There are some cars I drive, enjoy and hand back without giving them too much thought afterwards, and then there are the ones where handing over the key feels considerably more difficult. The Polestar 3 Performance falls very firmly into the second category.

I have actually been following this car for quite a while. I remember seeing the Polestar 3 when it was first launched and thinking it looked incredibly smart, then later getting the opportunity to drive one at Donington Park, where the overriding thought was simply how something this big could possibly drive like this. I drove it again at Bicester Motion and came away impressed for a second time, but spending a few hours with a car on a launch or a track day is very different from actually living with one.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve had the Polestar 3 Performance as part of everyday life. That has meant navigating Brighton, heading across the South Downs, covering the journey from Brighton to Bicester, dealing with motorways, sitting in traffic and even taking this enormous electric SUV right into central London. In other words, I’ve thrown a fairly broad selection of British driving at it, and I’ve really rather fallen for it.

The Polestar 3 range can be slightly confusing

Before getting into what the car is actually like, there is something worth explaining about Polestar’s naming system because it is easy to misunderstand. If you’ve grown up with manufacturers such as BMW, Audi and Mercedes-Benz, you’re probably used to numbers telling you roughly where a vehicle sits in the range, so it would be perfectly reasonable to assume a Polestar 4 must be larger or somehow more luxurious than a Polestar 3.

That isn’t how Polestar’s numbers work. Historically, they have broadly followed the sequence in which each model was introduced, with the Polestar 1 arriving first, followed by the Polestar 2, then the Polestar 3, Polestar 4 and Polestar 5. The Polestar 3 is actually the large luxury SUV, while the Polestar 4 takes a lower and more coupé-like SUV approach, and the Polestar 5 is a four-door performance GT rather than an even larger SUV.

So rather than thinking of the number as an indication of size or hierarchy, it makes much more sense to treat it as part of the car’s identity.

What does the Polestar 3 share with Volvo?

There is also a strong Volvo connection beneath the skin. The Polestar 3 uses the SPA2 architecture that also underpins the Volvo EX90, which might immediately make you assume the Polestar is simply a sportier EX90, but the similarities are much less obvious once you actually drive them.

The Volvo takes a much more traditional luxury family approach, offering seven seats and placing considerable emphasis on comfort, space and practicality. The Polestar 3 is a five-seater and feels far more interested in the person sitting behind the steering wheel. They are probably best thought of as siblings rather than twins. There is common engineering underneath, but very different personalities on top.

The current Polestar 3 Performance is seriously powerful

It is also worth checking exactly which Polestar 3 you are reading about because the car has evolved since it first arrived. The latest Polestar 3 Performance produces 500kW, equivalent to 680hp or around 670bhp, with 870Nm of torque, and it can reach 60mph in 3.8 seconds.

That is an extraordinary amount of performance for a large luxury SUV, and the current car has also moved to an 800V electrical architecture, allowing charging at up to 350kW, with Polestar quoting 10 to 80% in as little as 22 minutes under suitable conditions.

Those figures are important because there are plenty of older reviews online referring to earlier Polestar 3 specifications with different power outputs, charging speeds and battery technology. This is very much the newer generation.

It looks expensive without trying too hard

One of the reasons I’ve liked the Polestar 3 since I first saw it is that it manages to look distinctive without resorting to the increasingly common tactic of throwing every styling idea imaginable at one vehicle. There aren’t enormous fake grilles, ridiculous vents or endless pieces of black plastic trying desperately to convince you the car is sporty.

Instead, you get very clean Scandinavian surfacing, a relatively low roofline for an SUV and some clever aerodynamic work integrated into the shape. The aero wing beneath the leading edge of the bonnet is perhaps the most obvious example, helping to guide airflow over the car, while similar attention has been paid to the rear aero elements. Polestar says these features help reduce turbulence and improve aerodynamic efficiency.

It is a big car, though, and at around 4.9 metres long the Polestar 3 has real presence when you are standing next to it. The Performance version adds 22-inch forged wheels, Swedish gold Brembo brake callipers and some lovely gold detailing, including the seatbelts inside. It is quite a Polestar way of doing a performance car, because rather than covering it in carbon fibre wings and turning it into a visual caricature, the changes are tasteful and restrained while the serious performance remains hidden underneath.

