Fleet World Fleet: Polestar 2
- 21 April 2026
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Nat Barnes reports back on our Polestar 2 long-termer. Polestar 2 Long Range Single Motor List price (BiK): £49,160 (4%) Range: 379 miles Test range: 330 miles Claimed
Nat Barnes reports back on our Polestar 2 long-termer.
Polestar 2 Long Range Single Motor
List price (BiK): £49,160 (4%) Range: 379 miles Test range: 330 miles Claimed efficiency: 3.6mpkWh Test efficiency: 3.4mpkWh
Report 7:
How much do you like music?
Or perhaps the question should be, how much do you like listening to music and, more specifically, listening to it when you’re in the car. Not so long ago, my answer to that question would have been all the time, though now I tend to listen to podcasts a lot on longer journeys.
Every time I climb behind the wheel of my Polestar 2, I’m reminded that my test car has the optional £1,800 Bowers and Wilkins stereo by the cute, cone-shaped miniature speaker on top of the dashboard. Premium audio equipment has become a major differentiator for premium cars in recent years, and Bowers and Wilkins are one of the best.
I first came across Bowers and Wilkins due to the company’s association with Jaguar Land Rover back in 2007. In fact, as part of that association, we even visited one of the firm’s sound lounges in New York during the auto show, for it to demonstrate its in-home hi-fi systems and also to explain some of the challenges of in-car systems.
Premium audio systems have become big business for car brands in recent years and, being a natural born cynic, I’ve always been inclined to wonder if they’re really worth the cost – the system in my Polestar 2 is £1,800 after all (though you do get some of that back at resale time).
So, I started having a bit of a play around with the Polestar and listening to some familiar – and challenging – tracks. In fairness, I had experienced a similar B&W system in the Volvo EX90 not so long ago, but I delved into the Polestar’s menus where you can switch the sound itself between studio, surround and room, with then further choices for a concert hall or a jazz club. You can also adapt the speakers just for the driver, the front seats or the whole car – and yes, it does make a difference.
My first thought would have been to set it and then leave it on one preference, but if you’re regularly switching between music and spoken word podcasts, then your needs change depending on how you want the sound delivered. My ears are nowhere near as sensitive as others, but it’s easy even for relative audio buffoons like me to hear the different type of sound between the different settings.
My trick was to play a very familiar song – in my case a Peter Gabriel track with a tricky level of bass – and where you really get blown away is when you hear elements within the song that you haven’t heard before. It really is that good.
In short, £1,800 is still a lot to pay for an upgraded car stereo, but your ears will definitely thank you.
Report 6:
It’s funny how it’s easy to become obsessed by tiny things in cars. A rattle here, an annoying rough edge of a plastic moulding there.
For me in the Polestar 2, I’ve developed a rather unhealthy relationship with the efficiency readout. I’m afraid it won’t ever not bug me that it’s in kWh/100mls rather than the more traditional mls/kWh, but it also means getting your head round the fact that a lower number is better.
Rather like the European metric figures for ICE vehicles, it’s a measure of consumption not efficiency, whereas with mpg and mls/kWh, you want the figure to be as high as possible. Like queuing, apologising and unhealthy tinned meat products, it’s just another thing that we do better than our friends across the Channel.
But as the ambient temperature has improved, so I’ve seen my consumption on the dash readout dropping. Admittedly, in the grand scheme of things, it’s really not much, but I’ve started to notice every time it drops a decimal point. So, first I was happy when it dropped into the 20s at 29.9kWh/100mls as stated previously and now I’m already at 29.6. Every little helps, as they say.
Also falling into the ‘I need to get a life’ category is something else I noticed after the long-awaited visit to the car wash. I tend to leave the regenerative braking set to maximum, making one-pedal driving possible for the majority of the time. The result that I don’t have to rely on the friction brakes as much as a normal ICE car means a noticeable lack of brake dust.
When I look around at many other cars over the winter, their front wheels are coated black, but not those on the Polestar – another benefit of running an EV, I suppose.
Report 5:
Cardinham is a small village in Cornwall. I’ve never been there, but I think I know how it feels to be a resident. That’s because, at the time of writing, Cardinham has endured 50 consecutive days of rain. The last time they had a dry day, there was a 2025 calendar still on the wall.
In my last report on the Polestar 2, I commented about the level of road grime and needing to give it a wash on the next dry-weather day – I’m still waiting. As has been well-reported, the level of rain following the cold snap has also seen many roads deteriorate, and the roads in and around Marlow are no different. In some places, it seems like the entire road surface has failed – presumably from a lack of proper repairs or investment.
While the Polestar is running on standard 19-inch wheels (20s are available as an option), I’m still driving like a slalom skier down the road to avoid the potholes. Avoiding the more general road imperfections is less easy however and while the Polestar’s ride is firm, it’s not too uncomfortable, but a degree of road noise remains audible, especially from the rear.
