We see a star: good state of health!
And then suddenly there was Polestar, a kind of supercharged Volvo that stormed the electric car market with bravado. Marcel Hardeman already ‘went on the adventure’ with a Polestar 2 in 2020 and is now almost four years and 80,000 kilometers further. Time for an interim assessment: what is the condition of the battery of this cool car?
Immediately to Tuscany with the Polestar 2
Marcel Hardeman from Eindhoven is what you call an early adopter when it comes to Polestar. “Yes, I am one of the first seventy Dutch people to get into a Polestar 2. I was just looking forward to it at the time and thought the car looked cool,” Marcel reflects. There was something that preceded that. “I’ve driven Ford all my life. Name a Ford model and I’ve driven it. But Ford’s range of fully electric cars wasn’t it for me. The Mustang Mach-E, for example, did not appeal to me. So I left the brand.” And Marcel doesn’t regret that.
Marcel opted for a Polestar 2 with Performance package. “If you switch after all these years, you have to go for it completely. And I think rims, one of the building blocks of the package, are an important aspect of a car. It makes so much difference.”
For example, in 2020 Marcel got into a cool, new, fully electric car from a new brand. And I was immediately able to embark on a journey of discovery. “I went on holiday to Tuscany with my wife, with the Polestar. I felt a bit like I was in the 1980s with an LPG car on holiday to Southern Europe. Just find out where you can refuel! In the end it all turned out well,” says Marcel. He notices that the charging infrastructure has developed very quickly in recent years. “In any case, the Netherlands is a great country for fully electric driving. But the rest of civilized Europe has now also come along, so that is no longer a problem.”
Enjoy driving
Marcel is not an evangelist, but he is a happy EV driver based on the experiences with his Polestar 2, which is four years old and has 80,000 on the clock. “There’s something magical about driving, you generate powerful acceleration so easily, that’s really great. Faster from zero to one hundred than a Porsche 911. But on the other hand, it is also very relaxed to drive. I’m inclined to believe that makes it safer too. One-pedal is also nice. The Performance package of my Polestar 2 has a bunch of gold-plated Brembo brake calipers. Beautiful of course, but I hardly use them,” laughs Marcel.
Nothing has broken at all on Marcel’s Polestar 2 over the past four years and 80,000 km. “What you hear and read a lot is that things did not go completely well with the over-the-air updates and that you still had to go to the Volvo dealer. by car. That happened to me too. But hey, as long as it all works out in the end.” If Marcel had anything more to wish for, it would be a little more freedom. “I would like to have just a little more range than now. That it would reach just above 400, for example. I can’t do that now and that’s not a problem, but it would give me a little more breathing space. It would have been nice if that could also be added over-the-air.” He lives in Eindhoven and when visiting a customer in Hoogeveen or Alkmaar you have to improvise a bit, but oh well.
Residual value and depreciation
Newcomer Polestar was also bought in 2020, when Marcel bought the car, not at ram prices. In this version the car was just 67 grand clean. A high purchase price does not bode well for depreciation. And the uncertainty about the future of EVs doesn’t help either. At one point, when Marcel was at an event where his brand was rolling out new models, he was not really cheering when the sales crew made him a trade-in offer on the spot. “With 35 back for this car it was done. Well. So I want to continue with this for now.”
Marcel is committed to being an exemplary EV driver. Do not drive completely empty, do not fully charge and do not fast charge if not necessary. Yet he has the feeling that the range is already decreasing slightly. “It may also be that I started driving a little less carefully, a little more carelessly and therefore perhaps a little more uneconomically.” Let’s do some testing. This happens the week before the photo shoot. Over the air. And the result is not bad at all. We can record a neat 93%. That score, in combination with the car that we see here as good as new, results in a still happy Marcel who happily continues to roll in his electric north star.
The result
Had 75 kWh
Has 69.46 kWh
Range 445 km
SoH 93%
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl