Polestar 3 Car Review
With luxury, performance and sustainability at its heart, Polestar 3 is one of the most well-reconciled and satisfying cars we’ve ever driven! Polestar 3 is a masterclass in the creation of a modern vehicle that’s easy to live with, and great to drive…
As of August 2025, fully electric cars still accounted for just 19.6% of new car registrations in the UK, whilst petrol vehicles took a 52.2% market share.
Granted sales have increased from 267,203 in 2022 to 314,687 in 2023 and 381,970 in 2024, but we’re still not exactly abandoning the internal combustion engine in droves, and when you experience vehicles like the Polestar 3, that really does beggar belief.
For seven days I’ve been using one as a daily driver and handing back the key fob was one of the most disheartening feelings, because during that time, I’d genuinely grown to love the wheels off it.
Polestar was founded eight years ago as a motor-racing company then a tuning division of safe-as-houses family car brand Volvo. Today though, it’s no longer considered a premium sub-brand of Volvo specialising in the latter’s sporty electric vehicles, but a standalone marque in its own right.
Polestar 1 was a statement of intent: a plug-in hybrid GT of which just 1,500 examples were produced. Polestar 2 followed in 2020 and it was a fully-electric liftback with, its fair to say, some clear Volvo lineage visible in its design and interior. That car is still available, but it’s the brand’s two newer models that should really make you sit up and take notice.
Polestar nomenclature is a little ambiguous; the 2 is a compact executive-sized vehicle, whilst the 4 is a compact coupé-SUV. The vehicle that we’ve been driving for the past week is the Polestar 3.
The largest model in the company’s portfolio, The Polestar 3 is an all-electric sports SUV, and at 4.9 metres in length, it’s shy of a Range Rover Sport by just 5cm, but just as spacious inside thanks to the fact that it’s been conceived and packaged as an electric car from the ground up. It’s not an internal combustion-engined car that’s been the subject of a compromised alteration to an existing model.
There’s a (refreshingly simple) single trim level which can be specified with a long-range single motor, providing a range of 438 miles and reaching 60mph in 7.5 seconds. That’s yours for £69,910, and it’s jolly good value given the slew of standard equipment.
We reckon that’s ample performance and really good range, but step up to the long-range dual motor and you’ll gain all-wheel drive, you’ll achieve 395 miles of range and you’ll reach 60mph in a sports car-bothering 4.8 seconds.
At £75,910, this was our model, and take it from us, it’s as rapid as any car you’ll ever drive. Its crisp acceleration from standstill and reassuring mid-range performance is good for when you’re accelerating from, say, 50-70mph on the motorway.
Should you wish, the Dual Motor version can be specified with a Performance Pack which pushed the price up to £81,510 and shaves a bit off your 0-60mph time.
It also provides additional tuning of the chassis, some lovely Swedish gold brake callipers and matching gold seatbelts, plus some very handsome 22” alloy wheels.
Each of the Polestar 3 models are well-equipped and each offers exceptional range and standard kit. We’d stick with the single motor version, but there’s no doubt that the dual motor version is fast and entertaining.
Polestar 3 is a vehicle much larger in real life than photographs would have you believe. It hides its size well though and I reckon you could own one for a couple of months and still notice lovely little details like the illuminated Polestar wordmark on the flanks and the vertical red lights across the rear lightbar.
The pop-out door handles work much better than the design favoured by some other manufacturers. Overall, the attention to detail in the Polestar’s exterior design is exceptional, from the details above, to the spoilers on the front of the bonnet and integrated into the top of the tailgate.
If you reckon the car’s well-designed outside, though, the best is yet to come, because Polestar 3’s interior is absolutely delicious. You won’t find any switchgear inherited from Volvo forebears; it’s all exclusive to Polestar. You will, however, notice Volvo’s influence in the design of the seats, which are widely-regarded as the best in the business.
Polestar 3’s seats are the most comfortable you’ll ever experience, absolutely the best it’s possible to get. They’re heated, cooled and offer a meaningful massage facility that you can actually feel, unlike that of other manufacturers whose seats just poke you in the back a bit.
Our car’s seats were also finished in a light coloured Bridge of Weir nappa leather , which lifted the car’s interior, pairing nicely with an open-pore black ash-stained wood strip, a panoramic roof and tasteful white ambient lighting.
Speaking of materials, Polestar set itself an ambition in 2021 to create a climate neutral car by reducing the environmental impact of producing batteries, with responsible sourcing and the use of recycled textiles like the lovely soft dashboard top which is covered in fabric made from recycled plastic bottles. The steel and aluminium of the body are made from recycled post-consumer and industrial waste.
That makes me feel comfortable… and so do the seats which are very supportive with electrically-adjustable side bolsters which snuggle around you. Having driven to visit the in-laws in the north east, a journey of some 160 miles, there was no sense of fatigue for the driver, nor for the present Mrs Davis in the passenger seat.