While the rain continues, one saving grave is that the ambient temperature has risen – as has the Polestar 2’s range and my fully charged range is now back up to 330 miles. Thankfully, that was enough over half term for me and my son’s regular trip to Centre Parcs and back.
That was just as well as I’ve mentioned in previous reports about Centre Parcs’ robust commitments to EV charging, although on our visit to Elveden in Norfolk, the ones nearest our accommodation appeared to be already bagged, which was a shame. Still, we returned home after our trip with more than 20% charge left, so I was more than happy to charge up cheaper there.
This trips also saw me fill up the Polestar’s boot, taking advantage of its hatchback practicality (how do we take so much stuff for four days?), as mentioned in the last report. The only downside was tackling the M25 for both our outbound and return trips, which was so bad that Waze diverted us away from it as much as possible due to heavy traffic.
That made for slow going but, as ever with EVs, the silver lining for that cloud was that my efficiency reached 29.9kWh/100mls, the first time I’ve seen it drop below 30kWh/100mls. In the more traditional metric, that’s the equivalent of 3.34mpkWh, inching ever closer to the claimed figure of 3.63mpkWh. After the chilly winter we’ve had, I reckon that’s a pretty respectable average of my time with the car so far. It’ll be interesting to see if that improves further.
Report 4:
Ah, the joyous two hundred weeks of January… The cold, the wet and the seemingly never-ending darkness of short days.
Still, I kicked off 2026 meeting a friend for a long walk and in turn helping out his teenage daughter. She’s keen to extend her musical knowledge and my CD collection was sitting boxed up in the loft and going unloved as everything has long since been transferred digitally.
That meant once again taking advantage of the Polestar 2’s hatchback body and, four storage boxes of CDs later, I had more storage space and my friend had a happy teenager – a win for both parties. It did underline the flexibility of the 2’s interior space though and how I would never personally consider owning a saloon car.
One good thing is that even with the rear seats lowered, there was no additional road noise as is often the case with a hatchback; but that’s probably just as well, as even with the seats up, the Polestar 2 definitely could do with a little more soundproofing at the rear.
One other niggle – and indeed a pet peeve of many of the latest generation of EVs from all manufacturers – is the lack of a rear wiper. Fair enough, yes, I do use the rear camera when reversing for 95% of manoeuvres, but its low position by the rear number plate does mean it gets dirty and therefore doesn’t always offer a clear view out, which is frustrating. This isn’t just aimed at Polestar, but why a lot of modern EVs do without a rear wiper is a total mystery to me. Answers on a postcard please.
And talking of getting dirty, this wintry weather isn’t ideal either. The one good thing is that the Polestar 2’s Vapour paintwork seems to hide the effects of the dirt and road grime quite well. Well, I thought it did. Right up until last week that is, when it seems to have gone from slightly grubby to properly filthy. A trip to the car wash definitely needs to be scheduled in for a dry weather day.
As, incidentally, does a software update. It keeps popping up on the central touchscreen and I keep ignoring it. Being a technophobe, I’m slightly paranoid that it might have an effect on the car – although it’s only an hour and a half and I can schedule it overnight when I know I won’t need the car, so that’s also on my to-do list. And yes, I know I’m being paranoid, but as you’ll note from the opening comment and me still having hung onto my CDs (and vinyl), I don’t ever feel the need to rush into these things…
Report 3:
The festive period meant a lot of miles in the Polestar 2 and opened my eyes a little to the differences in charging costs.
It’s a weird anomaly of EVs that the worse and slower-moving traffic you have on a journey, the surprising improving effect it can have on the average mls/kWh efficiency of your car. It was no different in the Polestar 2.
Driving on the M25 is nobody’s idea of fun, especially at Christmas, but it was unavoidable. The one saving grace was that the slower speeds due to the heavier traffic meant my average efficiency noticeably went up and retained my usual 330-mile range. In fact, during the sudden temperature drop before Christmas I’d certainly noticed a drop in range unless I used pre-conditioning before my journey. Plus of course, that pre-conditioning meant I wasn’t using up valuable battery power warming the cabin.
However, when driving along I’m happy to endure a degree of discomfort to go without the heater in favour of the heater seats and steering wheel to save my range. But that doesn’t entirely make up for the colder overall cabin temperature and now and again, I did have to succumb to warming the cabin with the heater for a quick blast on a couple of occasions.
And then of course, there was the fact that I was charging away from home. A full charge of the Polestar’s 82kWh battery on a smart EV tariff such as Intelligent Octopus Go at 7p/kWh would equate to £5.74. However, my parents don’t have an EV so are on a standard tariff and I had to rely on charging via a granny cable. At the Standard Variable Tariff (which went up to 27.69p/kWh on 1 January incidentally), that same charge would be £22.71. Quite some difference.
However, the news gets worse if you have to charge at a public charger. There were 22kW ChargePoint chargers at my Boxing Day walk and I thought about possibly topping up at them for my return journey. Some quick mental maths for my remaining range meant I didn’t actually have to, but at 60p/kWh that same full charge described above would be £49.20!
