EV Chronicles #58 - Polestar 3 One Month Review

After just over one month of ownership (lease) of my 2025 Polestar 3, I have to say that I LOVE this car. It is truly the perfect vehicle for my wife and I. It is a great size for a commuter vehicle, but it has plenty of cargo space for weekend getaways for the two of us. The ride quality and quietness of the cabin are head and shoulders better than the 2021 Model Y, and the sound system is absolutely amazing. And the seats might be the most comfortable seats I have every experienced in a vehicle. The driver assist system is basically the equivalent of Tesla's Autopilot system (not to be confused with the Full Self-Driving system) and works very well on most highways and well painted, straighter secondary roads.

So far, I would highly recommend this vehicle to anyone that is looking to buy a Luxury SUV EV. The base sticker price is roughly $20,000 to 30,000 more than many other "bargin" midsized SUV EVs on the market like the 2025 Tesla Model Y LR or Kia EV6, but the spring 2025 Lease deals brought that price down by $20,000. For me, the remaining extra cost of the vehicle was worth it. Even without the lease incentives, it is comparable in price to other Luxury models like the Genesis GV Electrified Lineup, Volvo EV90, and Cadillac Lyriq just to name a few other options. By the way, I haven't test driven it yet, but the Cadillac Lyriq and Optiq might be the two next best SUV EVs on the market from the research I have done. People doing review videos on them seem to absolutely love them.

The negatives so far are minimal:

• The Biggest Issue: Buggy Software

  • The infotainment software has been a bit buggy. My Tesla was honestly like this the first 6 months of ownership as well and I am hoping that with a few software updates over the air, that those will be addressed. The two biggest issues is the main screen will be blank on occasion and music apps like Spotify will sometimes not connect to the data service or it too will have blank windows when trying to view song info. A simple soft reset of the infotainment system has resolved both of these issues.

  • The one other Software issue I have had is that the driver assist systems (cruise control / lane keep) just turns off without any pre-warning to the driver. It just turns off and at the same time, it gives the driver a warning beep that it is now off, but a warning BEFORE would be nice. The display will say something like "driver assist fault, schedule service", but most of the time this has happened, the weather has been lousy (rainy). I usually just wait 30 seconds and restart the driver assist system with no issues. My theory here is that their warning messages are not well aligned with what is actually causing the system to turn off. The warning message should probably be more along the lines of "poor visibility detected" as I do not think there is an actual "fault" happening. At the end of the day, the Tesla would have similar issues in wet weather. It just gave the driver a little more warning before it completely turned itself off.

• I really don't like the Piano black and chrome surfaces in the vehicle. Sure, they look nice, but they reflect the sunlight terribly and can blind the driver and front passenger. I am working on covering these surfaces with a matte black "film".

• I don't love the full roof glass in modern EVs, it just makes the inside really hot in the summer months. I had a temporary roof glass sunshade in the Tesla that worked great, but since there isn't a temporary roof glass shade available yet for the Polestar, I have actually installed a room darkening window film on the inside of the vehicle that completely blocks all light from the roof for now. I like this option so far and can easily peel it off next winter. if a shade becomes available. Hopefully they will have a temporary shade option available by then.

• Less hidden Storage:

  • The Frunk is much smaller than the Tesla. This is a space that I don't use often, but when you go on a long trip with lots of stuff, that extra space for a couple of bags can really come in handy.

  • The underfloor storage in the trunk is also smaller than the Tesla, but the more boxy back end of the Polestar 3 seems to make the above floor storage in the back more usable / larger.

Road Tripping:

I haven't really done any BIG roadtrips (>300 miles) in this vehicle yet. The driver assist system is so similar to the Tesla Autopilot which really helps to reduce driver's fatigue. The efficiency of this car is a bit lower than the model Y, but it has about a 50% larger battery. For example, we have taken it on a trip to Harrisburg twice and used about 33-35% of the battery one way (~100 miles) when the Tesla would use 40-45% for this same drive under the same conditions. I have taken the vehicle from SE PA to DC (180 mile one way trip) and used 50% of the battery on that trip when I would easily use 75% on that same route with the Tesla. The charging curve on this vehicle on the low end is a bit disappointing. Polestar advertises 250 kw charging but many owners including myself have not seen over 190 kw peak charging rate. But beyond 40% SOC, it holds a higher rate of charge than the Tesla (by 25-30 kw). At the end of the day, I think a 10-80% charge in the Polestar will take roughly the same time as the Tesla (about 30-35 minutes), but it will be able to drive further on that 70% (see preliminary charging curve data below).

Now for the Nerd Level 1000 Data:

• 1600 miles driven in the first month

  • YIKES! $0.25/mile over 15,000/year at lease end. I am on pace to drive roughly 50k miles total in 3 years.

  • I am thinking in 2026 or 2027 we might replace Susan's car with an EV and will be able to spread our usage a bit more evenly. Let me know if anyone is interested in a 2020 Mazda CX-5 Grand Touring Reserve (Turbo)! It has about 28k miles on it so far.

• 365 wh/mile Driving Efficiency - reported by the vehicle

  • This would equate to 295 miles of range using 100% of the battery and just over 200 miles using 70% of the battery (80%-10%). That is over 50 miles more real world driving miles on a roadtrip than the Tesla. I can't wait to test this out on a REAL roadtrip! We have two planned bigger drives coming up, including a trip from SE PA to Florida in July.

• 755 kwh of energy added to the vehicle (through charging)

  • Equates to 470 wh/mile Total energy used based on input (includes charging loses and energy used when not driving for HVAC and running computers, etc.).

  • This means I am using 115 wh/mile for "overhead" things.

• $0.06 / mile for electricity at $0.125/kwh (PECO TOU rate, Super Offpeak) if I would have charged 100% at home. I was at roughly $0.045/mile in the Tesla.

• $0.08665 / mile ACTUAL cost for electricity averaging $0.18/kwh

  • I did a bunch of charging curve tests the first two weeks of ownership. The only time I really "had" to charge at a DCFC was my one business trip to DC a couple weeks ago. That charge cost me $28.00 when at home, that would have been less than $10.

  • Note that in an SUV that averages 20 mpg, I would have average $0.164 / mile for gasoline (gas prices have come down slightly in the last couple of months. Some might claim this is due to administration policies, but the truth is that global oil production is up and demand is down due to economic uncertainty, which is leading to higher supply thus lower prices).

Preliminary Polestar 3 Charging Curve