r/polestar3

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Right now there are 130 Polestar 3's that are being liquidated nationwide.

Out of that total 125 have been lemon-lawed. Only five have a clean title.

Why are there so many out there?

It isn't really a Polestar quality issue. Yes, you read that right.

The stockpiling of lemon-law vehicles by manufacturers is far more common and pervasive than you may realize.

In fact, nearly everyone does it.

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The Chevy Bolt is a classic example of a manufacturing holding massive numbers of vehicles that would later have branded titles... forever.

Back in 2021 General Motors issued a stop order on all Chevrolet Bolts and issued a nationwide recall on tens of thousands of Chevy Bolts. This was due to some of the LG Batteries catching fire.

When I say some, I really mean that fewer than one in ten thousand had the issue.

GM offered a buyback due to that defect and, based on what I have seen nationally, I wouldn't be surprised if they had over 10,000 vehicles bought back in total.

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Guess how long it took to get all those vehicles back on the road. A few months? Maybe a year or two?

Try five years. And the only reason why so many were brought back was because of the Iran War.

Whenever an automaker experiences a difficult challenge with their product, they hold vehicles back.

Even after a vehicle is repaired, they don't want a small army of lemon-law vehicles with low miles to compete in the marketplace with brand new ones that determine their success.

So they hold back for as long as they need to keep the new cars in demand.

As a remarketing manager for Capital One I got to see football fields filled with vehicles that were already fixed.

But if that flood of vehicles were opened, the new ones would not only sit... they would be tarnished by the predominance of a much cheaper alternative.

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When it comes to an EV's charging system, the issue can be with a charging system that struggles with higher energy levels.

A great example of this are the ICCU's on Kia and Hyundai EVs which were recently given a 15 year / 180,000 mile extended warranty.

But sometimes it's more than a charger issue. It can also be a software issue.

In the unique case of the Polestar 3, it's the GHCA (Onboard Charger / Power Conversion Unit) coupled with software that needs to be upgraded and updated.

The system in the Polestar 3's earlier models sometimes prevented AC charging via home or Level 2 chargers.

Nearly all of the Polestar 3's that are at the wholesale dealer auctions and are manufacturer buybacks had this specific issue.

Have they all been fixed? The jury is still out on that. I

t looks like the newest version of this part is holding up. But it has only been out for about a year, and it requires programming and recalibration for that software to properly sync to the AC and DC charging system.

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The price of these lemon law vehicles generally range from $10,000 to $15,000 under the wholesale price. But they are also being sold AS/IS.

AS/IS means as... it... is...

It's yours. That's it. If the transporter brings you a 4,500 pound paperweight in the form of a 2025 Polestar 3, you'll have to bring it to a Polestar, Volvo, or independent repair shop that has the equipment to repair whatever is wrong.

Are these units still under their existing manufacturer warranty? Yes.

Does the federal government require that a lemon law vehicle is fixed before it is sold by a mnufacturer to a third-party. Absolutely.

But if there's a major issue on a part that already has a significant backlog and long wait times, you may experience that long interminable wait should it fail again.

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Millions of EVs have charging issues. This has been going on for over 15 years. I haven't seen a manufacturer that couldn't eventually solve the issue.

However. Even the larger manufacturers are still fighting this battle today as chargers have gone from 1 kW per hour to well over 100kW today . Nissan, Hyundai (and Kia), and even Polestar's parent company, Geely, which sold more than 1.5 million EVs last year and ranks third globally are investing heavily in charger technology.

That's one of the biggest challenges in today's EV market.

I don't think mainstream consumers should buy a Polestar 3 that is a lemon law buyback.

As for enthusiasts, I do think that the parts for the Polestar 3 currently built in South Carolina will reflect Geely's global reach. They not only sell more EVs than anyone except Tesla and BYD. They actually sell more vehicles than Ford.

It will be interesting to see where these Polestar 3's end up, and how they will be retailed. Now that Polestar is defunct for at least 2027, a floodgate of manufacturer buyback vehicles will be hitting the market.

That will make clean title vehicles cheaper as well. Stay tuned.

I am looking for owners of recent Volvo and Polestar models, seeking help to better characterize a security vulnerability that I found while digging into the software stack of my own car, a Volvo EX30. Before I make the responsible disclosure to Volvo Cars, I'd like to confirm whether it affects other models as well.

This is where I need some help: I need access to the software running on the AAOS (Android Automotive OS) infotainment systems of potentially affected models. Of course only the system part of the head unit, nothing that is individual to a vehicle (device/vehicle ID, user generated data, etc.).

