After 1 year and only 7,000km, including a vacation to the south of France, I start to appreciate the car more and more. It is not the most economical electric car, but it is very stylish, luxurious, drives exceptionally well, great handling, tons of comfort and above all more practical than a Tesla Model 3.
In the meantime, I only noted points of interest in this blog that I missed or was bothered by.
Pilot Assist
Steering corrections a little too severe on the highway
Instinctively, there are 2 solutions. Either the initial correction is not made immediately but compared to subsequent corrections and then averaged. At higher speeds such as on the highway this should not be a problem. Another solution is to effectively calculate a smooth curve in the lane with a margin of error on both sides.
Unexpected early braking for a vehicle in front of you at 90 km/h
It seems that the Adaptive Cruise Control panics a bit when you approach a truck that is in the same lane as you but moving at a much slower speed.
As long as the vehicle in front of you is too far away it is not detected by the radar. The adaptive cruise control icon remains light gray indicating that she has not yet seen the truck. Inevitably, you will approach the truck and when the vehicle in front is about 200 meters away, the Polestar suddenly starts to brake abruptly! This is especially annoying if you want to keep up with the other traffic around you. It is not only a surprise when the car suddenly brakes, but I can imagine that the cars behind you are not amused either. You have to turn on your indicator very well in advance to prevent the car from braking when it detects the truck.
It would be better if the Pilot Assist would brake much later and take more into account the minimum distance set in the Adaptive Cruise Control. If that is not possible (legally/technically) then I would rather get a warning so you have time to take over control yourself.
The Adaptive Cruise Control does intervene in a subtle way when the speed difference with the car in front is not so big.
Accelerate when the car in front is halfway across the center line
A slower-moving vehicle merges into your lane and the Adaptive Cruise Control intervenes very nicely by slowing down and maintaining the minimum distance. When the vehicle in front leaves your lane again, the Adaptive Cruise Control waits until all wheels of the vehicle in front of you have crossed the white line before accelerating again. This is not the "natural" way of driving because in general you accelerate when the car in front has left your lane halfway.
360 camera
In itself, the 360 camera with top view is very handy for maneuvering.
It would be even more convenient if you could see the image of a selected camera AND the 360 degree view at the same time. Currently if you click on a camera then half the screen goes black.
Center display
Fan speed
Although you can adjust the fan speed through the temperature and by asking Google it would be handy to have an icon on the homepage to adjust this directly.
Audio settings
To adjust the sound characteristics you now have to detour through Apps > Settings > Sound and then equalizer. It would be ideal if a shortcut/link would be added to the audio pop-up when you adjust the volume. You are briefly shown all possible sound volumes and here a link to the sound settings could be added.
Recent Apps
Switching between 2 or 3 applications is still a bit awkward because there is no "App Switcher" function foreseen. I am thinking about the classical ALT+TAB function in the computer world where you can switch very quickly to the other "active" or "recent" applications.
Consumption Information
Personally, I am disappointed with the current version of the consumption information in the center display.
The average and immediate consumption are shown via the graph but the numerical values are not displayed.
Actually I expect to see graphs of the consumption over time and this over different periods (1day, month, year, total).
But also the charging curve is interesting, as well as the battery status, temperature, and so on.
In the end, this is a computer on wheels and all that data is certainly available. So it should just be a matter of using the data and presenting it.
Below is an example of a Tesla chart which is more interesting than the Polestar version.
Drivers display
Google Maps hangs
This may be due to my particular Polestar but from time to time the Google Maps in the driver's display gets stuck. The only way to reset it is to hold down the home button on the center display and do a complete reset.
Kilometer units for range
The range of the Polestar 2 is always shown in brackets of 10 kilometers and it would be more pleasant if the range was calculated per kilometer. This also means that you can immediately see whether a calmer driving style is beneficial to the range. Now, the range will not be updated for a longer period of time untill the 10 kilometer slice has been used up.
GPS speed
The Polestar undoubtedly has the GPS speed which is more accurate than the traditional speed measurement. Why is this speed not displayed as well?
Radio / Music and Time
Display Information
The music station/source (Spotity) should be shown in one of the displays at all times. By itself, the driver's display seems like a good location to me. And the same goes for the time now shown on the center display. I always look for it in the driver's display only to realize it is shown on the center display.
Scan function
A very useful feature in my previous BMW was the scan function for the radio. The radio would hold on to each station for about 10 seconds and then move on to the next station. If there is a station you want to keep listing to then you press the scan button again to stop the scanning.
Interface
Performance Pack stylesheet
This is definitely a "nice to have" and no significant added value but it would be nice for Performance Pack owners to be able to choose a slightly different color theme that better matches the Performance Pack. I'm thinking gold buttons instead of orange and possibly an also high-tech driver's display.
Body color
And again a nice to have, that has been asked many times, is that you can set the color of the Polestar shown on the 2 displays.
Google Maps
My saved places
While preparing for a long trip I use the "saved places" of Google Maps to save places of interest, charging stations and restaurants.
By default you already get "Want to go", "Favorites" and "Starred Places" but you can create other lists via your web browser. And per trip I create a separate list.
The unfortunate thing is that these "non-standard" lists do not appear in Google Maps in the car. And so you MUST use the "Want to go" list and take out the already existing points.
Personal notes
A handy trick I use is to number the charging stations by day and specify up to which SoC I should be charging. This gives me a handy overview of the charging stations for that day.
But... also these notes are not shown in the Google Maps application in the car. And you can only find out which charging point you are going to have to select based on the address.
Decent route planning
This is one of the biggest strengths of A Better Route Planner, the ability to plan the entire route with all the charging stations you want to stop at. And in Google Maps it is not possible to plan a route with multiple charging stations as stopovers. If it is possible then I just haven't found it. So this is why I started using notes to record some sort of route.
State Of Charge at arrival
Another great benefit of ABRP is that you can specify how many SoC you want to arrive at a particular waypoint and/or endpoint.
Muting sound
A minor annoyance is that if you want to mute the sound of Google Maps you first have to press the sound icon and then choose from 3 options:
- mute
- hear notifications
- unmute
When you're driving your car you don't have time to go through that list every time to see which option mutes the sound. I would prefer that by pressing the icon you can turn the sound off/on immediately. It would be even more convenient to be able to use the command "Hey Google, mute the sound of Google Maps".
Polestar app for mobile device
Furthermore, I have also noticed that the percentage of the SoC is updated but not always the range.
In addition, I would find the following items very interesting:
- message when the alarm goes off
- message when car is charged (this should already exist but I never received a message)
- access to all consumption information
- ability to start/stop charging
- odometer
Open tailgate half way
Although you can set the maximum opening of the tailgate this opening will always be used. It is only in certain situations like underground parking lots where I sometimes want to open the tailgate only half way. It has happened a few times that the tailgate bumps into the low concrete ceiling.
Therefore it would be ideal if you could open the tailgate half way by pressing the remote twice or let the tailgate open as long as you hold down the button. If you release the button then the tailgate stops.
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten