The Polestar 2 will start at $59,900, deliveries start this summer

The Polestar 2 is one of the cars I’m most looking forward to driving this year. It’s an all-electric fastback sedan from the brand of the same name, with Polestar having been spun off by Volvo and its Chinese parent company as a new brand for performance BEVs. Production of the brand-new BEV started last month in China, ahead of the start of US deliveries this summer. And now we finally know exactly how much a Polestar 2 will cost here: $59,900, before any federal or local incentives.

That’s actually cheaper than we expected—last year, Polestar predicted the launch edition would start at $63,000. And the good news if you’ve already placed an online deposit is that the new, lower price is the one you’ll be asked to pay. The online configurator is also live with US pricing, so we can report that the launch-edition Polestar 2 will come pretty heavily loaded—the only cost options are for colors other than black ($1,200), a fancy leather and wood interior ($4,000), and the performance pack ($5,000), which gives you some fancy Öhlins dampers, Brembo front brakes, a different alloy wheel design, gold-colored tire-valve caps, gold-colored seat belts, and a shiny black roof. (You can also buy the performance pack wheels separately, for $1,200.)

We also expect a cheaper version in the coming months—the launch edition comes with both the Pilot and Plus packages as standard, and when European pricing was revealed last year, it included a sub-€40,000 model.

Otherwise, the car will be much as we expected. It uses Volvo’s Compact Modular Architecture and shares the same 300kW (402hp), 660Nm (487lb-ft) dual electric motor powertrain as the forthcoming Volvo XC40 Recharge BEV, and the same 78kWh lithium-ion battery pack, also from Volvo. It’s also powered by Google’s Android—at least as far as the infotainment system is concerned. (The main instrument display is running on a separate real-time OS.)

Polestar says it’s planning to start delivering US Polestar 2s this summer. Like Tesla, the brand is using an online retail model but will have physical showrooms—at first just on the West Coast and New York—where you can arrange a test drive or poke around a demo car in person.

Listing image by Polestar