It’s not that the Polestar cars are bad. They’re subtle and understated. Unfortunately, subtle and understated isn’t going to work in a universe where your competition is launching their electric sports cars into space. Enter the Polestar 6. If this car looks familiar to you, it’s because the Polestar 6 is the name given to the Polestar O2, a concept that Polestar revealed in Los Angeles back in March. The vehicle presented here looks to be the same as it was back then. Look closely and you’ll even see a script on the side that says Polestar 02. It still looks rather fantastic with its plus sign wheels, sculpted, but not overdone bodywork, and sloping roofline. While the car itself appears to still be in concept form, we are given some details about what’s under that sleek hardtop convertible skin.
Polestar says that the vehicle will be built on the company’s bonded aluminum platform, which is the same platform that underpins the Polestar 5. That also means an 800-Volt, dual-motor all-wheel drive powertrain that was announced for the Polestar 5 back in June. Those dual motors offer an up to 884 hp and 663 lb-ft torque punch. That translates to a 60 mph acceleration time of just 3.2 seconds and a top speed of 155 mph. And of course, you get to do that with the wind blowing through your hair.
Polestar is holding further details close to the chest for now. But it does say that there will be 500 units of a special edition produced. The Polestar 6 LA Concept edition will get the sky blue exterior of the Polestar O2 concept, those sweet 21-inch wheels, and a light leather interior. Pricing hasn’t been revealed, but Polestar says that more information will become available closer to the vehicle’s 2026 launch.
If you’re going to Monterey Car Week in California this week, you’ll be able to see the Polestar O2 concept car. It’ll be at Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and ‘The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering’ August 18 through 21.
[Image credits: Polestar]
A tiny sports car sized like a Lotus 11 and streamlined to a Cd value around the low 0.1X range could easily maintain 70-80 mph highway speeds on only 70-80 Wh/mile, similarly to an Aptera, but with less weight and frontal area and not as eccentric as the Aptera. Guess what that does to the amount of battery mass and cost? You’d only need 120 horsepower to compete regarding acceleration with cars like the Porsche Cayman if you had the mass around 500 kg, but current technology could easily allow 300+ horsepower in such a machine and the ability to make use of it on a regular basis without impacting reliability. You’d have competitive range in normal driving conditions to the standard Tesa 3s and Chevy Volts with only a 15-20 kWh pack.
If I had the money, I’d try to build and sell such things. It is what today’s technology allows and enthusiasts are being robbed by such a thing not being available. We don’t need “sports cars” with heated/air conditioned leather seats, satellite navigation, electronic armrests, and all of this other weight-adding profit-laden crap. Give us simple. Take Colin Chapmen’s advice. Simplify and add lightnesss. THEN apply that advice to wind loading too, so you can careen down the highway at 150 mph on only 80 horsepower.
Load reduction not only makes inexpensive long-range EVs with small battery packs a possibility, it also offers the possibility for inexpensive supercar performance to be available in a package that has an overall low lifetime operating cost. But if your $25,000 EV can perform in a straight line like an $70,000 Corvette or $700,000 Ferrari and lose them both in the twisties, how does the industry continue to justify the $70,000 price tag for the Corvette or an $700,000 price tag for the Ferrari? Nice interiors? Heated leather seats? Infotainment systems? All the crap that makes the car slower and defeats the purpose of a sports car? GM faced a conundrum with the Pontiac Fiero Turbo more than 30 years ago, as it was going to sell for cheaper than, while being able to out-perform, the more expensive Corvette of the time. Rather then put that out there, likely knowing consumers would buy it instead of the Corvette, GM killed it. It was a fluke that the Fiero Turbo reached that stage of development in the first place.
The Miata is about the best offering available from a mainstream manufacturer, yet Mazda can’t even come up with the desire to shove the Skyactive 3.0L inline-6 into it and make a coupe version with much lower drag coefficient than the existing offering. The Miata could be a 200 mph capable car that got 50+ EPA HWY MPG for not a lot of added cost if the engineers were allowed the free reign to do it and engineers that had such a function over form vision were hired in the first place. But somehow, that’s not “marketable”.
Thus, the auto industry isn’t getting any of my money on their new car offerings. In fact, given the state of today’s auto industry, I hope it crashes and burns under the crushing red tape it has lobbied into place in effort to keep any budding competition at bay. Then maybe we’ll be able to have cheap fun cars commensurate with the level of technology we have today.
And not everything needs to be built to fit the “people of Walmart” types either.
