The company released a software upgrade that boosts the peak outputs of both horsepower and torque of their dual-motor Polestar 2. It costs $1195
Polestar, Volvo’s electric car brand, just announced a software package available for purchase for owners of the dual-motor Polestar 2. For $1195, you get access to a software package to download into your car over-the-air. It’s worth an extra 68 horsepower and 15 lb.-ft of torque.
What a world we live in. Open up your laptop, spend five minutes setting up and paying for it at www.polestar-shop.com quite like you’re shopping on Amazon. And boom, you get more power delivered to your car wirelessly. Also, somewhat at least, like Amazon.
Polestar did not elaborate on how peak power increases. After all, it’s still the same battery pack, electric motors, and hardware. However, Polestar did say that “the additional power and torque are primarily felt at speeds between 44 and 80 mph, resulting in even, rapid mid-range acceleration.”
With that knowledge, and the fact that it’s a much bigger horsepower than torque increase, I speculate that they found a way to increase voltage to the electric motors at higher motor speeds. Or, put anther way, they found a way to taper off peak voltage outputs to those motors more slowly.
Perhaps Polestar realized their factor-of-safety to protect equipment and maintain running temperatures were too conservative and they could safely work the system harder. Or maybe a smart software engineer moved around a couple of semi colons and voila! Again, I only speculate.
The upshot is, with this upgrade the dual-motor Polestar 2 delivers 476 horsepower and 502 lb.-ft of torque at its peak instead of 408 and 487, respectively. As a result, 0-60mph takes but 4.2 seconds, which is mega and a 0.3 second improvement. Accelerating from 50-75 mph is half a second quicker than before, needing only 2.2 seconds to achieve it. Impressive.
Generally speaking, the Polestar 2 is a quick, nicely designed machine with either a single or two electric motors powering it, and an easy to use Google operating system handling “infortainment” duties. Energy for all of the above is stored in a 78 kWh battery pack, which is good for a range as high as 270 miles in the single-motor car.
It’s truly is amazing what you can buy on the internet these days.
You can ready my review of the dual-motor Polestar 2 when it first came out here: Polestar 2 Drive
You should also check out Honda’s future EV plans: Honda Prologue