The interior is where it starts making sense as a £90,000 car

The Polestar 3 Performance costs serious money. At the time of writing, the range starts from £76,540 in the UK, while the Performance sits at the top of the line-up and is comfortably into £90,000 territory.

Once you are spending that kind of money, good simply is not good enough and the cabin needs to feel special. Fortunately, this one does. Polestar has done minimalism properly, with a clean dashboard, very few physical controls and a general sense that everything has been deliberately placed rather than simply removed.

More importantly, it feels well made. I’ve driven minimalist interiors that look impressive in photographs but begin to feel disappointingly cheap once you start touching things, whereas the Polestar 3 feels solid, substantial and properly put together. Materials feel appropriate for the price, surfaces fit together properly and there is a genuine impression that somebody has spent time thinking about how the cabin should look and feel.

I really like having proper Nappa leather

One of my favourite things is something that is actually becoming less common: real leather, and specifically proper Nappa leather. There are perfectly valid reasons why manufacturers are moving towards vegan materials, recycled textiles and alternative upholstery, and some of those materials are excellent, but I still think there is something particularly luxurious about genuine high-quality leather.

The feel is different, the smell is different, and it gives the cabin something that is difficult to recreate artificially. Polestar uses fully traceable Nappa leather supplied by Bridge of Weir and says it adheres to specific animal welfare standards.

For me, though, the important thing is simply what it is like to sit in. It feels excellent and adds significantly to the sense that you are in a genuinely premium car.

These might be some of the best seats I’ve used in an SUV

The seats themselves are probably one of my favourite parts of the whole car because there is an enormous range of adjustment. Obviously you can move them forwards and backwards, raise and lower them and adjust the angle of the backrest, but that is really only the beginning.

You can alter the angle of the seat base, extend the lower cushion to provide more support beneath your thighs, adjust the lumbar support and even change how tightly the side bolsters hug you. Then you have heating, ventilation and massage, all of which become much more meaningful when you have actually spent several hours in the car rather than simply sitting in it at a showroom.

On my Brighton to Bicester drive, the seats were superb. You can find a position that works for you and then almost forget about them, while the ventilation is something I increasingly appreciate in cars with leather seats, particularly when the weather is warmer. The massage function is more than a novelty on longer journeys too, and combined with the heated steering wheel the Polestar feels like a car designed with proper long-distance driving in mind.

There is masses of space

The cabin also feels enormous, helped considerably by the full-length panoramic glass roof, which lets huge amounts of natural light into the interior. The flat floor and long wheelbase create plenty of passenger space too, with Polestar itself highlighting the generous distance between the rows of seats and completely flat floor as key elements of the interior design.

The rear is particularly impressive, with loads of legroom, decent headroom and enough space that adults will not feel like they are sitting in the cheap seats simply because they are in the back. My only personal wish with the roof is that it opened. I understand why fixed glass roofs have become common in EVs and visually the Polestar’s looks fantastic, but I still love being able to slide a sunroof open on a sunny day.

That is very much a personal preference rather than a genuine criticism, but it is one of the few things I would change about an otherwise excellent cabin.

The Bowers & Wilkins sound system is exceptional

This might be the feature I would show somebody first if they climbed into the car with me. The Bowers & Wilkins audio system is absolutely incredible, with 25 speakers, 1,610 watts of amplification, Dolby Atmos, speakers built into the headrests and active road-noise cancellation.

Those figures sound impressive, but they do not really explain what makes the system special. The more interesting part is the Abbey Road Studios functionality, which allows you to change the way the system presents music and alter the soundstage in ways that go far beyond simply adjusting bass and treble.

Put on a track you know really well and you can suddenly make it sound completely different. With the right settings and the right piece of music, there is an extraordinary sense that the artist is actually positioned somewhere in front of you, and it starts to feel less like listening to a stereo and more like sitting in a small performance space.

It is the sort of system that encourages you to sit in the car for another five minutes after arriving somewhere just because you want to finish listening to whatever is playing. I did that more than once.

Google built-in is still one of Polestar’s biggest strengths

Polestar’s decision to use Google built-in remains one of the things I like about the brand. Rather than developing a clunky proprietary navigation system and hoping owners tolerate it, Google Maps is properly integrated into the car, which means you are using a navigation system most people already understand but with access to information from the vehicle itself.

