My dad is a veterinarian. He is also, apparently, the kind of person who will give mouth-to-mouth to a goat. Which is how he ended up in Hervey Bay Hospital with Q Fever, and how I ended up heading north out of Brisbane on a Sunday morning in a hired Polestar 2 with a camera bag in the boot, telling myself I would get some shooting in while I was up there.

I did not plan to fall in love with the car. It was simply what was available when I booked. It had other ideas.

The drive from Brisbane to Hervey Bay runs about 290 kilometres up the Bruce Highway, through Caboolture, past Gympie and into Maryborough before dropping down to the coast. It is not a dramatic road. It is mostly open highway with long straights and the kind of mid-morning traffic that gives you time to think. In a petrol car, it is a fine drive. In the Polestar 2, it was genuinely good.

The car, before we get into it

The Polestar 2 is a Swedish electric fastback, made by the people behind Volvo. It is not trying to shout at you. The design is confident and clean without being anonymous, and the interior is very Scandinavian: minimal, considered and built around a Google-powered infotainment system that felt genuinely intuitive rather than a bolt-on tech exercise. For someone who spends a lot of time thinking about how things look, the cabin was easy to be in for three-plus hours.

Boot space was solid. Camera bag, a second body, tripod, spare clothing. It all went in without tetris. There is also a frunk under the front bonnet if you need overflow storage, which I did not use but appreciated knowing about.

The drive itself

Within about fifteen minutes on the highway I understood why people who switch to EVs struggle to go back. The power delivery in the Polestar 2 is completely linear. There is no wait, no kickdown, no engine deciding whether to help you. You press the accelerator and the car simply goes. Overtaking on the Bruce Highway, which in a normal car requires planning and a small act of optimism, was effortless. It recalibrates what a drive feels like.

"Overtaking on the Bruce Highway, which in a normal car requires planning and a small act of optimism, was effortless."

The ride is settled and composed. Long highway kilometres felt genuinely relaxed, which matters when you are trying to arrive at a location shoot without the accumulated tension of a bad drive sitting in your shoulders.

One honest note: one-pedal driving and I are not quite friends yet. The Polestar 2 has strong regenerative braking, which means lifting off the accelerator slows the car noticeably rather than letting it coast. The idea is that you rarely need the actual brake pedal. In practice, it felt slightly unnatural to me, particularly in traffic where I kept reaching for a smoothness I had to consciously reprogram. I suspect it is one of those things you adapt to quickly and then wonder how you drove any other way. I am not there yet. But I can see it.

Charging on the way

This was the part I had quietly braced for. EV charging anxiety is real, even when you know intellectually that the infrastructure has improved. In practice, it was completely stress free. Chargers were easy to find, the process was straightforward and there was no standing around waiting with rising concern about whether I would make it. It added very little friction to the trip and removed the one variable I had been tracking in my head.

Worth noting: the Polestar 2 gives you a genuine range figure you can trust. It is not optimistic. The car tells you what it has and means it, which makes planning simple.

Hervey Bay at the other end

Hervey Bay rewards the drive. If you have not been there with a camera, the light along the Esplanade in the early morning and late afternoon is genuinely beautiful: long, flat and golden in a way that the coast further south does not quite replicate. The pier, the pelicans, the calm water. It is a town that does not perform for photographers but quietly gives you a lot to work with if you are paying attention.

Arriving in something that drew a few quiet second glances in the car park did not hurt either. The Polestar 2 is the kind of car that looks good without trying to, which is roughly the aesthetic I am aiming for in most of my work.

Would I do it again

Without question. If you are a photographer or creative who regularly drives to locations and has been on the fence about whether an EV makes sense for a real road trip, this drive answered that question for me. The range holds up, the charging is manageable, and the drive itself is better than almost any petrol equivalent I have spent time in at this price point.

Dad is recovering well, since you asked. He has been told, firmly, to stop performing emergency resuscitation on livestock. He has not agreed to this.

If you want to hire a Polestar 2 through Europcar, the link below is my affiliate link. It costs you nothing extra and helps keep this kind of writing going.