Polestar 3 vs Mercedes-Benz Eqe300

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.

The EQE53 SUV is Mercedes-AMG's first fully-electric SUV.

That means it doesn't have a thundering V8 like a lot of its petrol-powered AMG siblings, but what it lacks in ear-splitting noise it makes up for in colossal but quietly delivered shove.

Which, when you have a sleeping child in the back, is exactly what you might need, because this after all is a family review and we're testing how good this silent beast of an SUV is when it comes to family duties.