2021 Polestar Polestar 2: what breaks, and at what mileage

What breaks on the 2021 Polestar Polestar 2

Owners have reported 46 named failure modes on the 2021 Polestar Polestar 2, and the three most-reported carry 39% of everything filed.

Backup camera failure leads with 50 reports and about 7.7 per 1,000 vehicles.

Infotainment screen failure follows with 13 reports.

Other engine problem follows with 12 reports, median 90,000 miles.

By system, the reports fall mostly into infotainment (63), engine (23) and adas (21).

What happens when these parts fail

Across the named modes, 6 mention a crash. Those are the words owners used in their own complaints, and NHTSA does not verify them, but they are the closest thing in this data to a measure of what a failure actually did.

The average severity weight across every report on this year is 3.14, where a stalled engine or a failed airbag weighs many times more than a rattling trim panel, and a figure this high means the reports are dominated by failures with safety consequences rather than annoyances. The weighting is set out in full on the methodology page.

What the top failures cost to put right, as editorial estimates for an independent US shop rather than figures from NHTSA: backup camera failure at $250–$1,200, infotainment screen failure at $400–$2,600, other engine problem at $300–$4,000 and other driver assistance problem at $250–$1,800. Dealer labour, a seized bolt or a part that is no longer made can push any of these past the top of its range.

20% of the reports on this year sit in the engine, transmission, drivetrain or cooling systems — the four where a repair bill is usually four figures.

How often, against how many were built

Scaled by an estimate of how many of these cars exist, the 2021 Polestar Polestar 2 draws about 30 per 1,000 vehicles, which puts it in the 96th percentile of complaint rates among 2021 vehicles we can rate.

That denominator is the weakest number on the page and it is fair to say so plainly. Rate per 1,000 uses a fleet-size estimate derived from recall paperwork for this exact model year. It is a lower bound.

The working figure is 6,456 vehicles. If the true number is twice that, every rate on this page is half what it says; the ranking against other 2021 vehicles, which is what the risk score uses, is far more robust than the rate itself.

Recalls on the 2021 model year

NHTSA has issued 5 recall campaigns covering the 2021 Polestar Polestar 2, affecting an estimated 19,311 vehicles. A recall is a different kind of evidence from a complaint: it is the regulator and the manufacturer agreeing that something has to be fixed, and the fix is free for as long as the car exists.

The campaigns cover back over prevention:software, service brakes, hydraulic:power assist:electric:control modu and back over prevention: sensing system: camera. Whether the work was actually done on the car in front of you is a question only the VIN can answer, and the manufacturer or NHTSA will answer it free.

One caution about reading these together: a recall usually raises the complaint count for the same part, because owners who read about it go and file. The mileages stay informative; the counts get noisy.

Where 2021 sits in the model line

High risk for a 2021 — 173rd riskiest of the 231 2021 vehicles we can rate. Every score on this site is a rank inside its own model year, which is what makes a 2004 and a 2019 comparable at all.

Across the 4 model years of this car that carry enough reports to score, 2023 comes out best at 69 and 2021 worst at 70, with 2021 itself at 70.

No other year of this model scores meaningfully better than 2021, so if this generation is what you want, the year is not the lever.

Within the 2021–2025 generation specifically, 2023 is the strongest year at 69 and 2021 the weakest at 70.

What this page cannot tell you

194 owner reports; fleet size estimated from this year's own recall paperwork. Every count on this page is therefore a floor: it is the number of owners who went to the trouble of filing with a federal agency, which is a small and self-selected fraction of the owners who had the fault.

Of those 194 reports, 25 carried an odometer reading, so the mileages here describe 13% of the sample rather than all of it. Owners also round: readings pile up on multiples of ten thousand, which is why this site publishes "about 90,000 miles" and not "91,438".

The failure modes are assigned by software reading the owner's own words, which is accurate in bulk and wrong in individual cases. A mode with a handful of reports may contain a misfiled one.

And nothing here predicts what one car will do. These are other people's complaints, filed years apart, on cars maintained by strangers. Read the page as a map of where this model year has previously gone wrong, then have the specific car in front of you inspected.