Sporty, Swedish, Luxury: 2025 Polestar 3 First Impressions

The first truly mass-market Polestar electric vehicle has finally hit the market, after many delays. Polestar 3 is turning heads with its sharp design, performance chops, and comfortable Swedish interior.

Polestar invited me to come drive the 2025 Polestar 3 through the mountains around Jackson Hole, Wyo. I, of course, couldn’t turn down the opportunity to explore firsthand what the new luxury, performance crossover is all about.

In short: The Polestar 3 is the make-it-or-break-it product for the Polestar brand. Its thoughtful design inside and out is a unique blend of performance and luxury. If consumers can get past the nearly six-figure price tag and a few quirks, the Polestar 3 is likely to be a big hit.

What’s a Polestar?

If you’re not a Volvo enthusiast or haven’t been following the electric vehicle market super closely, you might not have heard of Polestar. The company has deep Swedish motorsports roots, is today owned by Volvo, and builds cars alongside Volvo in the U.S., China, and South Korea.

Polestar started life in 1996 as an engineering firm that had a very sucessful motorsports team, which won touring car championships with factory-backed Volvo race cars. Around 2005, the company starting tuning Volvo production cars, which led it to being acquired by Volvo in 2015 and subsequently repositioned as an electric vehicle company in 2017.

In 2010, the Chinese conglomerate Geely Holding Group bought Volvo, which in turn means Polestar was bought by and is owned by Geely. While Polestar is its own company and is traded on the NASDAQ, it doesn’t have any of its own manufacturing facilities, uses EV technologies developed by Geely, and has many parts from Volvo.

For years now, Polestar has been losing big sums of money, with only one vehicle offering on the U.S. market, the Polestar 2 electric sedan. It is counting on big growth with the introduction of the Polestar 3 crossover SUV now, which has been delayed for a few years.

It hopes to make further profitability moves with the introduction of the 4 and 5 performance sedans and the model 6 sport car over the next few years. Now that U.S. production has started the company is pushing on the accelerator hard.

The core pillars of Polestar are “design, innovation, and sustainability.” Its vehicles are designed with an identity around “pure, progressive performance.” What that all amounts to is the goal of Polestar to stand out from the crowd with unique, performance-forward vehicles that utilize sustainable materials.

2025 Polestar 3 Launch Edition Review

The Polestar 3 is finally starting to roll out of the South Carolina assembly facility, where it is built alongside the Volvo EX90. Now that I’ve spent a long day of mountain driving with it, I can give you my first impressions. Let’s dive right in.

Polestar 3 Design

I find the design of the Polestar 3 to be just enough different from other SUVs to stand out from the crowd. Polestar designed the 3 to have a “strong stance, commanding presence,” be “sleek and wide with low roofline,” and focused on aerodynamics.

I’d say the exterior design meets those goals. A key feature that helps accomplish those goals is the front aero blade. It gives a big presence while improving aerodynamics.

Inside the latest Polestar feels very Volvo. It uses some of the same switchgear, screens, etc. It also has muted blue and gray tones with white accents, like you find in many Volvos. While similar, it does feel like its own product, and a bit more special than a typical Volvo. All touch surfaces are padded and luxurious, except some hard shiny black plastics in a few places.

Driving Performance

With 50/50 weight distribution and adaptive air suspension with active dampers, the Polestar 3 is an enjoyable vehicle to drive. Turn in is direct and responsive, and with its massive wheels and tires — wider in the back — it sticks to the road like glue.

Polestar 3 utilizes a torque vectoring disconnect clutch (TVDC) in its dual motor AWD setup. This helps with turn in and agility. Add to that big power and massive Brembo brakes, and you have a combination that driving enthusiasts will appreciate.

Amazingly, Polestar says the 3 crossover has a lower center of gravity than the Polestar 1 sport coupe. This helps greatly with performance. In the same breath, the company also said it decided to keep a bit of body roll to provide feedback to the driver. I found that to be an interesting choice, as the Polestar 3 does have a bit more body roll than you might expect out of a sporty long-slung BEV.

Polestar wants the 3 to be the “driver’s choice for its superior precision and distinct road contact.” It also said the vehicle provides an “analog driving experience.” I did not find that to be the case, as it is an electric car with nearly all functionality built into a touchscreen.

Polestar also noted that “strong driver authority systems are augmenting, not hindering.” The vehicle has all the normal tech you expect from a brand-new EV, including lane keep assist and adaptive cruise.

The issue is that the adaptive cruise doesn’t allow you to set the following distance — although that feature will likely come through a dealer-installed update soon — and the lane keep assist basically stays on even when you turn it off. I tried this a number of different ways and the system intervened in nearly every situation, even when I had it turned off. Polestar is aware, but didn’t hint at a fix.

Efficiency

As with all EVs, the range is a big number to look at when shopping for a vehicle to meet your transportation needs. The Polestar 3 Launch Edition offers up to 315 miles of range, with the Performance Pack-fitted vehicles offering 279.

These numbers are pretty impressive when you factor in the size and weight of this vehicle. The efficiency is achieved through a focus on aerodynamics and an AWD system that switches to FWD when cruising on the highway.

An electric heat pump is also standard on Polestar 3, which helps keep both the batteries and occupants at optimal temperatures.

Polestar 3 First Impressions

Now that you’ve got a feel for what the Polestar 3 is all about, let’s dive into the details that I found on my drive.

Things to Love About the Polestar 3

The interior of the Polestar 3 feels unique, quality, and luxurious. It is also quite quiet.

