Polestar 3 EV shown in camo, US-built SUV launches next year
Polestar's next entry will be a small, luxury-minded SUV. We get a first peek at the thing in the flesh today.
What you're looking at is Polestar's next car. It's there, hidden beneath some blocky camouflage intended to keep your eye from piecing together the car that CEO Thomas Ingenlath says will "define the look for SUVs in the electric age." That's a bold statement but, based on how well the company's current offerings catch the eye, I have high hopes.
More important than the styling is the overall shape of the thing and the segment it will occupy. While the Polestar 1 is a long, luxurious coupe that I could stare at for days, and the Polestar 2 is kind of a tall sedan-thing that isn't easily classified, the Polestar 3 will cleanly target the crossover SUV segment that is absolutely crucial for the US market.
It's significant, then, that the Polestar 3 will be the first Polestar to be built right here in the US. "In America for Americans" said Ingenlath, and it'll roll off the Volvo factory lines in Charleston, South Carolina. I asked Ingenlath about the decision to produce the car here, and it sounds like a perfect mix of opportunity and saving time, cost and emissions. "It's a sustainable way of producing and delivering cars," he said. "We are very dedicated to reducing the CO2 space that is not only in the use case of the car, but is also the stuff that goes in the car, the suppliers you work with. With electric cars, you have to go the full way of getting mobility to zero emissions."
Polestar is also promising that, in time, the Polestar 3 will be available with a Luminar Lidar sensor and Nvidia's self-driving platform, enabling the car to drive itself on the highway. "The initial [self-driving] hype is over and reality kicks in, and the reality is looking really promising," Ingenlath said before quickly reminding me that Polestar is indeed a sports car company. "We still build emotional cars with really great driving capabilities. But we acknowledge totally that that is not always the case... the luxury feature of having automated piloting driving will be an important part of that."
Another important part? The buying and service experience. Polestar already has a great platform where you can buy a car online and have it delivered, and can even request that someone pick up your car for service via the company's app. However, that's only if you happen to live within 150 miles of a Polestar service location. Ingenlath says that there will be 25 Polestar spaces open in the US by the end of the year, and that number will double before long -- growing to keep up with demand.
When the car was first announced, this was all they showed, so at least we've lost the sheet.
With 29,000 cars sold globally this year, demand sounds strong, set to only intensify if the Polestar 3 hits its marks. And what marks are those? Polestar is targeting a 600 kilometer range, or 370 miles, and pricing on par with the Porsche Cayenne, which currently starts at just under $70,000 in the US. That could be a compelling package for a fun, luxurious and long-legged EV, and we eagerly await to see it without the camo in the coming months.
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