2024 Polestar 2 PP - Long Distance Trip Review
Hello everyone! I'm the very proud new owner of a 2024 P2 Performance CPO in Magnesium that I bought from Polestar Boston and had shipped to Denver a few months ago. Now that I've had some time with it, and did a very long road trip, I wanted to share my thoughts with anyone who is considering one.
Addons
Michelin Cross Climate 2's (my favorite all weather tire for AWD ever)
Full Xpel XR Plus nano-ceramic tint: 40% sides and back, 70% windshield (can't even tell its there, I'm going 55% or lower next time!)
Xpel Stealth protection film on the piano black console parts. (looks SO MUCH better)
Spigen tempered glass matte/anti-fingerprint screen protector (must have IMO)
Tuxmat (front/rear seats, love them)
Nice dog back seat protector
3d printed door cupholders and center console organizer/mag charger from BrokenBonePrinting on Etsy.
OEM roof sunshade
OEM NACS adapter
OEM charging port cover (I cannot for the life of me get this to click in correctly.)
Experience
Outside of some registration issues because Boston doesn't do temp tags and that made the initial registration in Colorado awkward, the buying and shipping process was very smooth. Phil Jenkins at Polestar Boston was awesome the whole way through, and Fisher Shipping the shipping service they use was fantastic to work with. Cost at the time was around $35k, zero down @ 3.99% APR. Just under 22k miles, and was a single owner lease vehicle out of the same location.
I bought the car sight unseen (other than pictures PS:B took), and it was in even better shape than I could have hoped. Two very tiny dents and some repaired curb rash was all.
I had the car for roughly a month before I went on a very long roadtrip, and the car did fantastic.
Oregon Road Trip
Over a two week vacation I drove 3,542 miles from Denver, through Wyoming to see family, up through through the top of Utah, Idaho, to where I stayed most of the trip on Mt. Hood in Oregon, to Cannon Beach, around to Astoria (filming location of The Goonies!) and back.
Charging
During the entire trip, literally the only pain in the ass charging situation was in Laramie, Wyoming. For being the location of the state's only university, surprisingly it had the worst charging options. There are quite a few Tesla chargers near a hotel, but this was also my first exposure to Tesla-only charging stations. In order to make it to a much better charger in Rawlins, WY I had to sit for 3 hours on a charger barely better than charging on 120v at my house.
The rest of the charging along the route was very nice, especially at most Flying J locations where GM has set up covered charging locations with garbage cans and windshield squeegees.
Other than 3 or 4 charges on odd networks (Octopus something?) the majority of the charges were on Electrify America or Tesla. Tesla charging was by far the cheapest, but outside of Denver the Electrify America was reasonable.
I spent a total of $359 for the charging on the trip, including plenty of offpeak and out of network charges. By comparison my old car that gets around 29 mpg on the highway would have been closer to $550, and would have been a miserable road trip car.
There is a 50 amp charger at my place in Mt. Hood, and had I been able to do every charge there at the current kw rate it would have been $60 for that entire 3,500 miles. At the rate I drive, that would be less than $200 a year in charging. Insane.
Range
Worst: For anyone who has lived in Wyoming (where I am from originally) or driven through it on I-80, you know the weather is terrible and the wind is ridiculous all year round. My worst efficiency was from Rawlins to Evanston, into a 45+ mph headwind the entire time, which resulted in 48.8 kwh/100 miles. This was brutal.
Best: Going downhill from somewhere in east Oregon to the bottom of Mt. Hood I got 24.2 kwh/100 miles. This stretch lasted nearly 100 miles, and I managed to ADD range during the entire duration instead of consuming it.
Average: 34 kwh/100 miles. I believe the usable battery is 75 kw, so this would be 220 miles of range on a full charge. Not bad for how I drive, and for non-EV specific tires.
Driving Experience
I've never had a road trip be this easy. I drove so, so much during this two weeks, including one day with 14 hours and 850 miles of driving total, and it couldn't have been easier.
I listened to Dungeon Crawler Carl audiobooks 7 and 8 the entire time (no better audiobooks in existence IMO). The speakers took some tweaking, but I am very happy with how they settled. The Audible app sucked until I found how to download the book to the car, and then it became much easier to pick up where I left off.
I prefer Standard OPD and the firmest steering feel. I used Lane Keeping Aid during the tail end of my drives each day, but otherwise kept it off. No issues with that whatsoever.
