Pondering the Polestar 2, Part 1
I’ve had my Ioniq EV for about a year now and although it is a great little EV, I do have the low-end model with mostly basic features1. Plus, it has a somewhat limited range, which makes it less suitable for some winter trips. This original Ioniq is also not what I’d call a very good looking car. It’s rather frumpy and looks far too much like an old-style Prius. Some might say it’s ugly. Still, it has been a completely reliable vehicle and I should of course be completely happy with it.
As practical as the Ioniq is, it also is not exciting or interesting in any way. After all, it’s essentially an electric economy car. I’ve only ever really had a fancy car once in my life: a 1998 Audi A4. I leased it and it was a wonderful, if not completely reliable car. I still have a small die-cast model of it that I keep in my office.
Since then my vehicles have all been rather practical. The A4 was replaced with a Subaru Legacy wagon because we had a child on the way and weren’t quite ready for a minivan. The Legacy was nice enough, but it was slow and not fancy2. We kept it for 13 years, but near the end it was having too many issues. It was replaced with a Toyota Tacoma pick-up truck because we had a camper that we were hauling around with our other vehicle, a Honda Odyssey3, and it was not well-suited for that. The Tacoma was a truck and drove like one. It was eminently practical, but incredibly noisy and not fun at all. The Odyssey was loaded, and was a surprisingly fun vehicle to drive, but it was a minivan and thus the essence of practicality.
We kept the Odyssey for 13 years as well and replaced it with a Toyota Corolla, which became my primary vehicle. I got the “S” model for better styling, but it was still a slow economy car. It was my primary car until I got the Ioniq. We still have the Corolla, which my son currently has at college.
We swapped the Tacoma for our other vehicle, a Toyota RAV4, which is my wife’s car. She loves it, but I don’t much like driving it.
After having the Ioniq for a year, I am all-in on electric vehicles. I love charging at home and how silent and zippy they are. I hadn’t been planning to replace my Ioniq after just a year, but I thought it might be interesting to see what my options were.
EV Car Options
It turned out there weren’t many options. I don’t like SUVs and as anyone in the US knows, there are sadly very few non-SUV EVs available here4. My research identified the Nissan Leaf, Chevy Bolt, Ioniq 6, Tesla Model 3, Lucid Air, BMW i4, Mini Hardtop, Fiat 500e, Porsche Taycan and Polestar 2. That’s really about it.
The Nissan Leaf is even uglier than my Ioniq EV and not really an upgrade, so that’s not something I’d consider. The Bolt is not any better, either. The Ioniq 6 looks pretty cool, but it is rather large and does not have a hatchback. I would never consider a Tesla so that’s out. The Lucid Air looks lovely, but is out of my price range, as are the BMW and Taycan. The Mini Hardtop and Fiat 500e are tiny and could have been right up my alley, but both have much worse range than my Ioniq EV.
That leaves the Polestar 2. New Polestars would also be more than I’d want to pay, but I recently saw that some local dealers in my city had some used Polestars for sale and the prices were closer to what I’d consider. I’ve been aware of Polestar for a while, having watched several YouTube videos about them, but there is no dealer in my state so I don’t really see them around much, if at all.
What is Polestar?
If you’re not familiar with the Polestar brand, I wouldn’t be surprised. It is actually related to Volvo as both it and Polestar are owned by Geely, a Chinese company. The Polestar 2 is made in China, although designed in Sweden.
Polestar was originally the name for the Volvo performance division, but Geely decided to spin it off to its own brand that focuses on luxury and performance EVs. They make several models (2, 3, 4), but the others are SUVs.
The Polestar 2 debuted in the US as a 2021 model, the fully loaded “Launch Edition”. It is a compact5 four-door hatchback with all-wheel drive and 400hp.
The Available Cars
At the time of the writing, there were four Polestar 2 models available in my area in order of increasing price:
2022 Pilot + Pilot + Performance in Void (black, 30K miles).
2021 Launch Edition in Thunder (gray, 25K miles).
2022 Plus + Pilot in Thunder (20K miles).
2022 Plus + Pilot + Leather in Moon (greige - gray/beige, 7K miles).
This doesn’t account for several other models available at the Polestar Boston Space (that’s a dealer in Polestar lingo).
Over the past couple weeks I’ve taken a look at and driven #2 and #3 above. I really liked what I saw and drove.
In subsequent posts in this series6, I will describe the Polestar 2 and my experiences looking at them in more detail. How will this story end? Who knows?
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Although it does have wireless CarPlay!
Other than some aftermarket leather seating we had installed. Unfortunately these seats were not heated. I definitely do not recommend unheated leather seats!
Yes, we did end up getting a minivan.
Even the ICE selection is mostly SUVs these days.
Only about 5 inches longer than my Ioniq.
Likely to be paid posts.
I’m seeing a lot more Lucid’s (Lucidi?) in my neighborhood and yeah it does look fancy and I was down in fancy town the other day and they had Polestar, Lucid and Tesla showrooms at this mall. Is Lucid also Chinese?
I have a 23 I5, I agree its a great car in many aspects. I did replace the 12V at 10,000 miles with an AGM battery after seeing the orange light very often. But my apprehension has increased as of late. The constant reports of getting stranded by ICCU failures while driving is very disconcerting. If this occurs on a highway, results could be disastrous. The issue has been out for 3 years, Hyundai keeps trying various SW patches which have zero effect. If the ICCU fails, you must be towed to dealer and expect a very long delay in getting replacement as no stock is kept at any dealer.
As a result, I have started the search again to replace the car. I did look at Polestar but dealers are not widely available. I have been looking at both the Audi e-tron and BMW IX models. While they are more costly, I may go with one of them.
Sadly, my expereince with the I5 came right after buying a Ford Mach-E. It to started having a failure which caused a shutdown and the part wasnt replaced until an NHTSA recall was forced on them.
When I saw that even in a new 2025 I5, the ICCU part is identical, I lost faith in Hyundai which triggered my search.
I would love to hear your thoughts on other models.