What’s it like as a daily driver?

Welcome to our new long-term review format. We don’t actually buy these cars, but do try to replicate as much of the purchase experience as we can so that you get the full picture.

We’ve welcomed a 2023 Polestar 2 Long Range Single Motor into our garage for eight weeks. 

The Polestar 2 landed in Australia in February 2022 as the first local offering from Volvo’s new all-electric, performance-focussed spin-off brand. 

As one of Australia’s newest all-electric vehicle offerings, we’re keen to see how the Polestar – a medium-sized liftback sedan – functions as an only car for inner-city dwellers (many of them without off-street parking).

As such, we’re hoping to condense the full ownership experience into only eight weeks.  

We’re going to use this car as a daily driver, commuting to and from work, running errands on the weekends, driving it both solo and loaded up with family and friends, and charging it when and where we can in the process. 

Our coverage will kick off with the Polestar handover experience – mirroring what real-life buyers will encounter when collecting their car. 

From there, we will explore everything this new car has to offer and detail it in granular detail, from daily gripes to memorable highlights, plus all the mundane things in between. 

If you’d like to know something about this car, or want to see us doing something specific with it, tell us! We will do our best to answer your questions and carry out any specific activities or tests you’d like to see – on camera, where possible.

Although it only arrived in Australia fairly recently, in February 2022, we’re already pretty familiar with the Polestar 2. 

We first tested the all-electric new arrival at its local launch in late 2021, before finally welcoming it into our Melbourne garage for the first time in May 2022.

If you’d like to learn more about the Polestar 2 range, its features and equipment, check out our Polestar 2 showroom. 

On a fairly nondescript side street in Port Melbourne, among apartment buildings, office blocks, and shipping containers, sits the unassuming yet subtly stylish Polestar collection site.

There’s no giant logo, just a muted brown building with a roller door, a small, subtle black sign and a white shipping container that reads “Polestar 2 test drive”.

It’s Scandinavian minimalism at its best – and a welcome departure from garish dealership forecourts with their flailing inflatable noodle men and bright yellow discount signs. 

That’s likely because Polestar doesn’t really need dealerships in the traditional sense – not according to the staff at the handover site, who say the drive home is often the first time new Polestar owners will set foot in their car. 

Inside, gleaming examples of the liftback sedan – all in Scandi-approved muted shades of white, grey and blue – sit against a background of concrete flooring and high-definition screens displaying the model’s various configurations. 

I’m greeted by Mary, my positively delightful Polestar host, who will be conducting my vehicle walk-through, with all Polestar buyers treated to a roughly 60-minute tour of their new car. 

Mary starts the tour by talking me through the three main options for Polestar buyers: the Standard Range Single Motor, the Long Range Single Motor, and the flagship Long Range Dual Motor. 

My car is the Long Range Single Motor variant, which sits in the middle of the range and starts at $68,400 before on-road costs and options – roughly $4500 than the base Standard Range variant. 

That extra spend buys you a larger 78kWh battery offering an estimated range of up to 540km (WLTP) – roughly 60km more than the entry-level model. 

It’s front-wheel drive, and can complete the 0–100km/h sprint in 7.4 seconds.

Those craving added performance can opt for the Long Range Dual Motor variant, which offers all-wheel drive and can reach 100km/h from a standstill in 4.7 seconds. 

My particular Polestar 2 is finished in the eminently appealing shade of Magnesium – an iridescent pale grey that can look white or blue depending on the lighting. 

It’s also kitted out with two of three available options packs – the $3400 Pilot Lite Pack, and the $6000 Plus Pack, bringing the total as-tested price to $84,006 drive-away.

The Pilot Lite Pack adds a host of active safety features, while the Plus Pack adds mostly aesthetic and comfort updates. You can also opt for the $8000 Performance Pack, which adds bigger wheels, a dynamic chassis, Brembo brakes and Swedish gold seatbelts. 

The Polestar 2 receives some basic safety equipment as standard – like front and rear parking sensors and lane-keeping assistance – but the Pilot Lite Pack was made an optional extra to lower the starting price of the car, making it accessible to more buyers and likely sneaking it under the price limit for certain state government incentives.

It was tested by ANCAP in 2021 and received a five-star safety rating, scoring 92 per cent for adult occupant protection, 87 per cent for child occupant protection, 80 per cent for vulnerable road user protection and 82 per cent for the safety assist category.

According to Mary, the safety enhancement pack is proving a popular extra – with most buyers opting to add features like a rear cross-traffic alert, adaptive cruise control and blind-spot monitoring at an additional cost. 

As part of my tour, Mary highlights thoughtful inclusions like the SOS button, which can alert emergency services when required, or the call connect button, which connects Polestar owners with a call centre in Ballarat, where they can take advantage of their five years of roadside assistance coverage – a complimentary inclusion on all new Polestar cars.

There’s no sense of urgency and Mary doesn’t brush over anything – intent on making sure I truly understand how the various systems operate and pausing for any and all questions. 

In fact, it’s a soothing and immersive experience, free from the typical negotiations and paperwork associated with buying a car given the buying process takes place entirely online. 

I’d describe the overall vibe as a combination of Apple Genius bar, high-end spa and minimalist hotel lobby.

Despite the comprehensive nature of the tour, I feel the need to ask for more information on the charging process, which I typically find the most daunting part of electric car ownership.

The Polestar receives a seven-metre AC charging cord as standard in the purchase price, and the charging process appears simple enough, with the ability to pre-set your maximum charging current (so as not to blow a fuse in your home) and ideal battery charge percentage through a straightforward screen on the central display.