Furthermore, our willowy 6’2” son in the back had a welcome surfeit of legroom and headroom, as well as his own heated seats and personal climate control zone.
I’ll caveat any on the road comments by pointing out that I’m no Clarkson or Hamilton. There was no tyre-squealing turns or taking the car to its dynamic limits. Instead, I lived with it for a week and drove it to the supermarket, used it for my A-road commute and fired it up the motorway.
In all scenarios Polestar 3 acquits itself very well indeed. In town it’s smooth, silent, and easy to park in the supermarket. Below the main boot, too, there’s a hidden cargo area with hooks for supermarket bags or to stash camera kit out of sight. There’s a practical front boot, too, for storing a charging cable.
On faster roads, the car has more performance than you’ll ever need. Ride and handing are supple and reassuring thanks perhaps to its air suspension, and all-wheel drive… and that electric drivetrain is really efficient.
Polestar 3 also provides one-pedal driving – one of the pleasures of electric vehicles – with a keener setting for in-town driving and a more laid-back setting ideal for motorways.
There is a welcome physical rotary controller to mute the stereo, plus nicely-damped indicators and wipers on one stalk, and a steering column-mounted gear selector. Most controls though are routed through a 14.5” touch screen though, so you’ll pleased to know that it’s bright, high-resolution and very responsive. The 360° overhead view camera is so crisp and clear that I could see the individual bricks that make up our office’s block-paved car park.
The organisation, layout, modern sans serif typography, orange highlight colour and the logic of the system makes it a joy to use – every other manufacturer should look to Polestar for a masterclass in creating in-car touchscreen interfaces.
Only one demerit really; the black ash on the dashboard is lovely, but it’s not continued onto the centre console, where you’ll find gloss black trim instead: it tends to reflect the sun through the panoramic roof and it’s not as joyously tactile as that open-pore black ash when you’re leaning on the centre console.
Polestar 3’s interior is, however, a joy to look at, and even better on the ears than the eyes thanks to a whopping 1,650w 25-speaker Bowers & Wilkins, 3D surround sound, Dolby Atmos stereo. It’s the most impressive stereo you’ll ever experience, in a car or otherwise. Admittedly it’s a bit of an overkill for someone whose daily audio diet is Radio 4’s Farming Today, Today and The Archers, so just for spits and giggles I logged into Spotify and made a playlist of some of the most bass-heavy songs I could think of (Underworld’s Born Slippy), as well as a few songs with crisp soaring vocals (Nina Simone’s Sinnerman).
Short of being in a recording studio I doubt you’d find a better audio system, and speaking of recording studios, it even has an Abbey Road Studios mode designed to faithfully recreate the acoustics of the renowned studios which gave life to some of the Beatles’ most renowned tracks, as well as those by Kate Bush, Amy Winehouse, Oasis and Pink Floyd.
Fit and finish, too, are commensurate with a car that can beat premium German brands in the sales charts. There’s tonnes of standard equipment. However, whether you choose the single or dual motor version of Polestar 3, we recommend in the strongest possible terms specifying the Pilot and Plus Packs.
The former adds adaptive cruise control and lane change assist as well as a head-up display. All work well, none are obtrusive and the driver assistance systems are easy to turn off if required.
The Plus pack adds that superb stereo as well as heated front and rear seats, steering wheel and soft-close doors… doing so will ensure you’ve a bona fide executive motor with a smart badge and a vast breadth of practicality and capability.
In fact, it’s difficult to think of a single thing the car doesn’t do well. It’s as fast as a sports car, as practical as an SUV, as luxurious as an executive saloon and as easy to use around town as a much smaller car.
Plus, it’s eco-friendly by virtue of its electric drivetrain and sustainably-sourced materials. It is, in short, one of the best cars I’ve ever driven… and I already miss it a great deal!
Polestar 3:
Price: £75,900 (£89,200 with Long Range, Dual Motor with optional Plus/Pilot pack).
Powertrain: All electric, 107kWh battery, 483bhp, 840Nm torque, all-wheel drive via single-speed automatic gearbox.
Performance: 130mph, 0-60mph 4.8 secs.
Range: 398 miles range, 30 min charge from 0-80% with DC Connection.
Equipment: Adaptive cruise control, rear view/360° camera, parking sensors, 14.5” portrait touch screen with navigation, Bluetooth/5G, CarPlay/Android. 3-zone climate control, panoramic roof.
Read our full feature in the October edition of Pride Magazine at https://www.pridemagazines.co.uk/lincolnshire/view-magazines?magazine=October-2025
Our Polestar 3 was supplied by Polestar Sheffield, Meadowhall S9 1EP. 0114 5512900, see www.polestar.com.