For an EV, that is particularly useful because route planning and charging can be incorporated into the journey, while the newer software also integrates Gemini. At first, that sounds like something that exists mainly because every technology company currently wants to mention AI as often as possible, but in the car it can actually make sense.

Imagine you are heading somewhere and plans suddenly change. You could ask the car to find you an Italian restaurant near your destination with an EV charger within a five-minute walk, rather than stopping, getting your phone out, searching Google, checking a restaurant, opening a charging app and then trying to work out where everything is in relation to each other.

That kind of natural conversation is exactly where in-car assistants should be heading, and Polestar currently lists Gemini among the Google technologies supported by the Polestar 3.

I’m pleased Polestar hasn’t copied Tesla completely

For all the minimalism, I am very pleased Polestar has kept a proper display directly in front of the driver. You get the large portrait touchscreen in the centre, but you also have a dedicated driver’s display and a head-up display, which is something I personally prefer.

I’ve spent plenty of time in Teslas and I understand the logic of putting almost everything on one central screen, but I still think important information belongs directly in front of the person driving the car. Speed, navigation instructions and driver-assistance information should be available without you having to glance sideways, and the head-up display makes that even better because you can keep your eyes much closer to the road.

Unfortunately, Polestar has gone too far with removing buttons

This is probably my biggest criticism of the Polestar 3 because there simply are not enough physical controls. I’m not suggesting we return to a 1990s dashboard covered in buttons for every imaginable function, but we have reached a strange point in modern cars where basic operations sometimes take longer because manufacturers are determined to eliminate switches.

The headlights are a perfect example. Turning the lights off should not involve navigating through several stages of a touchscreen, and my problem is not really with the screen itself because the system is responsive, looks good and Google makes much of it intuitive. The issue is that the screen has been given responsibility for too many things.

Carwow makes exactly the same general criticism, listing the number of controls buried in infotainment menus as one of its main negatives, while Auto Express says the menu layout can be unnecessarily fiddly. 

What I would really like is a configurable home screen. Give me five or six favourite buttons and let me decide what they do. If I regularly want immediate access to the suspension settings, driver assistance, exterior lighting or another function, let me put it directly on the home screen. It would make a huge difference without compromising the clean interior design.

The performance is almost absurd

The latest Performance has 680hp, 870Nm and all-wheel drive, with 60mph arriving in 3.8 seconds. 

For context, this is a huge luxury SUV that weighs well over two tonnes, yet the acceleration is properly violent when you ask for everything. It does not build, there is no gearbox shuffling down two ratios and there is no waiting for a turbocharger to wake up. You simply press the accelerator and the car fires itself towards the horizon.

Even by modern EV standards, it feels seriously quick, but strangely enough this is not actually the aspect of the Performance model I find most impressive. Electric cars being very fast in a straight line is not particularly unusual anymore. What matters is what happens when the road starts bending.

This is where the Polestar 3 really surprised me

There is something quite ridiculous about throwing a car of this size down a B-road and actually enjoying yourself. The Polestar 3 should feel huge and heavy, with physics constantly reminding you that you are driving an enormous battery on wheels, but it does not.

Instead, the car seems to shrink around you. You become less aware of the weight than you should be and start concentrating on where you are going next, helped by loads of grip, accurate steering and remarkably well-controlled body movement.

The Polestar 3 can challenge the BMW iX dynamically, despite its considerable weight it does not feel particularly heavy through corners. That is a serious compliment because the iX is extremely good to drive.

I first discovered this on track

My first proper opportunity to push the Polestar 3 came at Donington Park, and that was probably where my opinion of the car changed from “this looks interesting” to “hang on, this is really good”. A circuit immediately exposes things you may never discover driving gently on public roads, including weight transfer, body control, braking and the way a car responds when you change direction quickly.

I’m certainly not suggesting the Polestar 3 is some kind of lightweight track weapon, but it behaved far better than something this large has any right to. I later had another opportunity to drive one at Bicester Motion and came away with the same feeling.

The really impressive thing about having one for a couple of weeks is discovering that the chassis is not simply entertaining in an artificial circuit environment. It works in real life too.

