The 2025 Polestar 3 Is a Cool Electric Luxury SUV

This is the new 2025 Polestar 3, and it's a fully electric luxury SUV, the first SUV from the new Polestar brand. It looks cool, it starts around $70,000, and it has big power. And today I'm going to review the new Polestar 3 and show you all of its quirks and features. Today's video is sponsored by Cars and Bids, which is my online car auction website for modern enthusiast cars. Cars and Bids has around 600,000 registered users all participating in our auctions of cool, special, exciting cars like this, and this, and this, and this. If you're looking to buy or sell an enthusiast car from the modern era, do it on carsandbids.com. All right, time for the quirks and features of the Polestar 3. And first, a big thank you to Unstoppable Automotive Group, who runs the Polestar stores here in San Diego at Westfield UTC and up in Orange County at South Coast Plaza. I sincerely appreciate borrowing the Polestar 3, which is just starting to find its way into these stores. You can check out more on these Polestar stores in Orange County and San Diego by clicking the link in the description below. We start the quirks and features with getting in the Polestar 3, and specifically the key, which is simply this. Very minimalist. So much so, in fact, that it doesn't even have any buttons. Minimalism is a key theme for this car, as you will see when we go through it. The way the key works is you have it in your pocket, no need to get it out, or press a button because you just stick your hands on the bottom edge of the door handle, it recognizes you're there, the door handle pops open, and you open up the car and get inside. And when you get inside, the first thing you discover is there are very few controls in the Polestar 3. Again, the theme of minimalism really plays out in this car. In fact, the only physical control in the center of the Polestar 3 is one individual. Individual dial that has the play pause button on it now I know a lot of people love buttons, but you gotta admit. This is kind of a cool look being completely buttonless and minimalist This is certainly the future. But anyway, you start the car by simply getting inside with the key putting your foot on the brake There's no start stop on off button and then these two big screens come to life and the front passenger compartment. Now, the center screen is this giant vertical display that basically controls everything for this car. All the buttons and switches you'd normally find in an interior have essentially been integrated into this screen, as I'll show you. This car comes standard with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto for ease of infotainment multimedia use, but If you use Polestar's software, the home screen is Google Maps, which is very familiar and, of course, very easy to use. And if you tap the home button a second time, a lower screen comes on and shows, like, the radio station and your phone, giving you access to more stuff. Now, of course, you can enlarge any of that at any time by just clicking on the individual icons for those items. If you want to see the full screen radio so you can make adjustments, that's fine. Same deal with phone and basically anything else, including something I have. I absolutely love the camera system in this car. It's a very easy tap away, and it's excellent. Not only easy to access, but really high quality with a great top-down camera that turns into a great 3D camera if you simply move your finger around. Very responsive, very easy, and very high quality makes it easy to see exactly what you want on the outside of this car. There's also a range and trip button that you can tap on and pulls up a really significant display showing Well, range and trip odometer stuff that you can kind of choose from to see a lot of different information about the vehicle, the trip you're on, the miles you've covered, your efficiency, all that sort of stuff is easy to see in here. And then there's the app widget, which includes a lot of different vehicle apps like the phone, the radio, etc. But some other nice things to have, including the YouTube app. The Spotify app, Google Chrome, Amazon Prime Video, you can do a lot of stuff through this screen, which operates a lot like a laptop or a tablet given everything that it offers. You even have Google Assistant built in, so you can tap on that and use it as sort of a voice control where you can tell it what to do, and it will help you figure it out. Now, all of that stuff is pretty cool and pretty high tech, but maybe more interesting staying is all of the controls that have been integrated into this. center screen. For example, this is where you go to adjust the outside mirrors, the rear view mirrors, not a little button or switch on the door panel, but you go in here and then tap on mirrors. And then you use the buttons on the steering wheel to adjust the exact placement and positioning of the mirrors. Same deal with adjusting the steering wheel itself. You go to steering wheel in the center screen, and then you use the steering wheel buttons to place the wheel where you want it. And same deal with the heads up display. You configure that in. the center screen and then use the wheel buttons to raise or lower it or adjust the brightness. In fact, this center screen is so all-encompassing that even the glove box is opened through here. You tap right here, it opens up the glove box. You don't even have a simple glove box latch. They got rid of even that in the name of minimalism. Now, with that said, there is one drawback to this giant all-controlling center screen, and that's your climate