EV Chronicles #55 - Way TOO EARLY Polestar 3 Review

My new 2025 Polestar 3

I have now driven a total of about 45 miles in my new Polestar 3, so it is time for the "Way TOO EARLY Review"! I picked up my new Polestar 3 yesterday morning. I have now executed 1.5 roundtrip commutes so I am an expert.  Good-bye 2021 Tesla Model Y LR (with Accel boost)!  The Polestar 3 Specs are as follows:

• Long Range, Dual Motor

• Pilot Plus Pack (included with Long Range Model) - basically this gives you AutoPilot functionality for those familiar with the Tesla functions (but not FSD level autonomy).  Does include Lane Change assist which AutoPilot doesn't have

• Plus Pack - a graphical head-up display, a bespoke Bowers & Wilkins audio system, a power-operated steering column, Air Quality with PM 2.5 sensor, soft-close doors

• 21" Wheels (an upgrade I wouldn't have selected but it was on the car that was available) - I had 20's on the Tesla in the summer, 19's in the winter.

• Price: $83,300 + Tax, Tags, License and other Fees = $89,500 (numbers rounded roughly)

  • I can provide the details, but the lease deal plus other discounts they gave me resulted in them taking more than $20,000 off of the price of the vehicle. The lease is about $420/month for 36 months for 15,000 miles / year.

  • Continued ownership of my Model Y, if you include potential maintenance on a car that already has 71k miles, was likely going to be greater than going with Polestar.

  • Cost of lease plus lease + Tesla Trade Value + end purchase price option is going to be less than $75,000. A ton of money for a vehicle, but way less than I would have paid for a direct purchase with current interest rates. Plus I have an escape option in 3 years if the vehicle has any sort of reliability issues or concerns. If not, then I will consider the purchase option if another excellent lease deal doesn't present itself.

My initial impressions so far:

• The ride is so much better.  the newer Model Y's (2023 and newer and particularly the newest version) might have better ride quality than my harsh 2021.

• The seats are so much more comfortable too.  The back seats included.

• Acceleration is peppy enough, but not quite the level of my Model Y with Accel Boost. It was capable of 4.3 seconds 0-60 mph and it was fast. I haven't pushed the Polestar hard yet. I actually have it in efficiency mode which only uses one of the two motors most of the time. Polestar claims about 4.8 sec 0-60, which is faster than almost every gas car out there.

• Doesn't have Seat/Wheel Egress mode - This Tesla feature was so nice - I am a big/tall guy, so getting into the drivers seat with everything where I like it for driving is just a bit of a PITA.  I am going to play a bit with the user settings to see if I can't configure another user profile with an ingress/egress setting location.

• Setup of the keys and phone and such was not exactly intuitive.  Glad the sales guy walked me through it.

• The Bower-Wilkins audio system is fantastic.  Tesla's sound was great too, but I think Polestar wins here. Bonus, the sound system upgrade comes with Active Noise Cancellation, making the road and wind noise basically zero. I felt like we had to turn up the Tesla radio volume to hear it clearly at highway speeds. Not in the Polestar.

• Heads-up diplay is nice.  My wife's CX-5 has it and I really like that feature.

• Small display on steering column is quickly becoming my go to place for info I need.  The big display in the middle, not so much

• The Vertical Screen vs the Landscape screen in the Tesla:

  • For Driving - doesn't really matter to me honestly while driving as I don't really need this screen for most driving functions

  • For charging / Video watching - haven't tried that yet.

• Available in Car Apps

  • The system is Android based, so it is all Google Play store driven

  • I actually decided to create an additional Gmail account for the Car to keep it separate from my personal GMAIL account (same goes for Spotify. I have a family share account and now my in car Spotify is separate from my home/offic Spotify)

  • Apps seem limited for entertainment - no Disney Plus for example.  I don't think it had Netflix either.  Hopefully this changes over time. It did for Tesla.