Most humans don’t have money to buy much of anything. That is also the problem. The reason cheap new cars don’t sell is because they are still priced above the means of most people. Your average new car buyer in the US has an individual income roughly in the 80th percentile, according to a 2015 NADA survey, and that’s for all new cars, including your stripper Nissan Versas and Mitsubishi Mirages. Most Americans don’t even have $500 in savings set aside for an emergency because they live paycheck to paycheck.
It is not coincidental that US automakers and US government are working together to keep increasing safety regulations; it is successfully keeping $4,000-10,000 new cars from China out of the U.S. altogether, cars that might have passed the regulations of 20 years ago, and is also increasing vehicle mass and bloat(and thus profit margin per unit once more features are added in).
The upper 20% are driving the new car market in the U.S., and it shows by the types and prices of new vehicles being bought. Those who are priced out of the new car market have to buy used, and the vehicles retaining the most value are also telling of what the poors actually want in a car. Cars like the Toyota Corolla/Camry, Honda Civic/Accord, small 4-cylinder pickup trucks like the Maverick, are among the best at warding off depreciation, precisely because they are in demand by those to whom factors such as overall operating cost, reliability, fuel efficiency, practicality, ect are the key concerns. Luxury feature-laden gas-guzzling vehicles that are selling well when new, are seeing their values drop off a cliff, for the same reason.
Sorry, yet another awkwardly proportioned electric car, trying to get you to overlook how soulless its driving experience is by overcompensating with straight line acceleration. Except this time its a convertible!
Seriously, there are a dozen startups I would have believed this came from.
I don’t know how “startup” is an insult when it comes to a car, but here’s a tip – the “soul” in a driving experience isn’t found in the dinosaur juice.
EV startups are usually a con, but they’ve forced Polestar, a subsidiary of an established company that is aware of the consequences of overpromising and underengineering, to play the same game because you can’t market a reasonable electric car when there’s 50 insane ones “about to be released”. They need this monstrosity if they want to sell their sensible electric sport saloons by association.
I always appreciate the lack of gaudy scoops and fake vents that lead nowhere, so I hope that each vent and scoop is functional and has a real purpose. If not, my interest in and opinion of this car will evaporate. I’m already not thrilled by the black areas in the corners of the bumper in front of the wheels.
An electric convertible is long overdue. Even an expensive one.
I’ve been waiting for an affordable electric convertible, preferably in an aluminum bodied car. This isn’t built for me only because I’m sure it’s not in my current price range, but it gets me excited again for what is eventually coming. (It also renews my excitement about my own fledgling business venture, with dreams of being able to affording this by the time it’s actually here.)
If I were going to go EV, these are contenders. Not the roadster, rather the sedans.
I will my opinions about other brands to myself as to not start a lynch mob at my house.
Challenge accepted. The 200 horsepower AC Propulsion TZero with a lithium ion battery pack could do 0-60 mph in 3.6 seconds, and weighed 1,900 lbs. This was not a good looking car, but I bet it was a total riot to drive. Nimble, light, responsive, and with rapid acceleration.
You know what 884 horsepower and a 0-60 mph time of 3.2 seconds tells me? That this Polestar thing is a total lardass. It even looks the part. It’s huge, and it has a length, width, and mass that exceeds that of some midsized SUVs. It looks like one of those XXL fat lady supermodels.
I’m all for fat shaming cars when the manufacturers deserve it after deliberately plumping them up. The cars currently available in the U.S. seem to be an apt reflection of its increasingly overweight population.
Sure the backseat won’t be able to be used by anyone who isn’t small enough to sit comfortably in a newborn’s car seat but that is true of a lot of sports cars.
Isn’t a 155 top speed/ 3.2 sec sprint to 60 pretty bad for a 884 hp sports car? I mean the C8 is doing sub 3’s, and the Tesla Model S/Plaid is doing sub 2’s. Maybe if it’s tossable through the curves, but who knows with all of that added battery weight (at least it should have a low center of gravity).
If I’m spending (presumably) six figures on an 884 hp sports car, I’d expect better.
Agreed the acceleration is sub par, but EVs are going to usher in peak vs sustained HP numbers in a way buyers haven’t had to deal with before. If you have a shop vac, it probably lists a hilarious horsepower number for its motor. And it will truly hit that number, for a fraction of a second in lab testing. Then it’ll crash back down to actually making something less than 2.25, because it’s on a 110 line.
This car will be capable of producing 884HP, in short bursts, before things get too hot, or the battery is just a bit depleted, or whatever. It’s akin to taking your stock car to track day and seeing it overheat constantly, unless you run it at 75%. The manufacturer has pre-selected 75% to protect the components, and that’s why it has acceleration numbers for a 550hp overweight car.