control adjustment. have been integrated into the screen, which in some cars is okay, but here they've been given a very small piece of real estate on the home screen. You can't really make any adjustments here. That means in order to change anything, the temperature, the airflow, where it's coming out, you basically have to make two taps, one on the climate control itself, and then a second tap to turn on the heated seats or the heated wheel or change the temperature or whatever. It's not the best integration and just another inch of climate control on this giant screen I mean, would have allowed for more easy changing of stuff like a lot of other cars have. But next, we move on to the other screen in this interior, the one directly in front of the steering wheel, and I gotta say, it's... Pretty impressive for such a small screen. For one thing, it's very adjustable, configurable to show exactly what it is you want to see. You can use the little buttons on the steering wheel to adjust what's being shown on the screen. If you want a full screen map, for instance, you can have that. But you can also show, like, your vehicle driver assist or larger or smaller displays of whatever you want to see. This is something that's missing from Tesla vehicles. Other electric cars have little screens here, but I've never seen one do it quite as well as the Polestar 3. A very useful screen directly in front of you. Now, with all that said, one interesting drawback about the controls on the steering wheel itself. You have these buttons that flank the center of the wheel, and I've mentioned some of the stuff they can do. adjust the mirrors, the position of the steering wheel, what's on your little gauge cluster display screen, and they can also make adjustments for your driver assist technology when you're out on the road, but they oddly don't control your stereo volume or your next track, which is disappointing. You don't have that directly at your fingertips on the steering wheel. Instead, you got to go down to that play-pause dial that I mentioned earlier, and you adjust the volume by twisting it, pretty standard. Next track, previous track, by moving it left or right. It's fairly easy to use, but it would be nice to have steering wheel audio controls like so many other cars do. And another control drawback in the The Polestar 3 is the window switch situation. You go on the driver's door panel, you can see there's only two window switches, but obviously this car has front and rear windows, so there's a button directly below the window switches that let you choose whether you're controlling the front or the rear windows, and in order to roll down the back windows, you have to first tap on that button, then it highlights back. Two lights, and then you use the same window switches for the front to control the rear. It's not exactly the most intuitive or simplest way to do this, and I think most people would just prefer four window switches like in basically every other car. But some of those complaints are the trade-offs. for minimalism and indeed there are quite a few benefits to minimalism in this interior. One thing I love the giant climate control vent that goes across the entire interior. It looks cool in sort of a basic and simple way. I also love the control for the seats in this car which is this little switch on the side of the seat. It's not shaped like a seat but it's incredibly intuitive. One One little control, and you adjust it the direction you want to go, and then the scene seat goes that way, this is how all seat controls should be adjusted. It's excellent. And another cool, quirky feature I like is this little clip. At the base of the windshield, which allows you to clip like a parking ticket showing how much time you have left or something like that directly onto your windshield instead of just sticking it in your dashboard. Volvo has had this little windshield clip in their vehicles for a while. Polestar is an offshoot brand of Volvo, so it makes sense to see that clip, and I love seeing it there. And speaking of the dashboard, another item I love on there is the center speaker mounted in the middle of the dashboard, which almost looks like a... Rocket ship or a jet engine placed right there on the dash. That is a pretty cool touch, and I like seeing it there. I also like the wireless charger right in the center of the center console. But most importantly, you have a little spot in the middle of the wireless charger for the key. It turns out the key doesn't have batteries. Instead, it wirelessly charges. So your key fob will never run out of batteries as long as you keep it on this wireless charger periodically. You will also notice there are a couple of vents in the wireless charger, those are designed to blow cool air on your device while it's charging to keep it cool, which solves a problem that wireless charging has, that it can get hot, these vents sort of air condition your device from the back, which is a cool idea. And next up we move on to the back seat in the Polestar 3, where frankly, there's a lot more room than I would expect. To be back here, given the overall size of this vehicle, sort of a midsize luxury SUV. I'll kind of get into the competitors in a little bit, but this is full-size territory in terms of space for knees, legs, hips, and head. You got a lot of space back here. It's pretty impressive in the back. And there are some nice touches back here, like dual USB-C ports, as you can see, at the base of the center console for charging devices. You also have heated rear seats in this one, which is nice. And rear climate controls and rear climate control vents