Yes, that’s an unrealistic option given that few people do a full charge at a public charger, but it underlines the importance of charging at home – even at the standard rate. And, after Christmas, I guess that we all need to help to make whatever savings we can make wherever we can get them…
Report 2:
It was a bit of a baptism of fire for the Polestar 2.
No sooner had it arrived on my drive, than I was loading it up for a work event in Warwick. With its notchback looks, it’s sometimes easy to forget that the 2 is a hatch rather than a saloon. And, while the lack of a rear wiper is a constant personal bugbear among many of the latest EVs (Hyundai even going so far as adding one later for the 5), the practicality of a hatch will always be my favoured choice.
And with that, it meant the seats were folded down, a long display board together with plenty of other materials were lobbed inside and off I went. I wasn’t challenging its ultimate load capacity, but the board was long and wide and certainly a smaller car may not have coped.
That time at the wheel on the motorway had me plugged in to Apple CarPlay and enjoying the Bowers and Wilkins stereo, but also noticing what I wasn’t noticing.
If that sounds like a weird statement, just bear with me. In my last report, I touched on the infotainment system and the digital driver display. And while many of the latest generation of EVs get carried away with personalised display options and how it looks, it’s one thing you really notice about the Polestar.
White/ light grey and orange highlights on a black background make them really simple to see on the move with a clear, simple layout. It sounds a stupid thing to highlight, but it’s refreshingly simple and you’d be surprised how many other firms get this so wrong. It’s another reason why a fellow journalist agreed with me only recently how well the Polestar 2 has retained its appeal despite its age.
Not that the 2 is perfect mind you. While I love the personalisation options for the drivetrain as outlined in my previous report, there are still a few niggles. I can just about forgive the need to plug in my phone to access Apple CarPlay, but it seems odd that you can’t adapt the trip computer efficiency readout to show mls/kWh only the less commonly used kWh/100mls. It’s a simple enough calculation, but still a frustration.
However, I am a convert for the pre-conditioning. A total game-changer for the recent icy mornings, but also for clearing any condensation on the inside of the windscreen too and warming up the cabin beforehand. The only downside there is the fault of yours truly forgetting to plug it in the night before.
First Report:
If a week is said to be a long time in politics, then five years is a veritable lifetime in the new car world.
That’s how long it’s been since the Polestar 2 first arrived on UK roads. Five years is still no short amount of time, especially so when some of the newcomer Chinese brands are facelifting their cars after less than two years on occasion.
Thankfully, the Polestar 2 received a nip and tuck of its own with a host of changes earlier this year, largely under the skin, as well as a new standard range 70kWh version to join this 82kWh Long Range model. Included in those changes were an upgraded processor chip for the infotainment and touchscreen and also a new Bowers & Wilkins audio system (an £1800 option also fitted to my car that I’ll be going into more detail in due course).
Those updates have helped to keep the 2 looking fresh though to my eyes, especially when it’s sitting alongside the latest 3 and 4 in those uber-trendy Polestar Spaces retailers. The 2’s slightly squared-off shape might at first feel slightly old school, but I think it’s barely aged at all and still stands out from the crowd in a busy car park (even though you’re now more likely to see other 2s as well). The only items showing their age on the outside are the proud, sticking-out door handles, when many modern EVs have gone for flush electronic versions instead.
That said, there’s no doubting that the 2 is a firm fleet favourite. In those past five years of being on sale, an incredible 80% of all 2s sold have been to fleets and businesses. And the latest spotlight on the brand generally with the new 3 and 4 is probably only likely to keep that strong too.
It’s admittedly been some time since I sat inside a 2, but while the portrait-style central infotainment screen looks basic at first glance compared to some of the latest all-singing-and-dancing offerings, the reality is that it’s refreshingly intuitive. I also love the fact that you can set individual settings not just for the regenerative braking, but also the steering weight and smaller factors like the seat heaters temperatures and whether you want the car to creep like a traditional automatic or tilt the mirrors when reversing. The reality is that most owners are likely to set these to their liking and then leave it, but for me it’s a neat addition – it shows someone has thought about the driver’s needs.
That’s not to say the 2 isn’t without some idiosyncrasies, mind you. The interior lighting wasn’t operating when opening the doors when the car got delivered, but rather oddly it’s not altered via the lighting menu on the screen, but by a roof-mounted button that you have to press and hold. Likewise, the ability to set the pre-conditioning isn’t in the charging menu, but on the heating and ventilation screen, which seems the wrong location to me.
What was also odd was how I solved these problems – via the on-screen digital handbook. Usually I’d rather run across a Lego-strewn floor in bare feet than use a digital handbook, but this one works well and, crucially, has a search function. That small addition has made me a convert. Rather than swearing and cursing as I went through the indexed menus, the search immediately bought up the required page and I could solve the problem. Pay attention other car makers – whoever designed that search button deserves a medal.
We’ll see if any other medals will be handed out over the next six months.