B-roads are where you forget how big it is

There are some excellent roads around Sussex where you can properly experience a chassis without doing anything ridiculous, and on those roads the Polestar 3 Performance is fantastic. The instant acceleration obviously means you can fire out of corners rapidly, but the more satisfying part is the control.

You can place the car confidently, feel the suspension managing the weight and actually get into a rhythm with it, which is something not every fast electric SUV manages. There are plenty that will destroy a traffic-light drag race but feel enormous and slightly uncomfortable the moment you ask them to deal with a sequence of bends.

The Polestar feels like somebody actually cared about how it drove beyond the 0-60 figure, and that matters to me far more.

The air suspension is seriously clever

A large part of that ability comes from the dual-chamber active air suspension, with Polestar saying the system is able to adapt to road and driving conditions hundreds of times every second. The important bit, though, is not really the number but what you actually feel from behind the wheel.

You can change the suspension settings depending on how you want the car to behave. On a motorway, you can let everything relax and enjoy what is an extremely refined luxury SUV, while on a B-road you can firm things up and immediately feel the car become more controlled.

What surprised me is that even in the firmer setting it does not become unpleasant. Some manufacturers seem to think “sporty” means making the suspension unbearably hard, but the Polestar avoids that trap. You still know you are on 22-inch wheels and a really poor piece of road is still a really poor piece of road, but it never felt as though I was being punished.

That is one area where my experience differs slightly from some other reviews. Carwow likes the general ride but thinks the sportiest setting is too firm for British roads. I actually did not mind it and, if anything, I liked having that extra control without the car becoming aggressively harsh.

Then you put it on a motorway and it completely changes character

The Brighton to Bicester journey demonstrated another side to the Polestar. Leave the interesting roads behind, join the motorway and it settles down almost immediately, which is where the seats, air suspension and refinement all come together.

There is very little road noise, wind noise is well controlled and the driving position is excellent. You can turn on the massage seat, put some music through that extraordinary Bowers & Wilkins system and cover serious mileage without feeling particularly tired when you arrive.

I would describe the Polestar 3 as exceptionally quiet and refined at motorway speeds, and found it particularly good at covering long distances. 

This is where the breadth of the car becomes obvious because the same vehicle you have just been throwing around a country road suddenly becomes a luxury motorway cruiser.

It coped surprisingly well with central London too

Taking it into central London was perhaps the least natural test for a car this large because there is no escaping the dimensions. It is wide, very wide, and you are aware of that when the roads become narrow, when cyclists are filtering past you and when you arrive at a parking space that appears to have been designed when an Austin Metro was considered a normal-sized family car.

Despite that, it never becomes especially difficult to drive. The steering is light enough at low speed, electric power delivery makes it incredibly easy to creep through traffic and the 360-degree camera gives you a much better idea of where the corners of the car are.

I would still change two things. Firstly, I really wish Polestar would use those cameras to provide a live blind-spot view when you indicate. Tesla and Kia both offer versions of this and once you have become used to having a camera view appear when you are changing lanes, it is very useful.

Secondly, I wish the mirrors dipped automatically when reversing. Those 22-inch Performance wheels are gorgeous, which also means I spent a slightly embarrassing amount of time worrying about scraping one against a London kerb. A proper kerb view would be enormously appreciated.

Some of the safety technology is a little overenthusiastic

Modern cars are full of assistance systems and I am generally very supportive of technology that genuinely improves safety, but sometimes the calibration becomes more annoying than useful. The traffic-sign recognition system is one example.

Driving along the A3 into London through a 50mph section, the Polestar managed to see a 20mph sign on a road running alongside me and decided that was the limit I should be following. That is irritating enough by itself and becomes considerably more annoying when the car then thinks you are massively exceeding the speed limit.

The driver-awareness system can also become aggressive surprisingly quickly. Tilt your head backwards or hold it at a slightly unusual angle and the system can decide you are not paying attention. I understand the purpose because if somebody is looking at their phone or falling asleep, I want the car to notice, but there needs to be enough intelligence to distinguish between that and somebody simply changing position in the seat.

You can switch some of these systems off, but certain functions reset every time the car is restarted. There is a quick shortcut for the speed warning, which is useful, but others require more digging around in the menus. Again, configurable shortcuts would solve much of this.