mounted here, too. So a lot of different nice luxuries in this car. Also, back here, you have a rear armrest that takes the place of the center seat if no one's sitting in it. And I have to say, there's just something about it that is perfectly comfortable. I don't know if it's the positioning of it or exactly how smushy it feels, but it's perfect, exactly where I want my arm. It's so lovely sitting in the back with this armrest. Now, when the armrest is down, you can push the front part out and you get some cup holders too, which adds to the convenience in back. By the way, one other item worth noting in the rear, from the back, you have the best view of the giant glass roof that spans the entire passenger compartment. This roof doesn't open, but it really is huge. And when you're sitting in back, you can especially see it and look out into the world above. And next up, we move on to the back of the Polestar 3, but before I get into the cargo area, take a look at the rear styling. Again, minimalism and simplicity wins the day with this car. You can see a very simple rear-end design, free of a lot of ugly or weird adornments you might see on other cars, and you don't even really have badging back here, just the Polestar logo in the center, and that's it. It doesn't say Polestar 3 or all-wheel drive or performance model with a dual I'm not going to say any of that. Just very simple and basic in the back. Now you do have a light bar that spans the entire way across the rear of this car, which is fairly distinctive, but it looks nice and it also throws off kind of simple, cool vibes in back. But anyway, next we move on to the cargo area in the Polestar 3 and you can see it's fairly normal size for a vehicle like this. Nothing too special, not too small, not too big, kind of exactly what you'd expect. But with that said, one very cool feature of this This particular cargo area that I love, the floor, you can pull on this strap in the floor and then stick it here where it's set up to become a divider between the front and rear of the cargo area. And when you do that, you also gain access to a lower compartment in the cargo area for even more stuff, which is pretty cool to see. There's even little hooks that come off of the divider that are for like shopping bags. You can see they have little images of a bag on them and you can hang your bags from the hooks So, there is a little bit more cargo space and practicality than first meets the eye. And if you're looking for even more cargo space, you can get it up front. To access the front storage compartment, just pull on this latch on the driver's footwell, and then you have a second latch here off to the side on the driver's side. You can open up the front hood, basically, and you see this large plastic panel which lifts up to reveal A cargo area, not a huge one, but large enough for the charging cables and some other stuff if you want it in here, and if you don't want to take up space in the interior or in the cargo area itself. Now, when you take a look at the front of the Polestar 3, you can see, just like the back, it's also a fairly basic, minimalist kind of... Cool modern design, not too many adornments or weirdnesses up front, and also fairly low on badging, although you do have one interesting item up here, which is the front spoiler. You can see this panel, which almost looks like a trim piece, you go under it and it's actually open underneath. It's a spoiler and air passes through it, which is certainly odd to see on a luxury electric SUV, a front spoiler, but the Polestar 3 has it. Now, one other interesting quirk on the outside of this car, labeling, I've noticed is very matter-of-fact. For instance, on the door, you can see it says Polestar 3, and it gives the power output in this like very simple, obvious font. Like it really wants to tell you something. It's the same deal at the very front of the car, where it shows you where the safety sensors are for the driver assist technology. It's labeled with this very simple matter-of-fact font telling you exactly what's up there. I assume you can pull off this stuff, especially the badge on the door if you You don't want it, but it's interesting to see that label. But anyway, the overall design, the look, the exterior styling of this car really is nice. I wouldn't say it's particularly beautifully amazing, but it is simple, modern, cool, and free of a lot of crazy hooks and... Strange design choices like you see in some other cars, especially electric SUVs today. It's a really nice looking vehicle. And next up, let's go through some of the basics of the Polestar 3. The base level entry model isn't out yet, but Polestar says when it comes out, it'll have a single motor and start around $69,000. The mid-tier version is a dual motor with all-wheel drive and about 480 horsepower, And it starts around around $75,000. This is the top of the line Polestar 3 Performance, which has about 520 horsepower and a starting price of around $81,000. Now, the sweet spot for range is that mid-level model, about 315 miles of range. You get the performance and the extra power. It also drops your range down to a still usable 280 miles, which this car has. As for sizing, This is a midsize luxury SUV. It's about 193 inches long, which puts it almost on par in terms of size with the BMW iX. That's one of this car's closest rivals, and other ones would include the electric Genesis GV70, the Porsche Macan EV, maybe the Rivian R1S or Tesla Model X. For people who just want electric but don't necessarily need the larger size of those cars, They may also consider pulling. Polestar. So with all that out of