The Polestar 2 gave me hope for the future.

This picture does not do the Magnesium color justice.

Electric cars, what a weird thing right? Who is ever going to give up their good old internal combustion engine for an overgrown golf cart? This guy, that’s who. You can stop shouting at your screen, I will never give up on internal combustion. In fact I see myself being that super old guy, holding onto knowledge and passion for a thing from a different time. Continuing to keep old cars going as a way of preserving the past, even though that is an unwinnable battle. Those cars will become like owning horses though, something done as a passion, a hobby. Meanwhile I will be whipping an electric car or whatever means of transportation the future brings, magnetic jet propulsion? 

    People sometimes mistake me for an electric car opponent. I criticize Tesla a lot, but that doesn’t mean I hate the technology, just that company. One thing I have praised Tesla for though is in making electric cars cool, or at least desirable to the common consumer. Now finally, after what seems to have been a considerably long time, actual car companies are stepping into the ring to try and take the electric car crown.

    I had an opportunity recently to spend some time in a Polestar 2. Suggestive name aside the Polestar 2 (which I am simply going to refer to as the 2 from here on because my brain can’t type out Polestar without giggling) is a great pretty normal car. In fact it's normality is it's biggest selling point for me. Sure it has all the electric car gadgets that are to be expected these days. No start button, wireless phone charging, Google assistant integration. Most of those things are just normal new car things anyway. It's the normal car stuff for me that sets it apart and elevates it higher than the tech focused Teslas. Things like normal door handles, a volume knob, and tried and true switchgear make it feel like something I wouldn’t feel weird driving every day.

    But Religion of Speed is focused on amateur motorsports and grassroots car culture, so why write about a brand new $60k EV? I could talk about how well the 2 handles. Sure it's got some extra weight, but it's down low, low center of gravity, blah blah blah, you have heard all this before. I could talk about its power, which is good. It's not Tesla ludicrous mode fast, but it did keep on with a GT350 Mustang on the highway. Once again though, electric cars make good power now, that is also nothing new. (Side note, when you're driving around in a clearly electric car that no one has ever seen before, everyone wants to race you.)

    No what I wanted to share was this. The Polestar 2 gave me hope for the future. Oh wait I already said that in the title, well how about this. Electric cars are better in nearly every way to internal combustion cars, sacrilege I know. I did not miss the internal combustion engine driving the 2. When I drive a Tesla I get the feeling of missing the old thing, missing the sounds and the feel. I’m not sure why but the 2 felt different, as I said earlier, normal. Just a really torquey normal. That gave me some hope for the future. 

I think every car guy has this idea that as the internal combustion engine slowly becomes extinct, cars will become less fun and engaging to drive. The 2 showed me that's not necessarily true. The 2 feels like a modern performance sedan. It can handle the twisties, has good power, you can even turn off the traction control and get some rotation out of the chassis.

Sure it will be quite a while before someone of my economic bracket is going to go out and spend this kind of money on an electric car. But as with everything else prices will come down, both on the used and new markets. At the same time the tech will get better and better. At some point in the future we will be able to do stupid silly things with cheap old used EV’s and it will be fun. We will figure out how to hot rod them, we will race them, we will bring them to car meets, carve canyons in them, and customize them.

In the same way the old guys were slow to adopt fuel injection over carburetors, my generation will be slow to adopt EV over ICE. But the march of time and technology doesn’t stop. As they say, the only constant is change. I for one am welcoming the change with open arms. I will hold on to internal combustion until the day I die, tinkering with machines and trying to extract more performance out of them. I simply see myself learning more about three phase electric so I can do the same with this new generation of toys.