Polestar 2 Single Motor Long Range review – fewer motors, less fun?
How does the 2 feel with front wheel drive?
The Polestar 2 took us by surprise last year. Its mix of Scandi chic, minimalist interior and spot-on infotainment tech combined with a solid driving experience gave us one of our favourite cars of the Year-We-Try-To-Forget-About.
And now it’s here in a less costly form, with more range and fewer motors. This, is the Polestar 2 Single Motor Long Range.
Watch the video below to find out if we liked it or read on for more thoughts.
What is it?
It’s a cheaper form of the Polestar 2. The Single Motor Long Range uses the dual motor’s 78kWh battery pack, but with a single motor powering the front wheels. A Polestar 2 Single Motor Long Range will set you back about £43,000 – although the one we tested had £5,700 of options. You can save more money by buying a single motor version with the 'standard' 64kWh battery – that'll set you back a smidge under £40,000.
Polestar 2 Single Motors look near identical to dual motor versions
As it stands, the Single Motor Long Range will take you further than any other model in the Polestar 2 lineup – 335 miles on the official WLTP test. That's 37 miles more than the dual motor, and 72 miles more than the standard range single motor car.
The switch to a single motor takes the 0-62mph time down to 7.4 seconds from 4.7 in the dual motor, and top speed drops from 127mph to 99mph.
In a smart move from Polestar, the single motor cars look identical to the dual motor version – other than the dinky sticker on the front doors showing that the power is down to 170kW (231hp).
Is it slow then?
There’s no doubt off-the-line acceleration is nowhere near as violent as in the dual motor car, however once you’re up to speed there’s precious little need for the extra oomf. Overtaking motorway and B-road traffic is still satisfyingly easy, and we never felt wanting for more power on some seriously steep and twisty roads in the Pennines.
That boxy roofline means that even six footers can fit in the back
Put it this way – you won’t be sitting on a motorway slip road worrying about getting up to 70mph in time, and mid-range punch is more than adequate, and puts most similarly priced combustion-engined cars to shame.
How does it handle?
Very much like the dual motor car. The Polestar 2 is a relative lightweight in the EV world at a smidge under two tonnes, and it has really quite impressive control of its mass over seriously bumpy and twisty roads. You never get the sense there's a tonne of water sloshing about out of time with the chassis, like in many other EVs of this ilk.
We drove on some of the UK’s most entertaining roads and it's testament to the Polestar 2's ride and handling that we never wished we were in a hot hatch.
There's little to criticise about the Polestar 2's handling – it even rides really well for an EV
You do sense the weight of the Polestar 2 in big compressions and dips, when it feels as though the suspension might be close to bottoming out under the load. But otherwise it just feels planted, with a pretty high limit before understeer forces you to slow down a bit for tighter corners – but you’ll be travelling pretty damn quickly before this happens.
The standard brakes do the job just fine, even for knobbish driving (the £6,000 Performance Pack adds chunkier Brembo brakes if you feel the need), and the whole package feels like a good partner for driving a bit faster than is probably legal.
There were moments on our test route where even the best automatic gearboxes in the world would’ve been taking their time to kick down and fire us up the steeper hills on the route, whereas the Polestar’s 330Nm of torque never dilly dallied to send us up the next bit of the road.
You do get more traction-control intervention out of very tight corners than in the dual-motor, but you don’t sense it kicking in – you just see the light flashing in the dashboard.
What about the rest of it?
It’s lovely. The interior is still Vegan as standard (you can add leather to meat things up if you wish), and the infotainment is knock-me-down-with-a-feather-and-tickle-my-armpits good. It’s astonishing.
The interior's minimalist but just works, and the infotainment is the stuff of dreams. Simple, gets the job done without any swearing
All the sat-nav work is handled by a custom version of Google Maps which also shows the maps in the digital driver display as well as on the infotainment screen – and for once the voice commands do exactly what you ask, because Polestar has left Google to do what Google does best. Software. Ask the car to take you to a niche camera shop (as I did) and it’ll get you there with no fuss, while displaying how much battery it thinks you’ll have left on arrival.
The rest of the system is really a masterclass in how to do a touchscreen infotainment system – all the important car and A/C functions are two touches away – touches on giant orange buttons you can’t miss while driving.
Plus pack cars get the panoramic sunroof with the projected Polestar logo (it's a lot more noticeable at night)
There are other neat, thoughtful touches that make it a joy to be in too. The gear selector is a really comfy shape for resting your hand, and the door mirrors are frameless and look posher than any we’ve ever seen. It sounds a feeble thing to praise, but every time you drive the car you’re reminded that it’s stylish and a bit unusual.
Frameless door mirrors are a nice touch – the whole unit moves when you adjust them
Rear seat space is perfectly decent, and there’s enough rear headroom for a 6’3” adult even with the Plus Pack’s excellent panoramic sunroof, complete with upwards-shining Polestar logo at the front of it.
The boot’s a 405-litre hole with a smart flip-up divider to stop stuff sliding about if you don’t fill it, and there’s a 35-litre frunk for odds and sods and charging cables. It's a bit of a shame the boot isn't bigger than the dual motor's – Polestar claims it would've been expensive to re-engineer the space just for the single motor cars.
Should I get one?
Still one of the very best EVs you can buy
The Polestar 2 has lost very little by losing a motor. Unless you plan on repeated traffic-light launches to impress friends and family, you’re better off saving a couple of grand, getting another 40 miles of range and enjoying one of the nicest, easiest to use and downright classy EVs on sale.
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Comments (9)
You went to Barnard Castle at one point, if I’m not mistaken. I was there last week!
I did!
Any car with 64 kWh battery is virtually useless for anything else than city commute, it is absolute joke. If you do the math, this is an equivalent of about 19 liters diesel tank in ICE/diesel car in the most optiImistic case. So now you now how far you can go with this - if you drive for about 5 liters/100 km, then you will do close to 400 kms. But if you drive for about 11-12 like me, then you can think only about 150. It would be terrible range even in the ICE when you can fill the 19 liters tank in minute. And it is even more terrible in EV when you easily wait for hours.
Thank you very much for this, but current EVs with current batteries are absolutely useless for hunderds of usual uses of car and unfortunate, my use is among them.
Well it's good to know that Polestar are doing a good job on their EVs, I really think they can battle Tesla on their cars if we give them a little more time!
Charging network aside, I'd say Polestar has already overtaken Tesla in the actual 'making a nice car' thing.
When Tesla showed of its big screen no one liked it but now the polestar does and apparently it’s amazing
The difference here is it's not a horrible user experience, and the voice commands work better than anyone else.
Ik Polestar is Chinese which may probably not be a good thing but they're still Swedish mostly so Polestar FTW!!!!!
All Polestars are built in China, yup. I don't see a problem with that - Chinese factories can build something as nice or as nasty as you ask for, and the Polestar proves they can do premium stuff really well.