Last week, a 2024 Polestar 2 was left in front of my apartment in central Berlin, less than a kilometer from the center of Mitte, the German capital’s most urbanized domain. More than 1,000 miles later, adding a lot of time on the road with no speed limit, I became familiar with the newest edition of the Polestar, a car I first drove about 3 years ago.
The 2024 Polestar 2 has some vital upgrades, and Scooter defined them as our first ride in 2023, which you definitely deserve to read. The short edition is that the long-variety, single-motor rear-wheel-drive edition I tested is probably the Polestar 2 you want. unless you care about speed. Its 82 kWh battery has a range of 655 km according to the generous WLTP cycle, and is one of the electric vehicles with the longest range on sale lately in Germany. Charging has also advanced from the last Polestar 2. models, with 205 kW DC load and an estimated moderate time of 10 to 80% in 28 minutes.
On the road, the Polestar 2’s fair dynamics and relatively compact length made it agile and comfortable, whether amid the madness of Berlin’s structural paintings or on the narrow roads of Bavarian towns. The steering is direct, the suspension is planted without punishing and the accelerator reaction is correct. The Polestar 2’s powerful regenerative braking enables true one-pedal driving, which is a real thrill in a stop-and-go city like Berlin. The stops are super graceful and I rarely find myself on the brake pedal. Overall, I give the Polestar 2 top marks in terms of driving experience – it’s actually a fun car to drive, which feels like a natural extension of what your hands and feet do when driving. This single-motor RWD style is rarely what you’d call fast, but it’s not slow either. Its speed of 7. 4 seconds to one hundred km/h is respectable and sufficient torque (490 Nm) allows for effortless overtaking at maximum speed. With 220 kW of maximum power, it may not melt you, but I’ve never looked for much more when using this vehicle as a transport vehicle; In fact, it’s a pretty good amount of power.
Visibility was my one big gripe when it came to driving experience. Parking the Polestar 2 is… not my favorite. The high beltline of the car and oddly small window openings mean you’re a captive of the car’s 360-degree camera view, which I found utterly overmatched in all but the best lighting conditions. No amount of wiping could keep the cameras clean during winter conditions, and the car’s aggressive backup auto-brake made me think I’d slammed into some unseen parking pylon on more than one occasion, giving me serious anxiety about placing the car during three-point turns. (Turning circle is not a strong point on the Polestar 2.) If you owned one, you’d probably turn off some of the parking nannies as you developed a sense of the car’s dimensions — they’re just too invasive, and I found the more I relied on them, the less confident I became.
Driving on the German autobahn, where there is no speed restriction, the Polestar 2 was quite a relaxing experience. Even with winter tires installed, road noise wasn’t bad until I started exceeding 80 mph (that’s 80 MPH for US Electrek readers), and wind noise even at very high speeds. high, it was strangely moderate. This RWD style reaches a top speed of 210 km/h (130 MPH), a speed at which you will most likely still be passed by a mid-level executive in an EQS. Germany! But at a more typical German cruising speed of 120 km/h, the Polestar 2 is comfortable, quiet and stable. Automatic driver aids are a mix: The vehicle brakes too aggressively when adaptive cruise control is used, causing harsh deceleration. Acceleration is smoother. The guide assist mode is decent, but only turns on in relatively ideal road conditions. All things being equal, I prefer to solve it myself if I use a formula that is as disconnected as this one. When driving on snow, ice builds up in front of the car over long distances. While the automatic cruise control still worked (there is said to be a heating detail in the radar module), the parking sensors required some manual defrosting to work.
The Polestar 2 is a five-seat sedan — if the people in the back don’t mind being rather intimate with one another’s personal space and if the humans up front aren’t too tall. The rear seating in this car is tight. That’s not new information, and it’s not as though the 2024 model magically found some extra wheelbase hiding under the floor. Up front, I’ve heard some people describe the cabin as cramped, but to me, it just feels like a compact sports sedan; you’re down “in” the car, not on top of it. It’s certainly not like being in a Model 3, there’s no “airiness” to the Polestar 2’s interior. It’s more like a good ergonomic office chair than a recliner — it supportively cradles you. Some people like this (I, for one, do), some people don’t. It’s a pretty subjective experience. If you really like to keep a wide-leg position (Manspreading) while driving, the Polestar 2 may not be the car for you.
