2025 Polestar 3 First Test: 3’s Company Is … Porsche?

Polestar as an automotive brand started life as Volvo’s performance halo, like BMW’s M or Mercedes’ AMG. Now a full-fledged marque of its own, it’s swinging for the fences and setting impressive targets. Like claiming it aimed to make the 2025 Polestar 3 SUV drive as well as a Porsche Cayenne. In that context, we wondered which emoji would our first test of a top-performing Polestar 3 with the Performance package inspire: 😳 or 🙄?

On the face of it, imagining the Polestar 3 sharing a garage with a Porsche Cayenne and perhaps the closer-in-price-and-mission Macan EV sounds a little like a slightly awkward Jack Tripper bunking with hotties Chrissy Snow and Janet Wood in the farcical late-’70s sitcom Three’s Company. There’s no way this Jack could really tango with either of those, right? Then you spend a week driving and testing this top-of-the-line 2025 Polestar 3 and discover … it’s kind of a player.

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Straight Performance

Right off the bat, we love how easy it is to access the Polestar 3’s full power—no nuclear-code-arming sequence of buttons, simply touch the always-present Performance button at the bottom of the screen, then hold the brake, floor the accelerator, release the brake, and leave the line quicker than Stanley Roper jumping to a conclusion. Acceleration ramps up less violently than in some performance EVs before going steeply linear for about 3 seconds and then tapering slightly. Bonus: There’s no goofy wah-wah-pedal thrumming or other synthetic nonsense, and you can actually hear the motor working. The resulting 0–60 time of 3.8 seconds ranks just ahead of size- and price-rivals like the BMW iX xDrive50 (4.0 seconds), Mercedes-Benz EQE500 4Matic (4.3), and Audi Q8 E-Tron (5.2), but it lags the smaller and cheaper Tesla Model Y Performance Dual Motor (3.5).

How does it compare to the Porsche bogeys? A Polestar 3 Launch Edition Pilot Plus Performance budget buys a V-6 Cayenne, which portends a 5.1-second time for the base model, or 4.3 seconds if you can swing an E-Hybrid ($99,195 to start). Shaving that last 0.6 second off requires a V-8—our last GTS matched the Polestar at 3.8 seconds, at a budget-busting $126,895. The Macan EV is smaller in every dimension, but even here, the price of outrunning a Polestar 3 is likely to be substantial. We haven’t tested any yet, but the similarly priced 4S model is expected to carry a 35-percent weight-to-power penalty relative to the Polestar, so we’re expecting 5.1-second performance, while ponying up $107,295 for the “Turbo” model should get you into mid-to-low 3s.

Stopping is equally impressive, with a best halt from 60 mph in 103 feet, and six stops varying by only 5 feet. Even more impressive, the 60–0 segment of a 100-mph stop was shorter still. Clearly these “Swedish Gold” Brembos are highly tolerant of heat. Fade was never an issue and pedal travel is short and braking easily modulated. You hear a throbbing as the brakes work on these severe stops, but we’d so much rather listen to componentry working than synthetic noise. Oh, and that 100–0-mph stop distance: 289 feet—3 feet shorter than both V-6 Cayennes. Here again we need to spring for a V-8 to beat the Polestar, with the Turbo GT coupe registering a 273-foot stop (Tesla and the aforementioned Germans need between 296 and 334 feet).

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Handling the Curves

These days, rocket-sled dragstrip performance is no big deal, but making a heavy electric car fun to drive on twisty roads is. That’s what Polestar has done, and without resorting to weight-adding, electron-slurping active anti-roll bars. Sure, it leans on its ZF adaptive dampers and dual-chamber air suspension to help manage body motions, but we’re convinced the tech hero is the Polestar 3’s savvy torque-vectoring rear axle.

When an all-wheel-drive performance EV uses permanent-magnet motors at both ends (as most do), the highway range play is to disconnect one axle during constant-speed cruising. Instead of a single disconnect ahead of the differential input, Polestar fits heavier-duty clutches on each axle shaft. So, in a turn, fully engaging the outside clutch while feathering the inside one actively yaws the car around the turn. This allows the wider rear (295/35) tires to provide meaningful cornering assistance to the slimmer (265/40) fronts, greatly reducing any sense of understeer at the helm.

