Polestar 2

The only way to ride this out is to keep your car long term and let the depreciation level out. Pretty much anyone that bought an EV here in early 2023 is in a similar position. If it’s any conciliation, when you bought at peak your trade in was also likely to have been overvalued. It’s hard to see around corners.

They’ll have to honour it but they potentially could look to knock it back a bit depending on conditions. Bodywork, Excess Mileage etc. It’s unlikely though unless it’s a wreck.

Depending on how far along the PCP term, maybe you could also hand back early using the half rule. Somebody on here with an ID3 did it last year. To put all this in perspective though, for most the cost to change up is the critical part and new car price cuts take the sting out of poor residual value.

Our fuel savings this year alone have a fairly reasonable accurate estimate of 2800 Euro. Versus our Diesel Volvo for the same period. Can only see this going up in 2025..

Make sure to rationalise your loses in context. And not a penny spent on servicing inside warranty either. Oh also no additional petrol station acquisitions when paying for fuel :) as we're rarely at one. Even more savings.

Note the above is fuel savings having worked out the electricity fuel costs and taking them out already. It's pure savings of making the wheels go go go

yeah agreed on the fuel and maintenance savings but they don’t come close to making up for the depreciation drop. Unless your old Volvo was very unreliable if you put all your costs down on paper, the depreciation hit on that was sunk cost where it’s all new loss on a new car.

Depends on your perspective of course, I really like the car and am of the “you can’t take it with you” mindset when it comes to money, but still don’t want to be fleeced. Anyway I’m 15 months away from the end of the deal and the world could all change again by then.

I think polestar have made a very half hearted effort in Ireland and are suffering the consequences of it.

Trying to flog off the old model and not introducing the refresh is just another example.

Polestar 2 is a good car but the refresh is apparently excellent.

As for the 3 and 4, who is going to have any confidence spending 80 to 100k plus on an unknown quantity?

Contrast that with BYD that have come in here cold and done very well getting dealerships up and running quickly.
Not having any dealer presence was a huge mistake for polestar. If they had even used existing Volvo dealers to showcase their cars it would have helped and allowed existing Volvo customers trade into one with more confidence.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if they exit Ireland.

I wonder will the second hand cars end up a bit like used Alfa Romeos? They end up being the general publics 3rd or 4th choice when buying a second hand premium car. I agree about the 3 and 4. They are targeting Porsche customers with the 3 when they really should be tempting people out of large Volvo, Audi, Merc and BMW’s. I’d consider the 4 myself but only at a reduced price. The general public won’t buy the 4 because they don’t really know what it is. Is it an SUV or is it a Saloon? I hear it’s very good but for 70k I want a bigger car. To some extent I think a lot of customers expected the 2 to be bigger as well.

No smaller than a 3 series tbh.

Their biggest mistake is not being front and center on volvos sales floor.

My only presumption there is they didn't want to cannibalise sales and that was an unwinnable battle between two distinctly separate revenue companies that are owned by the same company. The owners should have made the call there and not left this as something for 2 companies to decide on.

It's the same strategy in the UK as far as I can tell. Not sold through Volvo dealerships, but through similar setups like Spirit here.

Much bigger market in terms of volume. What works in the UK wont necessarily work here. Same story with used car supermarket type sales model.

Every dealership is focussed on profitability. Doesn't Joe Duffy have the Lotus dealership in Airside? Was it a flip of the coin by Geely to give Lotus to Joe Duffy and Polestar to Spirit?

I worked there as a trainee accountant at the time of the transition, just graduated from college.

Was the BMW dealership only then. Stayed for a year, enjoyed it, got my head turned by slightly more money in a job that I ended up hating. Should have stayed in hindsight.

No they'd just moved to north Rd finglas a few months before i started. I think Windsor are in that building now.

I think it was some part of the HSE above them afterwards but I was gone by then. Yeah Molloys owned the building.

I recognise some of the names of the guys there at the time from garages now, i was very much in the background setting up some finance and IT systems, was only there for about a year in 2004 and haven't worked in the motor industry since.

I see the Android Auto app is now available in software release 3.3.16. I'm still on 3.1.9, there's been 3.1.10, 3.2.4 and 3.2.8 which have never been installed on mine or others here (that I know of).

There were reported problems with 3.2.4 and possibly 3.2.8 as well, so we may go straight to 3.3.16.