The Polestar 3, the aptly named third vehicle from the electric performance marque, will have its official reveal in October 2022, the company announced. It will be Polestar’s first sport utility vehicle and its first made in the US.
The Polestar 3 marks Polestar’s attempt to break into the highly competitive and highly lucrative SUV market in the US. When it comes out, it will slot into the premium category, putting it in competition with EVs like the Tesla Model X, Audi E-tron, Mercedes-Benz EQE, Rivian R1S, and Fisker Ocean. Notably, the Polestar will be assembled at Volvo’s factory in Charleston, South Carolina, giving it the distinction of being the company’s first EV made on US soil.
At launch, the Polestar 3 will sport a dual-motor drivetrain and a large battery, with a range target of over 372 miles (600 km). In addition to being a higher-riding vehicle than the Polestar 2 fastback sedan, the Polestar 3 will also include a partially autonomous driving system for highway driving. That will be thanks to the inclusion of a lidar sensor from supplier Luminar, which is also providing components for hands-free highway driving to Volvo, as well as Nvidia, which will provide the on-board computing hardware.
Volvo, which jointly owns Polestar along with its parent company Geely, has said that it will roll out a hands-free highway driving feature as part of its next big platform update, the Scalable Product Architecture (SPA2), which will arrive with the next-generation XC90 SUV and the Polestar 3 in 2022.
Polestar recently announced plans to go public by merging with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. That merger is expected to close “in the first half of 2022,” after which Polestar will be a publicly traded company.
Polestar has only released two vehicles so far: the $155,000 hybrid coupe Polestar 1 and the Polestar 2 sedan. In addition to the Polestar 3, the company is also planning on releasing a compact SUV (the Polestar 4) in 2023 and the Polestar 5 (née Precept) sports sedan in 2024. The company also unveiled a sleek roadster concept called the Polestar O2 and is putting its high-performance version of the Polestar 2 into limited production.