I had two false emergency braking instances while backing up, both due to tall flowers on the side of the car and nothing behind. It brakes so hard I thought I hit something, but both were false alarms.
Emergency braking saved me twice, both instances driving into the sun and the car in front of me stopped suddenly. Once they wanted to let someone from an offramp without the right of way into the lane of travel when they absolutely shouldn't have, and another when they slammed on the brakes trying to take a picture of a mountain while in the middle of the road. No contact made either time, and had it not been activated I absolutely would have hit them.
Adaptive Cruise Control on this car blows my mind. Even in stop and go traffic in Portland it was really useful. Stuck to setting 3 or 4 following distance the whole time.
Pixel lights are downright amazing, full stop. I love them, and hope I never have to pay out of pocket to fix them.
Cargo space is ridiculous for how small the car is. I play goalie in ice hockey and my entire bag fits in here with the rear seats up, with room to spare. This has never been true in any other car I've owned, and was a huge selling point for me.
A/C was on Eco Mode the whole time, and according to the efficiency app thing maxed out at 6% of battery power on the hottest day, otherwise sat at 2-3%. Ceramic window tint and the sunshade made an enormous improvement in this regard, I never turn off Eco mode any more because I don't need to, and I run very hot.
I've had one sub-4s launch on these new tires. Gonna try again now that they are broken in and see what I can manage. For an all weather tire with a 3-peak rating and 60k mile warranty I think that is pretty awesome.
Apps
I used ABRP to plan the trip, but adding stops was a miserable experience so switched to the native google maps and just setting that days endpoint. This was much better, and had no issues finding chargers.
I subscribed to Aximote for the trip, and overall liked the experience. The only innaccurate part was it vastly overcalculated the number of trips I had, while everything else matched up with what the car reported +- 0.5%.
At one point I was at #1 in the world for Aximote users for longest trip and total distance!
Tidal is my preferred music streaming app, and it works pretty well. If you get in and out of the car quickly it sometimes has trouble continuing where it left off, but that is usually solved by opening a different app (Audible for instance), and hopping back into Tidal.
Issues
Not the car's fault, but in the middle of the trip I was driving on the tiny Historic Columbia River Highway when the truck in front of me kicked up a 12' piece of aluminum flashing it couldn't avoid either, and that razor sharp edge gouged the shit out of the front end in a few areas. I was extremely lucky that it only hit the plastic parts and no lights or metal, but it was still crushing to have it happen to such a new car. The chassis protection underneath left it completely unscathed there.
While turning on the Climate manually through the app has worked without issue, I have like a 25% success rate for it when it is scheduled. For instance on Tuesdays I have hockey in the morning, and leave at 5:30, so have it set to be done by 5:30 in the schedule. The majority of the time I get in it hasn't turned on.
Pros
Seriously love everything about this car. I've wanted one since it came out, and so happy I could finally afford one. Buying a 2 year old EV and saving 45+% and still having several years of warranty is pretty unbeatable.
This car flies under the radar because it doesn't look like a traditional EV. The people that do notice it compliment it quite often. I always get the typical "what the hell is that?!".
For as small as it is, it has a lot of ground clearance. Can't wait to bomb it around in the snow (if Colorado ever gets it again...)
Cons
My only recurring complaint is that the trim on the center console is too big. I am decently tall at 6'-1", and even though most of my height is in my torso I still wish there was more space between the bottom-right side of the steering wheel and the center console so I could prop my knee up further during long drives. I sort of solved this by sitting lower and further back. In the future I might have someone mod my side of the console to tuck it in more.
Whatever fucking butter they mixed in when making the windshield was the wrong call. I have never in my life gotten anywhere close to this many windshield chips. I had 4 repaired in the first 6 weeks of ownership, and during the trip got another 7 more, and now it is cheaper to get a new windshield than repair that many chips. My first job as a teenager was at an automotive glass shop and I don't recall ever seeing a windshield this prone to chipping. It is wild. I'm even looking at getting the protective film on my new one just to try to make it survive a bit longer.
Conclusion
I love this car so much. It is amazing on road trips and in town. I'm going to drive it until the wheels fall off. I'm sad about the 2027 Polestar announcement for the U.S., but still buy a P2 if you want one because there isn't a comparable EV that hits all the same markers.
--Dog Tax Included--
Posted Jul 3, 2026, 6:18 PM UTC