Polestar 3 finds a supercar gear: how the 800-volt revamp reshapes the electric SUV

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Polestar has updated the Polestar 3 electric SUV, putting the spotlight not only on power but on charging too. The model now runs on an 800-volt architecture that lets the battery pull up to 350 kW at fast chargers.

The flagship Polestar 3 Performance delivers 500 kW, or 680 hp, and 870 Nm. It hits 100 km/h in 3.9 seconds, with top speed capped at 230 km/h. The car weighs around 2.5 tonnes, though, so it is really more of a hefty premium SUV than a true sports car.

The 106 kWh battery charges from 10 to 80 % in roughly 22 minutes. WLTP range tops out at 635 km on the Dual Motor version and 593 km on the Performance. The Dual Motor itself looks like a strong pick: 544 hp, 740 Nm, 0–100 km/h in 4.7 seconds, and it starts at €87,900 against €106,900 for the Performance.

Under the skin sits a new rear motor developed in-house by Polestar and an asynchronous front motor that can now decouple automatically to save energy. Compute power takes a big jump too: the old NVIDIA Xavier chip (30 TOPS) gives way to the DRIVE AGX Orin with 254 TOPS — more than an eightfold gain. Current Polestar 3 owners are promised the processor upgrade as a complimentary retrofit.

Inside, Polestar leans hard into premium: noise insulation, double-glazed windows, a 25-speaker Bowers & Wilkins system and a 14.5-inch central display with Google services and the Gemini assistant. On the flip side, reviewers note that many functions are buried in menus and there are not enough physical buttons for seat and climate controls.