Range and charging have improved considerably

The latest Polestar 3 is now based around an 800V electrical architecture and supports DC charging at up to 350kW. Polestar says a 10 to 80% charge can take as little as 22 minutes with a suitable charger and appropriate battery conditions.

That is a major improvement for long-distance use. The headline range figure for the overall Polestar 3 range now stretches beyond 400 miles in the most efficient version, although the Performance sacrifices some efficiency in exchange for its additional power and chassis setup. Polestar currently quotes energy consumption for the Performance at 33.0 to 37.2kWh per 100 miles. 

As always, WLTP figures need treating as comparison tools rather than promises. Drive quickly on the motorway in winter, use lots of heating and exploit those 680 horses regularly and you are not going to achieve the same number as an official laboratory cycle, but the combination of a big battery and 350kW charging makes the latest Polestar 3 a far more convincing proposition for proper long journeys.

The boot is not class-leading on paper

This is one area where you need to separate the feeling of using the car from the numbers. I initially thought the boot felt huge because it is broad, easy to access and gives you a useful amount of room for everyday luggage, but technically it is not actually one of the biggest in the class.

The boot is 484 litres with the seats up and users in some forums have criticised it for being an area where competitors do offer a more usable luggage capacity. That is worth knowing if you are comparing specification tables, but personally I found it more useful than the number suggests. There is storage beneath the false floor, sensible space around the main load area and, importantly, proper shopping hooks.

That last point sounds laughably insignificant until you have driven home after doing the food shopping and discovered a bottle rolling from one side of the boot to the other every time you go around a roundabout. Small practical details matter.

The hands-free boot actually works

The Polestar also has one of those features manufacturers have been fitting for years but rarely seem to execute properly: the hands-free tailgate. Move your foot underneath the bumper and the boot opens, which sounds incredibly straightforward but on plenty of other cars results in you waving your leg around under the rear bumper for thirty seconds before eventually giving up.

The Polestar’s worked for me consistently, and that is exactly how the feature should behave. There is also a clever control inside the boot that allows you to lower the rear of the car using the air suspension, reducing the loading height and making it easier to lift heavier items into the back.

It would also be brilliant if you have a dog because rather than expecting them to leap into the boot of a large SUV, you can lower the car and make the step considerably smaller. It is one of those features that does not necessarily sell the car on a specification sheet but becomes genuinely useful once you own it.

I’m going to talk about the indicator sound

Apparently, I am now the sort of person who has opinions about indicator noises, but I genuinely like the one in the Polestar. It is subtle and slightly unusual rather than sounding like an exaggerated electronic click, and the sound design story behind Polestar and Volvo goes surprisingly deep.

Volvo’s designers famously experimented with natural Scandinavian sounds, including a recording based around a small fir-tree twig, while Polestar deliberately moved in a more technical direction with its own sound identity. The Polestar indicator was developed around a Kronecker pulse, effectively creating something closer to a tiny electrical spark than the traditional mechanical relay sound.

It is such a small thing, but it tells you something about the car because somebody actually thought about what the indicator should sound like. After two weeks of hearing it every day, I am pleased they did.

The digital key is another little thing that works well

The Polestar’s digital key can integrate with Apple Wallet, meaning your phone effectively becomes the key to the car. There is something slightly magical about walking up to a vehicle and simply having it recognise something you are already carrying, with no searching through pockets and no key fob dangling around.

It is technology disappearing into the background, which is where some of the best technology belongs.

So what does the Polestar 3 actually compete with?

This is where things become difficult for Polestar because £90,000 puts you into extremely serious company. You are no longer comparing this with mainstream electric SUVs, and the BMW iX is perhaps the most obvious rival because it is similarly large, luxurious, technologically advanced and surprisingly enjoyable to drive.

The Porsche Macan Electric is smaller but has enormous appeal if driving dynamics and brand prestige matter to you, while Audi’s Q6 e-tron brings a more traditional premium experience with sophisticated electric architecture. Mercedes-Benz has its own growing range of next-generation electric SUVs, and then there is the Volvo EX90, which shares some of the engineering underneath but places greater emphasis on family practicality and seven-seat capability.

Auto Express currently identifies the BMW iX, Audi Q6 e-tron and Mercedes-Benz electric SUVs among the Polestar 3’s primary competitors.