If you’re looking for a smooth enough ride that leans toward performance over comfort, the Polestar delivers.

An upgraded 25-speaker Bowers & Wilkens sound system comes with the Plus package and is really good — although I wasn’t able to evaluate the standard system. The system is highly fine-tunable and truly makes music sound great. Also, the speakers are individually amplified, which helps save overall power use of the sound system from the vehicle, helping with range.

I really love the massive storage area in the bottom of the trunk. It is accessed under a folding lid, which also has hangers on it for your grocery bags or backpacks. The system worked great to keep my camera bag from moving around when I was sampling the performance capabilities of the vehicle.

Things: Polestar 3

In the vehicle menu in the infotainment system, the Polestar 3 allows you to adjust things like the steering feel, suspension, and performance settings. The steering feel (Light/Standard/Firm) is way too light at one end, a bit heavy in the Firm setting, and pretty much perfect in the Standard setting — to my tastes, at least.

The suspension (Standard/Nimble/Firm) honestly doesn’t change the ride a ton, but I did find the Nimble setting to be well suited for most public road conditions. I drove the vehicle in Performance mode nearly all the time, as I wasn’t worried about range and the Range setting reduces throttle response and power quite a lot.

One-pedal drive is very intuitive in the Polestar 3. But, when you come off the right pedal and then touch the brake pedal the brakes are very aggressive. Hopefully, this can be smoothed out with calibration updates in the future.

I love all the soft and textured touch points inside the vehicle. There is a good bit of black shiny plastic that I’m not a fan of, however.

The two interior screens and the heads-up display (HUD) are bright, big, and have vivid graphics. They are quite busy, though.

The large glass roof is standard on all Polestar 3 and provides good headroom and a spacious feel. It has no built-in shade or adjustable tint, however, so it can heat up the vehicle in warm, sunny climates. There is a dealer accessory on offer that shades the glass roof if wanted for driving and parking in hot places.

Perforated and textured interior surfaces feel and look great, but can hold dirt and dust and be really hard to clean. This is something I also experienced in the Polestar 2, as did a friend who owned one.

Massage seats are really nice, but the only way to access the massage functions is to push the button in the center of the seat adjuster on the seat side, which then brings up the menu on the screen. There’s no other way within the screen to get that menu and quickly turn on the massage.

The rear passengers get a small coat hanger, reading lights, a third zone climate control, heated seats, USB 3.0 outlets, and loads of head and leg room. They also get a very low and narrow seat cushion that doesn’t support the legs of an adult.

The steering wheel is pretty nice, but the shiny black plastic buttons feel cheap. And, the buttons on the left of the wheel have no functionality — currently — besides controlling the Pilot Assist adaptive cruise control. The Pilot Assist system also has no functionality to allow you to adjust the gap to the vehicle in front of you, a pretty key feature, especially in traffic.

Things Not to Love About the Polestar 3

Way too many screens and button pushes to accomplish tasks, like with the massage seats. It takes two tappies to get the glove box open, three tappies to get to the performance vehicle page, etc. So, many screen taps (tappies) to make anything happen!

There is a solid delay when pressing the accelerator pedal. The wait for vehicle to respond to pedal input is cut in half in Performance mode over Range mode, but is still very slow.

The front passenger seat doesn’t go low enough or bucket enough to be all that comfortable for someone like me who has a long torso, back issues, and wants leg support. Luckily, the driver’s seat offers better adjustments and support. Surprising, as both seats seem identical — until you play with all the adjustments.

Polestar 3 has a frunk, but it’s tiny. It is perfect for securely storing your charge cable and a few roadside emergency supplies, however.

Oddly, there are no grab handles to help get in and out of the Polestar 3, at all, front or back. While the vehicle isn’t overly tall, it does have a bit of a threshold in the doors to get your legs over, which could be hard for some people without the assist of a grab handle.

Turn signals don’t seem to auto-cancel very well. I found myself manually canceling them more times than not. Also, they have a loud and annoying tapping sound when active.

And then there is the price …

2025 Polestar 3 Pricing & Availability

While pricing starts at $73,400 for the Polestar 3, the Launch Editions, and how you’re likely to want to spec one, cost quite a lot more. The two Launch Edition, Pilot, Plus vehicles tested both have 22-inch wheels (a $2,300 option on non-Performance Pack vehicles) and ventilated Nappa Leather seats (a $5,500 option). They also have sticker prices of $88,100 and $93,100 (model with Performance Pack).

One of the big reasons for the delayed U.S. launch of the Polestar 3 has been the eligibility for federal tax credits. The Volvo/Polestar plant in South Carolina needed to get running so the vehicle would be eligible for the max tax credit, at least when being leased. This is because it is assembled in the U.S., but production of battery and many components is still in China, which means the max tax credits don’t apply to purchases.

The 2025 Polestar 3 is on sale now and first deliveries are expected in the next few weeks — October 2024.

2025 Polestar 3 Launch Edition Review Wrapup

In the end, the 2025 Polestar 3 Launch Edition is a much-anticipated EV that was worth the wait. It delivers in all the areas that really matter, but does have lots of little things that could turn off potential buyers. The price tag being a big one, although very few will be sold, as most will be leased to get the best tax incentives.

Also, once you see it, you can’t unsee it. The new Lotus Eletre SUV has a striking family resemblance. It also has similar performance and stats, although slightly more performance-oriented. Once you scratch the surface, you quickly realize this isn’t a coincidence, as both Lotus and Polestar are owned and underpinned by Geely.