the way, next it's time to get behind the wheel and see how it drives. All right, driving the Polestar 3. Now I got to say, I really enjoyed driving the Polestar 2 when I did that a while ago, but the problem with that car was as nice looking as it was and as nice as the interior was, I just couldn't get the value proposition to really make sense. It just was a little bit too expensive given what it offered compared to Tesla. One benefit of the Polestar 3 is that by going a sort of a more upmarket territory, this car is an $84,000 sticker price, the value proposition becomes less of like a major contributing factor and people are starting to think more sort of emotion. You know, it's not necessarily like a buyer who's focused on a monthly payment, who's focused on a specific thing. It's more people who are thinking about things like style and technology and that sort of thing. And you get into your sort of BMW iX, Porsche Macan EV And that's definitely more on their minds. And this car seems to be more appealing in that territory. And I say that because this car is kind of cool. And I think a lot of reasonable people will find it to be kind of like a cool proposition that's appealing. It looks good. I think the Polestar brand name is kind of a cool one with a cool logo. Just the name Polestar is kind of neat. And also, this car is fast. Woo-hoo! It goes, it like goes, goes. It's like a legitimately a fast, exciting car. It handles well, it steers well, it drives well. There's a lot to like. I mean, that's what luxury car buyers are interested in. And I already showed you the technology, which frankly, in my view, is all pretty impressive. Beyond that, the ride is surprisingly comfortable considering how performance oriented this car is. It really rides. fairly softly. It's a little bit harsher than like a really over-the-top comfort focus like a Mercedes EQS SUV kind of thing, but it still feels nice and very compliant, very tolerable sitting in here. Definitely not overly harsh or anything like that. I also surprisingly really like the steering feel. There's all sorts of drive settings with this car. uh and i have it in like the tightest steering feel and i gotta say it's pretty nice when you steer it immediately changes directions to do pretty much exactly what it is that you want to do not something you typically think about happening from a mid-sized luxury suv handling is a little bit less generous uh there's a little bit more body roll than than You know, you'd want in a performance SUV like a BMW X5 M kind of situation and a little bit more kind of vagueness to the steering once you get going at a higher speed if you're going to hustle around corners. But it really is fast. It steers pretty well, especially at lower speeds on tighter corners. And the handling is definitely OK. I got to say, I'm actually pretty surprised at how nice and kind of fun this is to drive. And it really goes along with the price point and the sort of general feel of this car. I like the minimalism. I like the tech I think there's a lot of good stuff here. With that said, the interior is not the most high quality or beautiful, I would say. Our friend, the BMW iX, which a lot of people decry for the way it looks and reasonably so, that actually has a beautiful interior with some really, really high quality stuff. And this car with its minimalist interior and sort of more plastics and more cloth as opposed to leather and... It's definitely not quite at that same level, although it is very nice in here. Really, I think this is actually a really competent car. It's fast, it's relatively fun to drive, surprisingly so. With tight steering and handling, the ride quality is pretty good. The tech is excellent. You do have to get used to a lot of your controls being, you know, in this infotainment system. But overall, I think this car is great to drive. Does it feel like an $84,000 car? Actually, yeah, I think it does. I think what buyers will have to decide is whether they think that Polestar is an $84,000 brand. When you could have Mercedes-Benz, you could have Porsche, you could have Tesla, Rivian, which have both kind of started to prove their luxury chops. Is Polestar at that level considered? Considering basically their only car to date has been the Polestar 2, which is sort of an affordable little sedan, is this a real luxury brand that deserves consideration at that price point? I think from the perspective of the vehicle itself, Polestar has kind of pulled it off, but that doesn't necessarily mean that people will reward them with their hard-earned money unless the brand feels right, too. And so that's... The new Polestar 3. Like other Polestar models, this one is cool. The design is simple, the interior is minimalist, the name is short and futuristic. And frankly, it's a pretty good car too, with excellent performance and good tech. And now it's time to give the Polestar 3 a Doug score. And the Doug score is here, 65 out of 100, putting the Polestar 3 here against rivals, tying the BMW iX and just behind the Genesis GV60, but a few points back from the Model Y performance. I actually was surprised by the Polestar 3. It was better than I expected. It looks nice. Tech is good. It rides well. It doesn't have any glaring flaws, but The Model Y remains the juggernaut in this segment, combining many great benefits into a surprisingly affordable package. With that said, there are a few compelling reasons to pick the Polestar 3 over the Model Y, including better styling, some better tech, and more interior space. But to me, it'll only be more compelling if Polestar offers some significant deals on pricing.