Washington D.C. hasn’t had a true car sales location for years, but that all changed this month with the official unbuckling, or opening, of the newest Polestar Space in the heart of the District just a few blocks north of the White House. If you haven’t heard of Polestar, you wouldn’t be alone, with the brand itself only recently being spun out of just being the performance tuning affiliate of Volvo to a standalone car company now focused entirely on performance luxury electric vehicles (although their first vehicle, aptly named the 1, was a plug-in hybrid).
For avid Carsplainers, and there are at least a few of you out there, you know that we in fact have a Polestar 2 long-term vehicle. Our long-term vehicle actually predates the opening of a D.C.-area Polestar Space and was delivered via the then closest Space in Princeton, New Jersey. This brings us to a specific point about Polestar. As a new brand, Polestar established itself to be able to do direct-to-consumer, online sales of their vehicles. Super early customers like us never set foot in the Space prior to actually taking delivery of the vehicle, which we did from the comfort of our home. We also did our test drive from home as they brought a vehicle to us with a scheduled time slot.
That said, many shoppers still want to see/touch/smell and yes even potentially drive a vehicle before making that leap to filling out credit applications and whatnot. That’s where the Spaces come in. Spaces are somewhat like a dealer in that it’s an actual real physical location where you can see and drive a vehicle, but also almost nothing like a traditional dealer, as the brand “specialists” are not sales people, but there to help answer any questions you may have or demonstrate features. The specialists can also help guide you through the configuration process for your reservation and/or see potentially available units that could be had sooner. All prices and programs are fixed and shown online via the website.
Where Polestar is leveraging part of the traditional dealer network is in who it partners with the establish these Spaces. For Washington D.C. it is the Darcars Automotive Group that has stepped up in support of the Polestar brand. While the initial D.C. area space was a separated showroom on the same site as the existing Darcars Volvo up in Rockville, the downtown D.C. Space is entirely dedicated to Polestar. The showroom is small by traditional dealer standards, but it doesn’t need to house endless salesperson desks and sales manager “towers.” The Spaces still provide a critical touchpoint for the customer experience in the awareness, consideration and discovery process for brands as well as service and maintenance. The valet/concierge services are still very much part of the available options as well. With our own Polestar 2, the Darcars supported Polestar Space has been seamless in terms of managing our service needs from day 1 and hopefully through the rest of our lease term.
And Polestar really only has one volume model right now, the 2. But on display was their upcoming next model, named the 3 (see the pattern here?), Polestar’s first electric SUV with over 500 horsepower and targeting an EPA rated 300 miles of range. Pricing for the Polestar 3 starts at just over $85,000 with customer deliveries through Spaces such as these starting in mid 2024. We can’t wait to drive one, or is that three?
How do you like to shop for a vehicle? Could you buy something truly sight unseen? What do you think of the Space concept and would you consider going to one? Let us know in the comments!
