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Polestar wants you to buy and unlock your car with your phone
Add Polestar to the ranks of automotive brands that are basing their car experiences around your phone. The company has launched a Polestar Explore app for Android and iOS as part of a larger strategy to handle virtually everything from your phone. You can read about the Polestar 2, configure it, pre-order it and eventually buy or subscribe to it without having to visit a website or (gasp) show up at a retail location. And when your phone can also serve as a key, you're effectively set -- you might not need physical interactions besides tapping on your phone's glass or grabbing your car's door handle.
Polestar will reveal its first all-electric car on February 27th
Polestar was hyping up its first all-electric car even before its first car of any kind was ready, but now it's finally prepared to show its hand. The company has announced that it's revealing the Polestar 2 through a live online event on February 27th at 7AM Eastern. Sorry, that means no in-person looks -- it's ostensibly to "eliminate the environmental impact" of flying people in from all over the planet, which wouldn't jive with a car that's all about eco-friendliness.
Polestar wants to change almost everything about how you own a car
Two older gentlemen walk up the stairs of the Polestar booth at Pebble Beach. "What is this?" one asks the other as they marvel at the design. An employee walks up and explains that the Polestar 1 is the automaker's first car. A hybrid that'll be the last vehicle the company builds with a gas engine. They take photos and continue to chat with the representative. I watch it happen again and again. People unaware of the car and company stopping by to look at a very beautiful car. It's great for Polestar for people to learn about its vehicle at an event, but it's also a problem.
Volvo's all-electric Polestar 2 will go up against the Model 3
Now that Polestar's first car (and its only hybrid car) is out the door, what's it going to do for the purely electric follow-up? Give Tesla's Model 3 a run for the money, apparently. Chief operating officer Jonathan Goodman told Autocar in a recent interview that the Polestar 2 would have the kind of performance and pricing that might have some Model 3 buyers reconsidering their life choices. The upcoming EV would cost between £30,000 to £50,000 (about $39,400 to $65,700) with as much as 400 brake horsepower and a 350-mile range. And that last figure is for the starter model -- you wouldn't have to pay a premium for long-distance driving like you do for its Tesla rival.