  • Waze is an App, but I don't fully understand how to use it in the car stand-alone.  When I do, I get some sort of login error.  but it is available through AppleCarPlay

• AppleCarPlay (ACP) - Tesla will never have ACP or Android Auto

  • Not sold on this yet.  If the car has all the apps I need and the in car navigation is excellent, I just really don't need this functionality.  Waze might be the only nice function to have running from ACP. Great for shorter trips, but for longer trips where charging is required on the way, using the in car navigation to ensure optimal battery temps for charging is essential.

  • It doesn't connect directly. I have to click a menu button when I get into the car to establish a connection (I think).

• Voice activated commands

  • I tried this today, thinking that it would use the Google Assistance functionality to find the closest WAWA in the car's navigation.... it jumped over to AppleCarPlay and asked Siri to find a Wawa and used WAZE to get there.  Cool I guess, but I didn't want to do this via ACP, I just wanted the Google Map to work.

  • I think I have to locate the Google Assistant button in the menu to force it to use GA vs Siri when ACP is connected.

• Google Map / Navigation

  • Still learning the ropes.  An entire Blog will be needed on this one someday.  We are driving to Florida in July, and that might be one of our first LONG trips in the vehicle.

  • I want it to favor Tesla chargers at times. I haven't really investigated how to do this but I put in a trip to Florida yesterday and about half the chargers we non-Tesla chargers that I am not sure I would trust. My only option might be to manually select Tesla charging stops that are close to the suggested non-charger charging stops. We'll see how this works.

• Mobil Phone App

  • In summary, it sort of sucks. No, seriously, it lacks so many basic functions to include:

    • I can set the Charge limit from the app, but only in 10% increments (which is fine) but I cannot tell the car to start or stop charging easily from the app. You have to set a schedule to get it to stop charging, or you have to cancel a schedule to get it to start charging. I just want to have a start/stop button. I can set the AMPS in the app and it has a "minimum charge" function that will allow the car to charge UP TO this value if you arrive at your location with a very low SOC and have a schedule set for the car which is a nice feature Tesla doesn't have.

    • I don't like the interface for the HVAC. I thought I could only turn it on/off and not change temp, seats, etc... but I think I found where you can modify that stuff, you just have to drill down into the app a layer or two to get to those options.

    • Cannot open boot with App. Lock and unlock car is all you can really do with doors. I don't see anywhere where I can vent or open windows via the app.

• Functions I miss from Tesla

  • Ingress/Egress seat/steering setting when I put the car into park. I might be able to create another driver profile in the car to make this happen, although I would have to manually click the profiles button to change it.

  • Sideview Camera on the screen when I put on a turn signal to change lanes - didn't realize how much I used this honestly.  I always check mirrors and such, but the camera view is a great last double check that I didn't miss someone in my blind spot.  The Polestar DOES have BlindSpot Monitoring in the mirrors, which Tesla did NOT, so I just need to adjust to the light rather than a camera view.

    • Side mirrors on the Polestar are oddly shaped, likely for aero reasons. Need to figure out the optimal setting for them. I feel like I am still not getting the best view of my blindspot.

• Driving Efficiency

  • Too early to tell.  My commute in my Tesla used 5% on average to get to work.  I think I used 3% in the Polestar today.  There are menus in the car that give more details of each drive that I haven't looked at yet.  Based on this, both cars used about the same amount of energy 3.2-3.5 kwh for the commute.  The Polestar has just over 100 kwh usable battery where my Model Y was down to about 70 kwh usable.

  • The Polestar has an efficiency and a performance mode.  I have been using the efficiency mode which might help.

  • My gut is telling me that the two cars are going to have about the same kwh/mile usage which will give the Polestar a range advantage because of the larger battery

  • Tesla is notorious for not giving out accurate real life range numbers.  The in car navigation gave very accurate numbers though.  Going Highway speeds, about 220 miles in the Tesla... 100% to 0% was about the max you could do.

Future Blogs on Charging Curve (Tesla vs. CCS 350, 250, 150 chargers), long range trip planning and execution with the Google Map Navigation, Driving Efficiency (highway driving real world range) are all planned. Lots of nerd level 5000 stuff to come.