The driver’s seat was comfortable (including lumbar adjustment), but I noticed some serious bunching in the leather on the lower seat cushion with just 7500 km on the clock. That’s a bit disappointing. The manual tilt and telescope steering wheel made the ideal driving position easy to achieve, and even at my relatively bizarre setting (wheel pulled all the way in, maybe 75% lowered), the instrument binnacle was visually unobstructed. Solid ergonomics, Polestar. The seat heaters work pretty well (I didn’t test ventilation — it’s cold here), and the heated steering wheel is very effective. The wireless phone charger is terrible. I was lucky if it could even keep my iPhone 15 Pro at the same level of charge it’d start at, let alone add to the battery. Bring your USB-C cable. Cabin heating and defrosting seemed up to the challenge of a Berlin winter, melting light snow off the exterior glass, though I can’t speak for climates with true deep-freeze conditions.
The Android Automotive software powering the Polestar 2’s center display and instrument cluster is largely unchanged from when I first drove this car back in 2021, for better and for worse. On the upside, I love the sign-in and setup process of Android Automotive. So long as you have a Google account and a smartphone (yes, including an iPhone), setup takes under a minute. It is just so easy. If you want remote features (preheating, remote lock), though, you’ll need to set up and create a Polestar account separately. I do wish there was some kind of “all-in-one” way to handle that side of things, but I can understand this is a lot easier said than done. Google Maps routing with built-in charging planning works well, and I love that my recently viewed POIs across all my devices show up in the car’s map search — it feels like the future! Voice commands are probably solid if you speak German, but I’m not there yet, and trying to give German place names to a Google Assistant set to US English was not a good time. (This is a super unusual configuration unless you’re renting a car as a foreigner, so I don’t really consider it a negative. When set to German, the car understood place names just fine. I just didn’t understand the car.) I also loved how seamlessly the navigation displayed inside the instrument cluster, leaving the center display free for music, controls, and vehicle information.
I was less satisfied with the functionality and responsiveness of the software. It was the first car with Android Automotive and it shows. The design is so minimalist that it seems simplistic and accessing a specific domain of the interface is slow and tedious. Navigation is downright clumsy. The use of screen dominance is very inefficient and the gestures to access things like the weather interface require too much attention to use on the move. In retrospect, some decisions in the car UI just don’t make sense – why the hell do I have a pull-down notification bar in a car? The option to find this feature is almost non-existent. The app launcher layout doesn’t make much sense to me either: switching between other music streaming apps or podcasts, for example, is much more complicated than I’d like compared to Android Auto or CarPlay. Inconsistent responsiveness and delays caused by poor functionality also lead to many accidental taps or double-taps. Although it took only about 3 years to refine the initial concept, the Polestar 2’s software still feels like a first effort and hasn’t aged all that well. I’d be very curious to see how they evolved it in the Polestar 3 and Polestar four when they become available.
Increased diversity and charging upgrades make the Polestar 2 much more competitive in the modern electric landscape. Since I was absolutely reliant on DC public charging infrastructure during my test period, I was also given a pretty clever insight into the car’s cold weather charging characteristics. In my opinion, this 10 to 80% claim in 28 minutes is probably achievable under conceptual circumstances, i. e. “when it’s not 0 degrees Celsius outside”. But when employing 250kW Tesla Superchargers here in Germany, I’ve noticed the Polestar 2. consume 205kW of charging, once, briefly. In those bloodless conditions, my experiment would take upwards of 40 to 50 minutes to bring the battery to 80%. (That’s right, I was sitting in the car with the heating on. YMMV. )
Charging using Tesla’s Supercharger network here in Germany was pretty mundane (remember, Tesla uses CCS in the EU), unless for an incident where the Tesla app kept telling me “Connection to charger lost” regardless of which pole I chose. This site also had several towers out of service. The other Superchargers (I used another 4 spots a week) didn’t give me any problems. In Germany, as in many European countries, it is regularly necessary to subscribe to a charging network in order to take full advantage of productive freight prices. The ‘off-grid’ rate can be exorbitant, with many charging stations dc-0. 79€/kWh for the off-grid. Networks, such as eNBW or Tesla, offer monthly subscriptions that can cut this charge in half.
As for diversity, I used the car lightly in “normal” driving situations; These figures only serve to illustrate the brutal effect of winter driving on the highways. Traveling at 120 km/h (a fairly conservative cruising speed here in Germany) in 0°C temperatures, I saw consumption of around 25 kWh/100 km, compared to 14. 9-15. 8 kWh/100,000 km declared through Polestar. based on WLTP score of 2. Given the car’s superior drag coefficient of 0. 278 (worse even than the VW ID. 5 crossover, at 0. 26), I don’t think the Polestar 2 is a smart choice if long trips On the road they are the same usual mode of use, regardless of the temperature. At lower speeds (50-80 km/h), power especially increased (closer to 17-19 kWh/100 km). As a commuter vehicle, the diversity of this car is probably quite respectable. But as it is, for the natural diversity of the motorways, the Polestar 2 will be lucky to cover more than 350 km in winter, just over the crazy WLTP score of 655 km. In warmer situations I think you can go over 400 km like I did.
