POLESTAR’S journey has been far from smooth.
The special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) went public in mid-2022, and looked a promising proposition, backed by Geely’s Volvo. The road map didn’t quite match reality as stalled deliveries and heavy losses hampered its progress.
While Polestar makes most of its cars in China, the current mood to raise tariffs on Chinese-made EVs in the US and Europe is forcing the brand to look to activate new plants in US and South Korea. That could potentially raise the price of the cars.
But while the business may be on a bumpy path for now, the cars have been well-regarded.
No Looking Back
The Polestar 2 fastback caught the eye, while the Polestar 3 SUV and Polestar 4 SUV Coupe have balanced practicality with clean Scandinavian design, delivering not just an electric car, but one with an appropriately electrifying performance to match its *$370K price tag.
That’s certainly the case with the Polestar 4, the current leader of the pack, which drives with a sense of purpose to shake any fixed ideas of what a car must have.
For instance, it doesn’t have a rear windscreen. A sacrifice to the lords of design and style. To give this SUV a coupe feel, the back needed a serious slope. In order to achieve that, the rear windshield was ditched, replaced by a camera that feeds a live image to the monitor that now serves as a rearview mirror for the driver.
Interesting idea, but a bit disconcerting for the driver. It requires some visual adjustment to take in what is on the monitor versus a mirror. And in low light conditions, the image is sometimes poor.
When you’re parking, things at the back seem larger and nearer than they actually are. And all it requires is the shadow of a doubt for the brake to kick in, making parking a longer than necessary affair.
Best Seats In The House
But the trade off is you have nice adjustable seats in the back with room to that can recline, and with the basic control panel, lets you get quite comfortable.
In the front, like all cars these days, a screen dominates proceedings. All that’s left to fiddle with is a knob that controls your music pumped through the Harman Kardon system, which you can also control on your steering wheel. And there’s a place to charge your phone wirelessly.
Everything else involves a hand-eye coordinated jab at the screen. Or you could “Hey Google” a request and hope your command is clear enough.
Driven By Options
In this case, a functional 15” display presents lots of options for you to personalise your settings, to a great degree of detail. You can decide which wing mirror you’d like tilted down when reversing.
The colour of the ambient lighting is an out-of-this-world experience, following our solar system. You can turn on creep, decide if you wish to have blind spot information and speed limit warnings, set up how your sound system will deliver the music, open your glove compartment, determine if you want one-pedal drive, and much more.
The problem with having everything on a screen is that you have to be sure about how you want the car set up before driving off.
It’s inconvenient, and dicy, trying to make changes on the fly.
Driving Styles
Single pedal driving is always going to deliver a jerky drive in built-up cities. The moment you lift in your foot off the accelerator the car decelerates, resulting in a lurching motion. Best to shut that off so you get a smoother ride, more akin to an ICE machine.
In driving the Polestar 4, I sense the gap between EVs and the internal combustion engine (ICE) being bridged, though never completely. There’s a bit more feel to the car, in part because of the acoustics but also the driving characteristics on offer.
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The Long Range Dual Motor pumps out 400kW of power and 686Nm of torque, and with all wheels spinning, it’ll take you from standstill to 100kmh in 3.8 seconds. And it’s a sweet rush as the road is gobbled up even as you feel comfortable and cocooned in acoustic calm.
With a range of 590km, and an app that lets you plot your stops to juice up and refresh along the way, you could make a comfortable run up north and back without having to contend with range anxiety.
RATING
Polestar 4 Long Range Dual Motor
Styling: 8/10
Interior: 7/10
Connectivity: 7/10
Ride: 8.5/10
Handling: 8/10
Power: 9/10
Overall: 8/10
*Please reconfirm price with dealer.
Read more STORM-ASIA car reviews HERE.
