Impressions after ten days with a Polestar 2
We hired a car over Christmas because Fiat are taking months to get parts to fix ours (after an accident—nobody was hurt). We specified "electric" but didn't have a choice and ended up with a Polestar 2.
I knew nothing about Polestar. It's way too big for us, so daunting, but it was great to try something different for ten days. It has an interesting sustainability story, which I'll get to at the end of this post.
The above image is from the wonderful Carsized.com site.
A comparison of a Polestar 2 to a Fiat500e
The Polestar feels dark inside with less visibility. I'm comparing two different-shaped cars, and the Fiat has a glass roof thing.
It's less fun to drive than the Fiat. I mean, it's a big car for us.
Having 250 miles of range is amazing. But not for us at that price and size. (I think I mentioned the car is big, and will stop now.)
The parking cameras are wonderful. Polestar and a few other manufacturers do some kind of fancy transform on the cameras to give you a top-down view when parking or passing close to something. It's cute, and useful. We absolutely needed this.
The Polestar screen interfaces are close to perfect. I think it's fair to say Fiat likely doesn't realise it's a software company, given their menu systems, hilarious voice interface which we never use, and the "oh, I'll just quit at the point you need me" TomTom integration. But we love the Fiat500e despite, or perhaps because of, this. Still: the Polestar showed us what we could have won.
The touch screen menus are clear and fast, and not overburdened with options. Sure, there are a couple of things I'd like, but it's good stuff. The driver display does this lovely blending of map with speed and energy use. Liked that a lot.
The Google navigation integration on the Polestar is also close to perfect. Being able to see and tap to switch to a more eco route and see predicted battery charge on arrival (and return) is great. Fiat buries a limited version of this in menus.
The Fiat bongs and beeps are nicer. It's not exactly a deal breaker.
Jane has great notes and photos on the rental, too.
Sustainability
Polestar publishes a climate impact on the construction and operations of their products. They have a goal of a climate-neutral car. I didn't know about this until I watched an Everything Electric episode on the Polestar 4.
That episode included a segment talking about CO2 emissions. It took just the tail-pipe emissions from petrol cars, and compared them to a heavily rounded-up construction and usage (total lifetime) pollution from the Polestar. Anyone telling you EVs are more polluting, well, they're wrong.