The particular brands/models I'm interested in:

• all Volvo Cars models that use AAOS ins their infotainment system (vehicles made in the last 3-5 years or even older models that might have gotten it as an upgrade)
• all Polestar models that use AAOS in their infotainment system (vehicles made in the last 5-6 years)

I suspect that the issue predates the arrival of AAOS, but I'm not really familiar with the Sensus architecture. Still, if somebody has a file system dump from an older Sensus infotainment system, I'd like to take a look at it too.

Here's what I need:

• a dump of parts of the file system like /product, /system, /system_ext, /vendor, etc. (or an OTA update package, i.e. *.VBF files)
• name of the vehicle model
• model year
• software version

I also wrote a non-instrusive app that can extract a file system dump from an AAOS device (of course not everything, just what any 3rd party app can read), it's available on GitHub. You can compile it yourself or I can give access to my Google Play Internal Testing track.

I'll not give away any details about the vulnerability itself before I gave Volvo a chance to fix it, so don't even ask.

If somebody is willing to help with this, I wrote a more lengthy page about the system dumper app, my motivation, myself (I don't try to hide my identity) and how you can contact me.

Of course I understand that anybody could write this with malicious intent in mind. I don't think there's much more I could do to convince people that my intentions are honest. If I don't get useful feedback/help, I'll just hand in (to Volvo Cars) what I know about the EX30 and hope they'll actually fix it. The worst that could happen is that they do an ineffective fix for the EX30, they don't fix any other models (claiming that they are not affected by the issue and I cannot prove them wrong) and in reality they all remain vulnerable and somebody with malicious intent starts working on this. In that scenario there's still the option to involve regional authorities (US, EU, etc.) and the media. Both can exercise the necessary pressure to make an actual fix happen (there has been precedent with models from other automakers).

Has anyone bought a Polestar 3 since the recent announcement? If so, was the dealership willing to negotiate, and what was their asking price?

I found a dealer with a car that has about 6,000 miles, the Pilot and Plus packs, and is being sold as new for roughly $65k after current incentives. That feels high to me, but there isn't much pricing data out there to compare against.

I know leasing is generally recommended, but I drive about 20k miles a year, so the mileage allowance would likely cancel out any savings.

Any pricing data or negotiation experiences would be appreciated.

In the Polestar 3 manual, it says that the default lighting is "auto". However, it is a little ambiguous if this "auto" behavior also applies to the high-beam or not. When I leave it in the default mode, I have never seen the auto high mean turn on, but when I push the left stalk forward, it does engage the auto high-beam functionality and works as expected.

So, my question is, does the default auto lighting mode also cover the high-beam functionality? I am talking specifically about the US variant of Polestar 3, as I believe the EU version of the car is equipped with a more advanced HD pixel illumination technology.

Noticed the new 3D maps and the system suddenly became more sluggish

How can I disable the 3D rendering

Hi all,

My Polestar 3 has stopped charging at my home charger (Easee), and I've run out of ideas. Hoping someone here has seen this before.

What I've tested

• My neighbour's Volvo EX90 charges normally on my home charger.
• My P3 charges normally on my neighbour's charger, and on public AC and DC chargers.

So both the charger and the car's on-board AC charger seem fine. The problem only occurs with my car on my own charger at home. The home charger app reports that the car is refusing to charge after half a minute, and then a bit later the car shows a charging error with a red light at the charging port.

What I've tried
The car and charger were linked through the Polestar Energy app. I unlinked them and then deleted the app, but nothing changed.

My theory
Since the hardware seems fine, I suspect there's still a link, charging profile or schedule active somewhere in the backend, possibly tied to my home location or to this specific charger, that blocks charging at home.

Questions

1. Has anyone had a similar issue after using Polestar Energy (or another smart charging service)?
2. Does the car store charging settings per location or per charger, and is there a way to reset them?
3. Any other things I should check?

I've also contacted Polestar support, but haven't been helped so far.

Car: Polestar 3 Performance 2024, latest software

Thanks!

I feel dumb asking this, but in the Polestar 2, there were physical seat memory buttons. They were actually really helpful in cases where I needed to move the seat for some reason (like having a snack in the car), and then wanted to put it back.

In the 3, beyond the position being saved to the user profile, is there a way to store a specific position in case I want or need to move the seat temporarily?

The old phone was paired just fine. I deleted it from the polestar system and followed the directions for creating a digital key w my new phone and it just sits in the “connecting….” Part of the step. The phone never connects to the car even after waiting a long time. Thoughts? Maybe the polestar is having a bad day. I’ll try again later, after it has a snooze. 😴🤦🏼‍♀️