You could also look towards a Lotus Eletre if outright performance and dramatic styling are high on the priority list, so the competition is formidable.

Why would you choose the Polestar?

For me, it comes down to personality. The Polestar does not feel like it is trying to be a BMW, it is not attempting to imitate Porsche and, although there is obvious Volvo DNA underneath, it does not simply feel like an EX90 wearing a different body.

It has its own character. It is understated but still distinctive, luxurious without trying to recreate an old-fashioned drawing room, outrageously fast without shouting about it and genuinely well engineered beneath all the technology.

There is something very appealing about that combination, particularly if you want a luxury electric SUV that feels a little different from the obvious German choices.

Does it genuinely feel like a £90,000-plus car?

This is perhaps the most important question because £90,000 is a huge amount of money and you can buy an awful lot of car for that. Being fast does not justify the price and neither does having a large touchscreen.

What makes the Polestar 3 feel expensive is the way all the smaller things combine. There is the feel and smell of the leather, the way the seat can be adjusted until it fits you perfectly, the massage function halfway through a long drive, the quality of the Bowers & Wilkins system, the head-up display and even the gold seatbelt you pull across yourself every morning.

Then there is the way the suspension completely changes character depending on what you are doing, the solidity of the interior, the silence at motorway speeds and the fact that, when you want it, pressing the accelerator unleashes 680hp.

There are cars where the specification sounds far more impressive than the finished product. The Polestar is almost the opposite because the longer I spent with it, the more I appreciated it.

What I loved

The biggest surprise was probably the sheer breadth of ability. I expected it to be quick and comfortable, but I did not expect a car this large to be as enjoyable as it is on a good road. The seats are superb and perhaps among the best I have experienced in an electric SUV, while the genuine Nappa leather adds a sense of luxury that is becoming less common and the ventilation and massage functions make a meaningful difference on longer journeys.

The Bowers & Wilkins system is exceptional and Abbey Road Studios Mode turns it into something you actively want to experiment with rather than simply leaving on one setting forever. I also like the technology when it is genuinely useful, with Google Maps remaining one of the best navigation systems to have integrated into a car and Gemini having the potential to make voice control considerably more practical.

The air suspension is fantastic, the cabin quality is excellent and the little details, from the gold seatbelts to the digital key and even that indicator sound, add personality.

What I didn’t love

The lack of physical controls is easily my biggest frustration. There are some things that should simply have a switch, and while the software itself is not bad, needing to go hunting through menus for basic functions becomes irritating very quickly.

The driver-monitoring system also needs refinement, as does the traffic-sign recognition. I would also expect automatic blind-spot camera views and kerb-view mirrors on a car this large and expensive, particularly when it is wearing 22-inch wheels that you desperately do not want to damage.

And yes, I would still like an opening sunroof. None of these things would stop me wanting the car, but when you are spending this much you are allowed to be picky.

My verdict on the Polestar 3 Performance

I have now experienced the Polestar 3 in more situations than I do most cars. I’ve driven it on track at Donington, driven it at Bicester Motion, lived with one in Brighton, taken it across Sussex B-roads, driven it from Brighton to Bicester, spent plenty of time on motorways and threaded it through central London.

That variety is what has finally made me understand the Polestar 3. It is not really about the 680hp and it is not about the 3.8-second 0-60 time either. Those figures are impressive, obviously, but enormous performance figures have become almost normal in expensive EVs.

What makes this car good is that all of its different personalities work. It can be an extremely comfortable long-distance luxury car, a quiet urban EV, a spacious five-seat SUV and something you can genuinely enjoy when the road clears.

There are flaws. Polestar has gone too far in its pursuit of a button-free interior, the driver-assistance systems occasionally need calming down and some of the cameras could be used more intelligently, but those frustrations feel relatively minor compared with the fundamental quality of the car.

When I first saw the Polestar 3, I thought it looked pretty smart. When I first drove one at Donington, I thought it was seriously impressive. After living with the Performance for a couple of weeks, I think I finally understand it.

It is one of the best cars Polestar has made and, more importantly, it is one of the few £90,000-plus electric SUVs I have driven where I can actually see where a lot of the money has gone. When the time came to hand it back, I really did not want to, and that probably tells you everything you need to know.