High Speed Testing of the Polestar 1 Caught on Tape

Polestar, an offshoot of Swedish brand Volvo, aims to become a force to be reckoned with in the industry by offering a safe, high tech and rather expensive machine. For that to happen, a lot of testing has to go into the car.

And since it’s not every day we get to see how the actual build and testing of a car is done, we can only be grateful to the company for keeping us in the loop.

Polestar has already shown how the carbon fiber body of the car is just as strong as steel by crashing the 1 into a stationary barrier at 56 km/h (38 mph). It also did a series of aerodynamic and on-road tests.

Now, Polestar is trying something new, driving at high speeds on a proving ground in Sweden somewhere.

The maneuvers you are about to see in the video attached below were made to test the car’s steering responsiveness and torque vectoring calibration following some tuning made to the car’s chassis and suspension earlier in the year.

To properly test that, Polestar chief test driver Joakim Rydholm took to the track and drove the car at 220 kph (136 mph) for over six km (3.7 miles) on a 45 degrees banked section.

“Whenever you drive Polestar 1, you should immediately feel like you are in control and that the car is ready to respond to your input, no matter what you want to do,” the test driver said.

“This is a GT that needs to be easy to drive and comfortable in everyday use with its smooth and quiet hybrid drivetrain.”

The Polestar 1 is a plug-in hybrid equipped with two electric motors on the rear axle, two 34 kWh batteries and Volvo’s the T8 Drive-E turbocharged 2.0-liter engine. The car develops 600 horsepower and has an electric range of 150 kilometers (93 miles), more than any other similar car currently on the market.

For all that performance, the car has a price to match: $155,000.