What if you need to speed up your adventure on the road?I don’t propose it for an extended period unless you enjoy visiting public charging facilities. At 160 km/h (about 100 mph), the Polestar 2 was powered by a staggering 30 kWh/100 km. I didn’t expect anyone to use the car this way, but I just wanted to know to be more thorough.
I was testing an electric vehicle under circumstances that weren’t easy: the highest speeds, the lowest temperatures, and the exclusive use of public charging stations. The Polestar 2 never let me down, although it wasn’t necessarily the most productive tool for the kind of driving I was doing. The disappointing diversity on the road is probably less of a headache in the summer, however, I had to make two charging stops at what deserved to have been a single stop on my commute, as the car was simply nowhere to be found. I’m close to being able to accept that. But it’s a completely individual experience and fits my expectations of the car.
From a more objective perspective, the Polestar 2 is a difficult car to place within the broader EV landscape. It doesn’t offer the passenger space of even a Model 3, and it’s in no way priced higher than one. The actual power is actually decent if you don’t do much highway driving. But if you need to save money at the beginning of your purchase, the Polestar 2 is not an affordable vehicle: with its equipment, my check car costs more than €62,000 (options included Napa leather, premium generation and stereo, and assistance packages driver). . This RWD variant competes with the BMW i4 eDrive40, at least on paper. I haven’t driven this car so I’ll be curious to see how it compares. But without competition, I wonder what the need is for a small luxury electric sedan that literally can’t credibly claim to seat five passengers, at least not comfortably. It’s also hard to forget about the tension coming from the crossover market position segment.
What worries me the most is that the Polestar 2’s technology doesn’t age well. That would be my reason, personally, for avoiding taking one. The Intel processor that powers this car’s infotainment formula is a dog, and it just makes using the car more uncomfortable and unsightly than it deserves to be. Even when it disappeared 3 years ago, this hardware was outdated. Today? I can’t believe I’m stuck with this point of the software’s functionality for another 3 or four years. No thanks. That said, you can simply set your navigation to Google Maps’ built-in EV route, connect CarPlay for media, and prevent the car from enjoying everything except dedicated vehicle controls. I suspect most people will do that.
There’s still a lot to like about the Polestar 2. The upgraded Harmon Kardon stereo is really great, and I say that as a pretty discerning listener (I’m seriously disappointed by most trendy car stereos; tuning this HK setup is excellent). The look is boldly Scandinavian, though at the end it might scream “Volvo chic”. The driving dynamics are also pretty clever for a compact luxury sedan. The driving position is clever (albeit cramped), the tailgate and lower boot compartment offer plenty of storage space and you get a usable trunk. This car turned heads when it was launched, and many of the reasons why it’s still valid today.
I think Polestar’s real challenge is in convincing a potential customer that what it adds — effectively, a premium touch and driver-first dynamics — is meaningfully attractive compared to the obvious alternative (a Model 3/Y Long Range). While BMW may have a more price-analogous competitor to the Polestar 2, the kind of customer considering this car is far more likely cross-shopping with Tesla. This is a tech-first brand, not a traditional luxury automaker. And here in Europe, you have growing competition from Chinese brands like NIO’s ET5 and BYD’s Seal to consider in this space as well, where you’ll get far more performance and tech for less money.
In some ways, the 2024 Polestar 2 already feels like it needs an update to remain on the bleeding edge — and that’s not a great place for a just-updated car to be. It’s certainly a good car, but it’s one that’s becoming less competitive by the month. Unless Polestar starts considering some aggressive price reductions, I think the Polestar 2 runs a real risk of falling out of the electric sedan conversation. That’s too bad, because it’s a lovely vehicle in many ways. It’s just tricky to translate that charm into economic or utilitarian rationale.
David has been a car enthusiast his entire life and has followed the automotive industry since he was a teenager. Prior to joining Electrek, David was a mobile journalist for over a decade at Android Police, where he started as an editor before becoming an editor. He then accepted a secondary internship in global tech startup marketing, where he led content and product marketing projects at two companies.