Here the objective numbers break Porsche’s way, with our 3’s impressive skidpad grip of 0.95 g falling shy of the base (and 812-pounds-lighter) V-6 Cayenne’s 1.02 g. But it still grips harder than the iX, EQE500, Q8, and Tesla (0.83, 0.87, 0.92, and 0.91g). Figure-eight results track similarly, with that lightweight base Cayenne a half-second ahead of our hero (both on Pirelli P Zero Corsas), and the German competitors and Tesla trailing. Note that for these tests we touched the “car” icon, and from the Settings menu engaged “Sport ESC,” which is mostly off and allows moderate drifting. Here, inveterate mode-tinkerers can also tailor steering feel (between light, standard, firm) and suspension feel (standard, nimble, firm), although we found the differences so subtle we doubt most owners will bother. On the positive side, no mode is at all objectionable.

Here, the suspension’s superb body motion control gets a lot of credit, preventing most pitch, dive, and roll as we transition on and off the pedals and swing the wheel around. Senior testing editor Matt Chudzinski was amazed by how the breezy, responsive steering helped make the front end feel light, causing him to liken this not to a Cayenne, but to a 911(!). “There is just an ease that the 911 projects through a turn, and this Polestar 3 mimics that and doesn't feel at all like a 5,700-pound wagon. The Polestar AWD programming is so smart, and the nannies never ruin the fun.”

These same positive impressions translate faithfully to driving on hilly, twisty backroads. Here the feeling may have been less 911 and more Panamera, but the sensation is still one of delightfully buttoned-down body without the muscle-bound sensation of head-toss and body-jiggle that come from achieving this end via stiff springs and anti-roll bars.

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How Is It To Live With?

Certain safety-first aspects of the Polestar betray its Volvo heritage, such as slowing from the cruise control set speed for a very gentle bend on a freeway, or loud warnings about “Repeated lane-departure interventions—pay attention!” while repeatedly peeking around a slow-moving garbage truck on a two-lane road (couldn’t a forward-facing camera figure out that we ARE paying attention?).

We were also disappointed by the highway pilot assist system, which theoretically provides both lane-centering and lane-change assistance, but in practice kept shutting itself off for unclear reasons and refusing to resume until the next vehicle restart. When it was on, we were never able to entice it to change lanes. The adaptive cruise following distance is not adjustable and is set way too far (safety!), and the cancel/resume logic is terrible; you press down on the shift lever both to set the cruise speed and to cancel it. Pressing it down twice resumes it, but if you get the timing slightly wrong, you’ve just set a new, wrong speed.

Otherwise, we mostly love the 2025 Polestar 3, from the five seat-massage options at three intensity levels each to the astounding Bowers & Wilkins Dolby Atmos sound system’s fidelity and the adjustability of the one-pedal driving modes. The rear seat is posh and comfortable (if a tad too close to the high floor) and the roomy rear cargo compartment’s floor can be folded as a partition featuring three handy bag hooks. There’s even a button that raises or lowers the rear suspension for easier loading/unloading.

The screens seem logically organized with a user-friendly interface and decent options for useful information to display. The head-up display is visible with polarized glasses and it quickly informs the driver what the unmarked steering-wheel switches do. The sheetmetal was bent into a darned good-looking design, too, and though Polestar markets it as an SUV, the 3's overall height is low enough for sub-6-footers to hand wash the entire roof.

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Is It a Good EV?

Boasting 107 kWh of usable battery capacity—more than the Audi, BMW, or Mercedes competitors or the Macan EV carry—its EPA mpg-e ratings as well as its MotorTrend Road-Trip Range all trail these competitors. Sticky, grippy tires probably deserve most of the blame. Older-style 400-volt architecture also limits charging speeds to a rated 250 kW, but our two DC fast-charging sessions peaked at 192 kW, adding fewer cumulative miles than these competitors for any given length of time. And the 800-volt Macan will surely charge faster and travel farther than any of these EVs. So maybe don’t choose the Polestar to run in the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Trophy Dash.

Bottom Line

At the end of our week in the 2025 Polestar 3 Launch Edition, we reckoned that if our garage had this electric successor to the Volvo V70R sandwiched between a Cayenne and a Macan EV, the Polestar could expect to get every bit as much exercise as either Porsche.