Cargo capacity is at a premium inside the car, with only 15.5 cubic feet of storage space, unless you fold the rear seats down. That said, if you are looking for groceries instead of a hot ass, then this might not be the EV for you. You can instead consider the Hyundai Kona Electric or Kia Niro EV, as this EV is definitely not an electric SUV.
The Polestar 2 was an explosion to drive through the turns and turns of CA-35. Due to the direct access of the electric motors to torque, a lightning bolt from the accelerator pedal at the top of a curve blew me out faster than when I entered. That rapid acceleration was seen in normal city driving, both in the relative bustle of midnight in downtown San Francisco and the sleepy, swelling spread of suburban Los Gatos. The single-pedal driving system proved to be useful in light city traffic, allowing me to automatically slow down to a crawl by simply lifting my foot off the gas. That feature can be disabled if you prefer a two-pedal driving experience. I had no trouble stopping with traffic, even in city streets, multi-lane boulevards or on highways. Especially by highway. It has easily kept pace with the flow of traffic – even if this stream may have exceeded the local speed limit.
Polestar / Beadyeye
Your biggest concern will be to make the lane next to you clear as you try to pass, as the Polestar 2’s blind spots are large enough to hide a MAC truck inside. The A-pillars are wide, as are B-pillars. Plus, the side mirrors are minimized to lower the drag coefficient, but they only give you a small glimpse of what’s in the lane next to you. I would like to take the reduced range as it means I can look better at the traffic around me from larger mirrors.
The centerpiece of the Polestar 2 is the car’s fancy center console. It replaces just about every button, dial and switch with an 11-inch screen that has one of the first versions of Android Automotive OS available to third parties. In addition to the window and mirror controls, door locks and interlocking, everything is run by what looks like an iPad Pro set in portrait mode and placed on the front of the dash. I have never been to much of these types of checks. The idea of chasing through multiple submenus on a glorious tablet while navigating peak traffic has always given me the heebie-jeebies, but the AAOS system is remarkably simple and intuitive. I never typed more than a few times to get to the control I was looking for.
Polestar / Beadyeye
That is not to say that there is no learning curve. I spent 10 minutes in 98 degree weather trying to turn on the A / C for the first time, but then the process took seconds. And to be honest, I just could not have been more stubborn and said, “Hey Google, turn on the air conditioning and set the temperature to 68 degrees.” Because that works too and it’s pretty cool.
Typically when you connect your smartphone to the infotainment system of your car, it simply reflects the functionality of the phone. AAOS, on the other hand, is a standalone system that means you do not have to physically plug in your phone – although you do need a Bluetooth connection to make calls and send texts.
Instead, simply connect the infotainment to your Google Account. Doing so allows you to enable a deeper degree of integration, allowing drivers to take advantage of their preferred capabilities when dealing with Maps for navigation, Google Play for media or Assistant for voice assistance. What’s more, according to the Polestar press kit, if you already have a Google Home, congratulations, your Google account already has a lot of recordings of your voice patterns, so the infotainment system will make you more clearly understand the get-go.
“From a security standpoint, similar things we have on the phone are things that also exist in the car,” Haris Ramic, Google product leader for Android Automotive, told Engadget. “For example, you can set it up, if you secure your account, it will be encrypted. En [to access that encrypted data] you have to enter a PIN in the car or sometimes do something on the phone [such as 2-factor authentication] to open it up. When the car shuts down, the user partitions, which is the area where all user information is stored, are also encrypted. “
What’s more, Google is wary of which companies will access their new OS APIs. “Obviously the goal is not just to focus on big companies, because innovation can come from everywhere. We do not want to provide a set of APIs that anyone can use, “Ramic continued.” But in part the reason we go so slowly, instead of just opening everything up and saying that everyone can develop everything. they want. We focus on areas where we know there is a lot of consumer value. “
Signing up for the infotainment system is not required, remember, it will just work without your credentials, just not with the same degree of personalization (and exposure to data privacy) as you did. During my test drive, I used a generic account provided by Polestar and paired my phone via Bluetooth. So even though it would not play songs from my Google Music account, I still had easy access to Maps, Assistant and Spotify.
Polestar / Beadyeye
Assistant was surprisingly efficient and intelligent during the four-plus hours I had to play with. I do not need to enter destinations manually, simply told Assistant where I wanted to go and the system automatically generates a route. This was way, wei easier than the navigation experience we saw in January with the Cooper SE. Assistant was generally disturbed by background noise, and reacted quickly to the sounds coming from the 16-speaker Polestar Harmon Kardon stereo system and was really only disturbed when I tried to understand while I was commanding with the windows at freeway speeds shook.
It returned some bad results when I asked it to play certain bands. For example, when I was asked to play The Coup, Spotify loaded “In the Coupe” with Curren $ y and Harry Fraud instead, or when I requested Chika, I got Chica. And yet, when I asked Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the system correctly loaded “Return to Zero” without breathing. Whether that’s a lack of Assistant’s ability to parse language or just not having Spotify about those artists in their catalog, is something I could not distinguish in the few hours I had the car. But it definitely took me a long time to get access to my existing Google Music playlists.
One issue I ran into was the fact that streaming media required a 4G / LTE connection and when I made my way through the hills of Santa Cruz, I often ran into dead zones in service that would cut the music until the signal is restored (does not affect navigation.) This applies to streaming services such as Google Music or Spotify, such as FM and AM radio stations (which are also streamed via an onboard app, because AM radio signals play with EVs.) Fortunately, you can easily get around this issue by making a hard connection between your phone and the system via one of four USB-C ports and directly play media from the phone’s hard drive when you turn it on. do not want to chance. The console also offers a 15w charging plate for phone-compatible phones.
Volvo’s influence (as part owner of the brand) can be seen in the car’s wide array of safety and driver features. It will have Level 2 ADAS, namely Pilot Assist (already deployed in Volvo models such as the V60 and XC90) – it offers acceleration, braking and steering up to 81 mph; blind spot, rear crash, and cross-traffic warnings; a lane assistance, accident prevention and prevention. It even keeps the driver an eye to make sure they stay focused on the road. That is not to say that it has cameras that control the driver or whatever, the attention monitor is based on contact on the steering wheel. One unique safety feature of the Polestar 2 is its airbags on the inside. These are mounted on opposite sides of the center console and are designed to protect both driver and passenger from protecting their femurs against the console or crashing into each other in the event that the car hits the side.
