2025 Polestar Polestar 3 Driver assistance Problems

On [XXX], while driving, the car issued a warning that stated, “driving performance reduced. Book a service” and an icon of a turtle. Then on [XXX], while driving on [XXX], the car suddenly slowed dramatically that me, my husband and our frenchie in a dog crate behind us lurched forward violently. Estimated 30 mph sudden drop in speed then the turtle icon appeared briefly. I took the car to the Polestar 3 service department in North Hills, CA on March 12 and it is now April 10 without any resolution in site. Notably, this Polestar 3 also would not unlock the morning of [XXX]x only one night after we signed a lease contract. It had to be towed from our Los Angeles house’s garage. Then on [XXX], it would not charge and had to be in service for almost four weeks. INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)

NHTSA ID

11730450

Incident

Mar 10, 2026

I have had multiple issues with my Polestar 3. Most notably, the vehicle lost all propulsion at highway speeds. My safety was heavily jeopardized as I had to merge across multiple lanes of traffic to reach the shoulder. On the day of the incident, the car's propulsion stopped working 4 separate times. The Polestar service center did nothing other than reset the software and tell me the issue was not repeatable. Additionally, the Polestar 3 has consistently electrical issues. I've had doors handles close on my fingers, the rear hatch close on my head, I had a period of time where the driver door did not open, and many basic elements like handsfree calling and bluetooth fail regularly. I also get repeated phantom front-end collision issues where the car automatically jams on the brakes when there is no actual concern for front-end collision. Lastly, like many Polestar 3 owners, I frequently have had multiple failures of the Level 2 Charging port. For the 2nd time, I am not able to charge at home or at any other Level 2 Charger. And frequent requests from Polestar to alleviate this go unheeded. I've had to spend a ton of time and money on Level 3 charging (like Electrify America) rather than the charger I paid to install at home. Overall, Polestar 3 has been an awful experience and the vehicle should not have been released. I'm effectively a beta tester for a substandard and unsafe vehicle.

NHTSA ID

11701760

Incident

Jul 24, 2025

The malfunction I experienced involved the vehicle's electronic safety system, which caused the brake to apply suddenly and without my input. The service center was "UNABLE TO DUPLICATE" the specific fault during their inspection and found "NO CODES STORED," noting that the problem was intermittent and not verifiable by the technician. The car is, however, available for inspection.   My safety and the safety of others were put at extreme risk because the car suddenly and unexpectedly applied the brakes while I was driving in the middle of a street, creating an immediate and severe danger of being rear-ended by other traffic.   The problem has not been reproduced or confirmed by the dealer. The technician's notes explicitly state: "UNABLE TO DUPLICATE, NO CODES STORED," and the issue was recorded as "NO PROBLEM FOUND AT THIS TIME."   The vehicle has only been inspected by a technician at the authorized Polestar service center. There has been no inspection by police, insurance representatives, or any corporate representative from the manufacturer concerning this safety defect.   There were no warning lamps or messages immediately prior to the failure on November 13, 2025.

NHTSA ID

11700146

Incident

Nov 12, 2025

Date of Incident: [XXX] US Eastern Time Location: [XXX] Incident Type: Safety defect and vehicle malfunction due to Sudden Unintended Acceleration with multiple safety system failures On the date referenced above, while traveling at approximately 5 mph and preparing to park in a gravel parking lot, I removed my foot from the accelerator pedal to bring the vehicle to a complete stop using the normal deceleration process (with One-Pedal Mode disabled). Instead of the expected behavior, the vehicle: 1.Suddenly and violently accelerated without input 2.Drove straight into a parked vehicle at high speed, completely displacing it 3.Continued accelerating despite my attempts to control it 4.Required multiple brake applications before finally stopping 5.Traveled approximately 270 degrees across the parking lot while I desperately tried to avoid additional collisions 6.There were ~6 women that had been standing exactly where the incident happened only a few minutes before the accident, had I arrived earlier I could have hurt/killed these pedestrians Critical Safety System Failures During This Incident: •No pre-collision warnings or alerts activated •No collision avoidance sensors engaged •No automatic emergency braking deployed •No warning messages appeared on the vehicle display •No audible warning sounds of any kind •No air bag activation after my car rammed into the parked car This represents a catastrophic failure of multiple redundant safety systems that are fundamental to the Polestar 3's safety design. INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)

NHTSA ID

11692656

Incident

Sep 4, 2025

After the car is backed up in reverse, the car is placed in drive however if at a stand still you pull down on the shift lever twice the car thinks it is in adaptive cruise control and as soon as you apply pressure to the accelerator pedal the car speeds up quickly without application of pressure on the accelerator. Multiple times I had to quickly apply the brake otherwise I would have crashed into my garage. I a person was in front of the car they could be injured. The company has not addressed this issue. Also the forward collision warning system activates spontaneously and incorrectly tightening the seat belts suddenly and with force.

