Polestar 3 vs Audi Q6 E-Tron

What's the difference?

Sometimes, a vehicle facelift doesn’t amount to much. Maybe a nip here, a tuck there, but to be sure you’re looking at the new version, you need to check the badges.

To be honest, the revised Polestar 3 SUV is a bit of that, with very little to visually distinguish the facelift from the previous car. But underneath there are some serious upgrades which, in that oh-so-Swedish understated way, serve to make the Polestar 3 an even more tantalising prospect.

The Polestar 3 has now moved to 800-volt technology which not only allows for faster charging, it also opens up the prospect of even more performance. A new generation of lithium-ion batteries also means greater range potential.

But it’s nice to see that Polestar hasn’t limited its attention to the drivetrain; there’s now a revised anti-roll-bar system and a recalibration of the power steering assistance. Which just goes to show that even though brands like Polestar trade on being an all-electric solution, there are still some engineers in Sweden who know how the rest of a car should work.

Meantime, the medium-large SUV space is a very crowded one right now, so the question is whether the new tech – invisible as it is – is enough to keep the Polestar 3 carving out its slice of that market.

From a few paces back, the Q6 e-tron is easy to mistake for just another Audi.

After all, Audi, perhaps above all its contemporaries, has established such a consistent look and feel for its entire range.

But this is no regular Audi. The brand tells us the Q6 e-tron is the most significant new vehicle it has launched in a decade.

Underneath its familiar visage, Audi is so excited about the Q6 e-tron because it brings with it a ground-up new-vehicle platform, which brings with it some forward leaps when it comes to technology.

But does being new actually make the Q6 e-tron a good car? We went to its Australian media launch to find out.