Polestar, the company that makes luxury SUVs, has announced that they will introduce a cheaper version of their Polestar 3 SUV later this year. Brent Ellis, who works for Polestar, told Drive, an Australian publication, “Later this year, the single-motor version of the Polestar 3 will be available. It will be rear-wheel drive, and we will have more details a few months from now when the time comes to launch.”
They didn’t share all the details about how fast the car can go or how much it will cost, but Andreas Andreen, who manages the Polestar 3, said that it will have the same electric motor in the back as the Long Range Dual Motor AWD version. This might mean it will have about 241 horsepower. For an SUV that weighs around 5,700 pounds, that’s not a lot of power. They might use the 268-hp setup from the new Polestar 4 instead.
The rear-wheel drive Polestar 3 will keep the same 111 kWh battery as the AWD model. The Long Range Dual Motor version can go about 315 miles on a single charge, which is quite good. The more powerful Performance Pack version can go around 279 miles on one charge. It’s likely that the Polestar 3 RWD will have an even better range. The single-motor Polestar 4 has a smaller 102 kWh battery and can go about 300 miles.
We don’t know how much it will cost yet, but if Polestar gets the pricing right, the Polestar 3 RWD could be a great deal. Recently, the company lowered the price of its entry-level trim by over $10,000, so now it sells for $73,400. That means the single-motor RWD version will probably be less than $70,000. If Polestar can get the price closer to $65,000, it would be much cheaper than the BMW iX and the Mercedes EQE SUV.
Unfortunately, if you were hoping for a seven-seater Polestar 3, you’re out of luck. Ellis said that the Polestar 3 will only have five seats. However, this could mean that Polestar might make a bigger SUV in the future to compete with models like the Mercedes EQS SUV and the Tesla Model X.
Originally, the Polestar 3 was supposed to start production in August 2023, but it faced some delays. The first ones were made in China in late February, and they will start making them in the US later this year. The American Polestar 3 will be made in South Carolina alongside the Volvo EX90. We expect to see the Polestar 3 RWD before the end of 2024.