NHTSA ID

11690698

Incident

Sep 30, 2025

We have owned this vehicle for about 4 months. During that time, it has displayed dozens of error messages about the vehicle's safety systems. Most commonly, it indicates that the safety systems are not available at all. There are also persistent warning lights about faults in the safety systems. Even when they are working, the ongoing warnings, issues and randomly occurring failures of these systems make them unreliable and less safe than not having the assist systems at all. Polestar service had the vehicle for over 7 weeks but still returned it to us with active safety system failure warnings.

NHTSA ID

11688335

Incident

Sep 12, 2025

I was parking, lifted my foot off the accelerator to slow my car down, and instead my car unexpectedly went into high acceleration (note: not user error, I took my foot OFF the pedal). My car hit head-on into another car, then I steered the car sideways, and finally was able to get the car to stop by pumping the breaks several times.

NHTSA ID

11685027

Incident

Sep 4, 2025

I was driving my Polestar 3 2025 Performance into a gated garage. The car was on one pedal mode, I slowed down to come to a stop to open the gate. When the clicker for the garage door was clicked the car lunged forward and full speed rammed into the opening gate. Realizing the car is not stopping I pressed harder on the brakes, lifted my foot up and looked down to insure that I was pressing on the correct pedal and started pumping the brake pedal. None of these slowed down or stopped the car, which eventually hit a wall and stopped.

NHTSA ID

11668236

Incident

Jun 19, 2025

- Blind spot warning detection failure (intermittent, unpredictable) - stops working during a drive and doesn't identify cars in blindspot despite working at the beginning of the drive without any notification of system failure. No way to reproduce this as it occurs randomly. Alternatively, it will sometimes light up when there is no car in the blindspot. - Lane keeping assist with cruise control: sometimes car will show that it is following a lane and stop following the lane without warning or notification, with the dash showing that the feature is still on.

NHTSA ID

11659836

Incident

May 3, 2025

There is a documented bug with Polestar. If you shift the car into reverse, the rear camera comes on (point back, like it should). If you shift out of reverse, and back into reverse, the camera defaults to an overhead view. With this view it is very difficult to see what is behind you. This happens 100% of the time...it is not a "sometimes happens" bug.

NHTSA ID

11658534

Incident

May 2, 2025

Changing the gear to Drive while car is already in Drive is the normal way to put the car on cruise control at highway speeds. This should not be permitted when car is under a certain speed. However, it appears you can turn on cruise control when the car is at 0 mph. When car is already in Drive and at a stop (0 mph), shifting gear changer into drive again, and letting foot off brake and lightly tapping the gas pedals causes car to suddenly lurch forward in a highly disproportional manner to any light pressure applied to the gas pedal. Car then continues to increase speed from 0 mph at an alarming rate as if cruise control is on. This is extremely unsafe. One can accidentally shift the gear into drive more than once while at 0mph, and cause the car to unexpectedly lunge forward into someone or something. Moreover, the current gear is not clearly displayed at any time in a large enough font. The gear indicator is only displayed in tiny font on a small screen atop the steering column, and the gear indicator can be easily blocked by the spoke of the steering wheel when wheel is turned. At no time is the current gear indicator displayed on the larger head unit. Furthermore, there is no audible chime or indication that gear has been switched like in other cars. Without the chime, one can easily put the gear into to Drive twice, entering this dangerous condition where car can lurch forward as if cruise control is suddenly on.

NHTSA ID

11649147

Incident

Mar 18, 2025

When parking the car and putting the car in reverse, the cameras are activated and two views are displayed simultaneously on the head unit: 1) a 360 view is displayed; and 2) rear camera view is displayed. However when putting the car in Drive and then back in Reverse again, only the 360 view displays but NOT the Rear view camera. Subsequently drive / reverse sequences during a parking maneuver do not cause the rear camera to display again, The only way to turn the rear camera back on is to keep the car in reverse and then fiddle with the head unit to tap the appropriate button sequences to turn the rear camera back on. This is not safe.

