The new 517PS Polestar 3 might become our favourite SUV

It serves as Polestar’s equivalent to the Range Rover Sport, BMW X5 or Porsche Cayenne, with prices starting from £79,900 for the standard 489PS (360kW) non-performance pack version and rising to £85,000+ for the full 517PS machine. Performance is predictably strong, with 0-62mph times coming in at five and 4.7 seconds respectively.

Truthfully, as these big, gaudy SUVs go, it looks the part too. Polestar’s cool Scandinavian design that began with the Polestar 1 and has evolved most recently with the Precept Concept and the Polestar 5, sits well on a car of this stature. It looks broad but not imposing, sharp but not intimidating and entirely recognisable as a Polestar. While the Precept is entirely evident in the nose, it’s the sweeping rear window and width-spanning light bar that’s newest on this car at the rear end. There’s clever aero too, with a front wing integrated into the bonnet feeding air over the car to the rear wing and aero blades – not dissimilar to this car’s distant cousin, the Lotus Eletre.

On the inside, the cool, calm, high-tech Swedish feel continues, with premium sustainable materials and crisp digital interfaces. In addition to the driver’s display, there’s a full 14.5-inch vertical centre display featuring Android Automotive OS, an evolution of the OS used in the Polestar 2.

Keeping with the influences from the mobile phone industry, the Polestar 3 uses the Snapdragon Cockpit Platform, developed by Qualcomm. For reference, most smartphones use Snapdragon chips. This works alongside the centralised Nvidia Drive core computer – a first in the Polestar 3 – that’s effectively the car’s brain. The car will also get over-the-air updates to keep the car and its systems running at their absolute best.

True to parent company Volvo’s heritage, the Polestar 3 has pioneering safety tech. A new cabin radar system can detect the tiniest movements inside the car, which is good for keeping kids and pets safe. Bio-attributed MicroTech features inside, in addition to animal welfare-certified leather and fully traceable wool upholsteries.

Standard equipment is strong, with the full-length panoramic glass roof and full LED lighting coming on all Polestar 3s. For the first model year, the Plus Pack comes standard too, which include a 25-speaker Bowers and Wilkins audio system, soft-closing doors and a head-up display. The Pilot Pack is also a part of that, with Pilot Assist thanks to a Luminar-sourced LiDAR system, extra sensors, cameras and an additional Nvidia control unit.

Power goes to all four wheels via two motors, with twin-clutch torque vectoring at the rear – a development of the system debuted in the high-performance Polestar 1 coupe. The rear can also be decoupled for the most efficient driving, while there’s also adjustable one-pedal driving built in for maximum efficiency and ease of driving. In performance driving scenarios every Polestar 3 is rear-biased in terms of power output. The motors are fed by an enormous 117kW battery, with a claimed 380-mile range for the standard car, that drops to 360 miles for the Performance Pack car. The architecture is 400-volt, allowing charging from 10 to 80 per cent in 30 minutes, at the maximum 250kW rate.

The chassis features dual-chamber air suspension with ZF dampers, which is constantly adaptable, with the car able to adjust once every two milliseconds. The Performance Pack car features further optimisations to the suspension for a more dynamic feel. The hard points include double wishbones at the front and integral links at the rear. Brakes up front are Brembo four-piston 400mm discs, with single-piston 390mm rears joining. The Polestar 3 isn’t a light car, with a stated kerb weight of between 2,584 and 2,670kg, which is part of what limits the still impressive permissible towing capacity of 2,200kg.

So what do you think of the Polestar 3? Among ever-homogenised all-electric SUV appliances, this gives the impression it’s something a bit more and goes a little further. It looks good, its numbers are impressive and, in its segment, given its equipment levels, it’s far from unreasonably priced.