The longest part of the process is setting up the Polestar app, which requires me to create a Polestar user account and pair the app with my car – which I’ve affectionately nicknamed ‘Polly’. 

The process is fairly simple, but I was glad to have Mary there guiding me through it.

Similarly, setting up the car’s in-built Android-powered operating system and coupling it with my personal Google profile takes more than a few steps. 

It’s a unique set-up, but one that appeals to me as someone who uses a Google Home and Google doorbell. It allows you to access voice commands by saying “Hey Google”, and replaces a typical satellite navigation system with Google Maps, so it’s familiar to anyone who uses an Android device. 

My “Hey Google” assistant isn’t cooperative during the tour, but it doesn’t bother me too much, as I’m able to bypass it by saying “Hey Siri” to my phone via the wired Apple CarPlay (possibly defeating the purpose somewhat, but it’s good to know you have options). 

By the time I leave the collection centre, however, it’s back to being responsive.

The interior of the car is visually striking, and feels more substantial than some other electric cars I’ve driven. More like a car than an iPad on wheels. 

My first impression is that the roof line feels lower than I’m used to in my usual SUV, and the car feels dark despite the panoramic glass roof, but otherwise it’s a reasonably comfortable space with premium leanings – plus that eye-catching Volvo-esque 11.5-inch centre touch display. 

The sheer amount of technology at hand is a little overwhelming, and I briefly consider the fact I’m glad I have eight weeks to get to know Polly, because she’s as layered as an onion. 

With my app, keys, Google profile and car all paired (I think), my tour comes to a close – and my inane questions have seen it run well over the one-hour mark. Mary’s patience and enthusiasm didn’t falter once. 

Before driving out of the delivery location, I have an embarrassing pause where I attempt to find the ‘start’ button before remembering the car turns on automatically upon getting in. D’oh. 

I think I covered well enough, though, and I silently slink out of the delivery centre and into the big wide world, but not before a word of warning from the centre manager, only partly in jest: “This car will get you a speeding ticket if you let it, so please be careful”.

Ah, Polly. This should be interesting. 

If you’re anything like me, having a soundtrack to your daily drive is key to your overall enjoyment of a car.

The good news is that the Polestar 2’s Harman Kardon premium soundsystem (part of the $6000 Plus Pack) encompasses you in a silky bubble of sound and the lack of engine noise only serves to amplify the crispness.

One of theother cool things about the Polestar 2 is that it has its own SIM card, meaning you can directly download apps from the world wide web onto your car’s infotainment system.

My first priority, in lieu of Apple CarPlay (which I still haven’t connected because I don’t own a USB-C cord and there are no old-school USB ports in Polly), was to download the Spotify app.

Turns out it’s a remarkably easy process. You simply hit the Google Play icon (the rainbow arrow on the bottom of the home screen), search for the app you want and click ‘Install’ (there’s a handy how-to video here).

Once installed, my car flashed up a QR code that I scanned with my phone, allowing me to log in to my account immediately and have all my playlists pre-load.

I particularly love how impactful the album cover art looks when it appears on the Polestar 2’s 11.15-inch vertical central display.

Also, while I initially hesitated to upload these photos of my incredibly dirty screen, this review is meant to show you the real-life ownership experience and, in the interests of transparency, this is how fingerprint-covered your glossy touchscreen is likely to get in a matter of days. Sorry.

Houston, we have a problem. My lovely colleague Emma Notarfrancesco borrowed Polly for the evening and got into the car in the morning to find she had a blank screen instead of the 360-degree surround view camera (part of the $3400 Pilot Lite Pack).

She hadn’t done anything differently or changed any settings – it just vanished. Emma checked to see there was nothing obscuring the camera and scrolled through all of the car’s settings to no avail.

While the parking sensors were still functioning as normal, we were in the dark in terms of any kind of camera view.

That proved pretty challenging in a car that has limited rearward visibility and a fairly long body (4.6m to be precise), making it already tricky to park.

Enter: James Ward, our fearless Director of Content.

James’ quick tour through Polestar 2 owner forums revealed this was a somewhat common conundrum – and the fix was resetting the infotainment system.

To do this, James held down the ‘Home’ button at the bottom of the screen for a solid 30 seconds.

This will make the central screen blank and remove the Google-powered map from the driver display, but leave the rest of your driver display functions visible.

And voila! We’re back in action.

While we’re on the topic, however, I do have couple of complaints about the camera.

Firstly, it provides a warped perspective that makes it look like your car is sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool.

Secondly, the camera view shows your car perpetually surrounded by a grey rectangle – corresponding to the area the cameras can’t map – which makes the view look unfinished and prevents you from achieving true precision when parking close to a kerb.

One of the perks of the Polestar 2’s built-in Google system is that you can sign in with your Google profile and access all linked devices, including any Google Home units you might have in your house.

I have a Google Home in my son’s room, which is linked to a light with a smart light bulb, meaning I can turn the light on and off with voice control.

As it turns out, I can also control this light via the Polestar’s Google assistant – enabling me to turn on my house lights from my car before I get home at night, to ensure I’m not stumbling around in the dark.

I was skeptical as to whether or not this would actually work, but after conducting a test with my husband in the house monitoring the light, I can confirm it was a success!

Because I’m young and trendy (or, at least, desperately trying to be), I documented my test in a TikTok video, which I’ve included below. Feel free to comment on it and tell me how cool and trendy I am.