NHTSA ID

11648253

Incident

Mar 13, 2025

Activation and persistence of the rearview camera. This situation occurs when selecting reverse, drive and then reverse again in short order (i.e. parallel parking, maneuvering to get into our garage with a narrow driveway and tight turn). When I initially select Reverse, the center display shows both the 360 view and the reverse camera - perfect. When I select Drive to move forward a couple of feet and realign the car, the display switches to show just the 360 view - makes sense. When I then put it back into Reverse to continue parking, the rear view camera does not come back on and only the 360 view is visible. Based on my reading of the regulations, if the car is in reverse, the rear view camera should be active and show on the screen. This is a significant safety issue and one that Polestar claims is not and that their software is operating as designed.

NHTSA ID

11643197

Incident

Jan 5, 2025

On a curvy, 2-lane road, moderate traffic both ways, my vehicle performed unnecessary emergency braking for on oncoming vehicle while negotiating an “S” curve. There was no vehicle in my lane in front of me, the oncoming vehicle was squarely in its lane, I was in my lane, both of us had several cars following behind. But we had both just passed the apex of our respective curves and were approaching each other in the “middle” of the “S”. All warning lights flashed, my car applied emergency braking, and vehicle behind me took evasive action to the right shoulder in order to avoid a rear collision.

NHTSA ID

11640090

Incident

Jan 9, 2025

Lane Keeping and Lane Departure: Lane Departure warnings cannot be disabled, but steering interventions also cannot be disabled, contrary to manual’s instructions and control panel button. With feature turned “off”, vehicle still intervenes and self-steers. Car has steered back toward potholes and bicyclists that I was trying to avoid. I could have destroyed a wheel in the 1st case or killed somebody in the second case.

NHTSA ID

11640083

Incident

Dec 30, 2024

- Vehicle displays are unresponsive and stay off or black, the display shows key indicators like speed & turn signals. Because the vehicle has no physical buttons you cannot control heat, cannot use backup cameras.

NHTSA ID

11639924

Incident

Jan 20, 2025

There are several issues with this vehicles, but here are the two most glaring safety issues: 1.) Emergency Braking System - on two occasions this was activated with no actual emergency. The first was simply turning left at an intersection. I was ~10ft away from the car in front of me and keeping the same speed or less than that car. The emergency braking was activated and the vehicle came to an almost full stop. The vehicle behind me nearly hit me. There was no reason for this to be activated and nearly caused an accident rather than prevented one. Check out the owner forums - this is happening frequently to multiple owners. [XXX] 2.) The software frequently shows malfunction in critical systems such as suspension and drivetrain which then will randomly disappear with a restart of the car or system. Again there are many stories of this in the owner forums. The most recent fault for us showed a suspension malfunction that then disappeared once it got to the dealer. These random phantom warnings are a safety hazard as drivers may become complacent and begin ignoring them. When a real malfunction happens it could be ignored to catastrophic results. INFORMATION REDACTED PURSUANT TO THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552(B)(6)

NHTSA ID

11637492

Incident

Jan 21, 2025

According to the NHTSA documentation, "REQUIREMENT: The rear visibility system must default to the rearview image meeting the requirements of S5.5.1 and S5.5.2 (S6.2.1 and S6.2.2) at the beginning of each backing event regardless of any modification to the field of view the driver has previously selected." The Polestar 3 does show the rearview camera upon initially entering reverse, but if the car is placed in drive and then placed back into reverse, only the top-down "bird-eye" view is displayed. The driver must manually configure the camera to show the rear view again. This would appear to be a violation of this requirement.

NHTSA ID

11634077

Incident

Jan 4, 2025

The rear view parking camera software is defective. If you put the car into reverse, the rear parking camera view comes up (as intended). However, if you put the car into drive and then back into reverse (as if you are making some parking adjustments in a parking lot), the rear parking camera view does NOT come back up. In fact, it requires several additional touches on the car's infotainment touchscreen to bring the rear parking camera view back up.

NHTSA ID

11634053

Incident

Jan 4, 2025

The issue is with the displaying of the rear view camera. When I put the car in reverse the rear view camera displays on the bottom of the screen and the 360 view at the top of the screen as it should. But if I then put the car in drive (like when parallel parking) the display changes to show just the 360 view. Then when I put the car back in reverse only the 360 degree view is shown the reverse camera view is not displayed as required. The only way to get the reverse camera view to display is to tap the screen and click on the Rear view options to get the rear view to display. This is clearly a safety issue and not following federal regulations.

NHTSA ID

11634052

Incident

Nov 6, 2024