First European customer gets his Polestar 2

Swedish Sture Stensson, who immediately ordered it on launch day in early 2019, is the first European customer who got his Polestar 2 delivered at the company’s headquarters in Gothenburg.

In the first week of August, customers in Norway and China will get served. The other launch markets, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK, “will begin to receive their cars next. Switzerland and North America will follow,” Polestar says.

Dispite global pandemic

Thomas Ingenlath, CEO of Polestar, says in a press release to be “extremely proud of the entire team. To have overcome production and logistics challenges due to the global pandemic, and to be able to bring this product to our customers when we said we would is a huge achievement. The press reaction has been incredible, and we are building real momentum behind Polestar 2.”

Polestar, a new car manufacturer of electric vehicles with Volvo roots and daughter of the Chinese Geely Group, had opened its first ‘Space’ in Brussels just a week ago, the third in the world, after Beijing and Oslo.

No ordinary showroom

A Polestar Space is no ordinary showroom. “We want to inform visitors here, not to sell cars,” commented Lies Eeckman, MD of Polestar Belgium, at the opening.

“The cars will be sold online; there is no stock. Our employees aren’t salespeople; they are trained to inform our potential clients as detailed as possible.”

Via Zeebrugge

There are 14 of them to open in the next weeks and 50 planned across China, Europe, and North America before the end of 2020. Later, there will be three more in Belgium, in Antwerp, Ghent, and Liège.

End of June, the first load of Polestar 2 cars arrived from the shared production facility in Luqiao, China, in the Belgian Port of Zeebrugge, a major entry port for cars into Europe where also the Teslas arrive.

Serious contender

Colleague Tony Verhelle was one of the first journalists to test drive the Polestar 2 in February. He felt this might be considered a serious contender for the Tesla 3.

“With a price just under the €60 000 barrier, the Polestar 2 can be considered a severe contender to cars like the Tesla Model 3 but also the (much more expensive) Jaguar I-Pace. The latter has undoubtedly been a benchmark for the chassis engineers of Polestar; their driving experiences tend to resemble each other very much.”

The Polestar 2 features an output of 300 kW (408 hp) and 660 Nm of torque (150 kW and 330 Nm electric motor per axle). With its 78 kWh battery, it should be able to last for a range of 470 km (WLTP). The Tesla 3 Long Range with a 75 kWh battery advertises a 457 km range.

Interesting price

“The price is even more interesting if you take into account that the Polestar 2 is well equipped,” says Verhelle, featuring a complete Android-driven infotainment system as a world first on a series car.

There is only one (big) option, the so-called Performance Pack, at €6 000. It consists of larger 20″-wheels, Brembo brakes, and special, manually adjustable Öhlins dampers.”

Looking at the powertrain and chassis, the Polestar 2 is identical to the Volvo XC 40 Recharge, the first fully electric Volvo to be built in Ghent arriving on the market at the end of the year. The complete chassis tuning, on the contrary, is different.