The first can be seen on the do-it-all touchscreen, where you’ll find a button that allows you to instantly switch off the speed-limit warning bong, a safety-minded device that has to be there for legal reasons. Polestar might be all about clean living, EV-only and puritanical design, but that button tells you that Polestar is on your side.

The second: it’s available in the UK with zero per cent APR finance on a PCP deal. Taking the car we’re testing today – a Long Range Dual Motor at £75,900 – that means you could drive one for £659 a month with a £11,300 deposit. The Long Range Single Motor is even more competitive.

The nearest equivalent from Polestar’s former parent company Volvo doesn’t go any lower than 1.9 per cent, while the BMW iX that’s today’s rival for the Polestar 3 demands 3.9 per cent. Combined with the considerably heftier starting price of the iX (£104,285), it means the Bavarian car’s PCP is nearly twice as much a month.

The cynic will point out that Polestar very much needs to shift some units to help the stock markets view it in a more positive light. But from a potential buyer’s point of view, that sort of business talk is much less interesting than the price disparity between these two cars.

It wouldn’t be an issue if the BMW was clearly worth every penny of the extra. Let’s find out whether it is.

The 3 is based on the same SPA2 platform as Volvo’s EX90 but this time with only five seats, not seven. As if to prove the two cars are targeted at different markets, the Polestar is almost wilfully impractical, the neat styling and sloped back leading to a compromised boot: the iX has a more useful, taller space even if the numbers in the spec panel say otherwise. The EX90 is positively Transit-like in comparison.

Both the 3 and the iX are on EV-only platforms – SPA2 features a relatively conventional skateboard battery in a steel monocoque, while the BMW channels the spirit of its ground-breaking i3 ancestor by going for a slightly more unusual approach. BMW calls it an aluminium spaceframe set-up, but this isn’t Stirling Moss in a bare-bones Lotus 18 – rather an extruded aluminium chassis with a ‘carbon cage’ of carbonfibre-reinforced plastic to give maximum stiffness and minimum weight. Just as well, when the thing weighs 2.5 tonnes even with all that tech.

Battery sizes are similar – Polestar’s nickel-manganese-cobalt CATL battery is the same as the Volvo’s, delivering 107kWh of usable juice and a range that gets to a claimed 383 miles, while BMW’s runs to 109kWh and 365 miles.

Real-world figures were disappointing for both, admittedly on a test loop that included plenty of stop-start driving. The Polestar 2’s efficiency has always felt undercooked and the 3 is no different, achieving 2.4 miles per kilowatt-hour, which equates to a 257-mile range, 15 miles short of the iX. Charging speeds are better in the Polestar: 250kW DC vs 200kW.

Inside the Polestar, you’re greeted by a typical 2020s interior with clean, digital living to the fore. There is a leather option (£5000, and the claim that it’s ‘animal welfare’ leather) but as standard it comes with a material that uses pine oil instead of PVC derived from fossil fuel. There’s even a large label on each front seat explaining as much. The seats don’t envelop you around the sides quite as much as the BMW’s but they give support in all the right places.

Unexpectedly, given BMW’s impressive history in this area, the Polestar’s cockpit feels the more driver-focused. You sit lower, the shoulder line is higher, and with the 3’s more traditional, sectioned-off driver’s area, it instantly feels as if you’re hunkered down and ready to go.

Sustainability is to the fore with both – Polestar goes to great lengths to highlight the 3’s ‘cradle to gate’ CO2 emissions of 24.7 tonnes, lower than the Polestar 2 when it launched. But BMW is similarly focused on clean production methods, using hydropower in its factory and, as with Polestar, fitting eco-friendly materials in the car. Both, for example, use recycled fishing nets in the carpets. Surely we’re getting to the point where fishermen could be charging a premium, given how many manufacturers are claiming to be stripping the world’s oceans of this rubbish.

The 3’s touchscreen is vast and dominating, with just about enough easy shortcuts to make daily driving bearable, albeit lacking the BMW’s iDrive system (which remains the driver interface that makes the best argument for touchscreen-dominated infotainment). It’s all Google-enabled, as with the 2 and indeed every current Volvo, so the basic principle of it will be familiar to anyone who’s been in one of those.

What’s not so familiar is the excellence of the Polestar’s audio equipment, at least if you splash out £5000 on the optional Plus pack. The Bowers & Wilkins set-up uses Dolby Atmos and, if you’re playing an Atmos-enabled track, is staggeringly clear and full of detail. The BMW has the same base system, but does without the Atmos tech, and you can tell the difference.

Both cars have all-wheel drive; the Polestar opting for twin permanently excited motors to power the axles (241bhp at the front, 268bhp at the rear; total output 483bhp) and the BMW the less conventional electrically excited units with 516bhp. The Polestar’s interesting bit, and trump card, lies towards the rear of the car: a mechanical BorgWarner differential. The crucial difference this brings is actively pushing the power to the outer wheel during cornering rather than using electronics to brake the inside wheel.

The 3 is unusual in this and it’s certainly a point of difference with the more vanilla approach of its non-identical twin, the Volvo EX90. It can also de-clutch entirely, and indeed does so when the 3 is cruising along; at those times, the 3 becomes front-wheel drive. Anyone looking to the Long Range Single Motor version that will arrive next year as a potential bargain option (it’s £69,900) should know that it won’t come with the trick diff. Pity.

The BMW does without any driving modes. After spending time prodding between the various settings on the Polestar and ending up back in the default middle settings for steering and ride, you can sympathise with that simpler approach. The exception on the Polestar is Performance mode, which gives a level of throttle response you don’t get with the default Range setting.

But this is quibbling. For a large, SUV-shaped EV, the Polestar 3 drives well. Despite the 2.5-tonne weight, it turns in with a satisfying degree of bite. By being aggressive with the steering and throttle, you can start to feel the BorgWarner diff tightening the line as you hit the apex, making the 3 a car that rewards in the style of a Porsche Macan rather than mimicking the more subdued attitude of the EX90.

When I drove the Volvo a few weeks ago, it proved to be an extremely comfortable and refined car, ticking a lot of Volvo boxes. But it was also very one-dimensional; there was no depth to the experience. The Polestar is very different. I wouldn’t go so far as to label it a drivers’ car in the style of a Porsche Taycan, but it’s definitely a car with a lot to offer the enthusiast. Although please can someone please find a way to make these electrically assisted steering systems feel more organic…

Don’t let all this praise for the Polestar mislead you into thinking BMW has forgotten how to make a good driver’s car. In fact, there’s one area where the German car is much better: ride quality. Both our test cars have air suspension (a £2k option on the BMW, and single-chamber where the Polestar is double-chamber) and similarly massive 22-inch wheels, which might lead you to expect them to be similar. But in reality, the 3 inherits some of the Polestar 2’s lumpier ride characteristics, picking out bumps the BMW manages to absorb.