is one of the first to be designed from the ground up to be pure electric.

Admittedly, the overall SUV silhouette has not been messed with, but the difference is in the details. Drawing on many of the design elements in the Polestar Precept concept car (opens in new tab), it moves the game on from the crisply conservative Polestar 2 (opens in new tab). 

Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar’s CEO, is an acclaimed car designer in his own right. He’s credited with guiding the nascent brand away from its origins as a Volvo spin-off towards becoming an independent challenger.

‘This car has been designed as a Polestar from the start and features new defining characteristics for us – like the dual blade headlights, SmartZone and front aero wing,’ Ingenlath says, referring to the integral spoiler set into the front bonnet.

Available with five seats and a capacious luggage area, the interior design is governed by Polestar’s ongoing emphasis on high-end sustainability, with welfare-certified leather and wool.

The driving environment is pared back without being overtly minimal – something Ingenlath attributes to the company’s distillation of Scandinavian values. 

Of more importance is the way Polestar is pushing for life-cycle assessments of its products, hoping to find definitive figures that reveal how much it costs in carbon to produce, ship, drive and ultimately recycle a car. While Polestar has never been especially overt about speed or acceleration, the electric motors can generate 380 kW (equivalent to 517 hp) if you specify the ‘performance pack’, meaning that this big machine will be no slouch.

The more important metric for EV buyers is range; initial estimates suggest a driving range of up to 379 miles thanks to a 111kWh battery.  

The car’s tech suite, which consists of a small information screen behind the wheel and a giant tablet in the centre of the dashboard, is driven by Nvidia Drive, a new automotive-industry-centric chipset from the Silicon Valley mainstay, along with chips and displays driven by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon series.

Like its predecessor, Polestar 3 comes with Android Auto as the default OS. There are also a host of sensors – inside and out – that scan the surroundings and the driver’s level of alertness.

Future options include the forthcoming ‘Pilot Pack’, which adds in a Lidar sensor, amongst other extras, to provide ‘enhanced 3D scanning of the car’s surroundings’, a move that’ll pave the way for fully autonomous driving.

The other big thing about this car is that it will herald Polestar’s first US production centre in addition to its base in Chengdu, China. SUVs continue to be an absolute mainstay of the huge American market, so getting in early with a confident, highly specified and boldly styled model should stand Polestar in good stead.  

Polestar is taking orders now. With the launch of the company’s flagship UK ‘Space’ in London’s Battersea Power Station (opens in new tab), the brand is going from to strength.

Polestar 3, from £79,900

polestar.com (opens in new tab)