Polestar 4: What’s The Verdict?

21 hours ago

Polestar 4, the brand’s first SUV coupé, is put through its impressive paces

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With a range of 370 miles, that’s a mighty distance before you need a leg stretch, says Simon de Burton. He reviews the Polestar 4.

Review: Polestar 4

I’m just back from Austria where something strange happened – I drove an electric car without realising it.

That’s not to say I didn’t know I was driving, but that it only occurred to me afterwards that none of the usual negative thoughts about being behind the wheel of an EV (that’s ‘electric vehicle’, you know) had entered my head while out on the road.

If you had asked me whether or not that was possible a week before, I would have said ‘no way’. No way could I drive an EV without missing the sound and throb of a combustion engine, the interaction of changing gear in a ‘manual’ and the freedom of always being able to find somewhere to ‘fill up’. But the Polestar 4 had me well and truly tricked.

This latest model from Volvo’s sister brand (both of which are these days owned by giant Chinese conglomerate Geely) is described as an ‘SUV Coupe’ and is long, sleek and different. It’s different for several reasons, not least because it has no rear window – Polestar says deleting it makes for greater passenger headroom, and has compensated for not being able to see ‘out the back’ by turning the driver’s mirror into a high-definition television screen connected to similarly high-definition cameras. Lots of pundits say it’s not the same as having a real glass mirror but, Luddite though I am, I thought it worked and worked well.

The Polestar 4 is also different in having waste-free seat upholstery made-to-size from recycled plastic bottles, and ambient lighting featuring colours based on the planets of the solar system (be prepared for immature passengers demanding to see what Uranus is like). It also has an ‘electrochromic’ glass roof that uses liquid crystals to enable it to instantly change from clear to opaque in seconds, either to let light in or to reduce glare.

Yet what’s most different about the 4 is that, unlike other electric cars I’ve driven, there was no sense of the dreaded ‘range anxiety’ because (for once) it soon became apparent that the distance Polestar claims it’s possible to travel between charges is more or less spot-on.

The version I drove was the long-range, dual motor (one at the front, one at the back) which has a claimed autonomy of 590km – almost 370 miles – which, even if it were 20 per cent optimistic (which it isn’t) allows the Polestar 4 to be driven non-stop until most of us are more than ready for a leg stretch.

One of the many apps on the large, landscape format ‘infotainment’ screen will, of course, guide you to a charger and you’ll be back on the road at 80 per cent capacity in half an hour – or, as electric car types like to say, ‘while you have a coffee’ (which seems to be compulsory in the EV world, regardless of whether or not you even drink coffee).

The ‘4’ also impressed with its performance. If you still think of electric cars as being along the lines of the ‘G-Wiz’ of the early 2000s – those micro cars that wheezed to a max of 50mph – think again. The dual motor Polestar 4 is startlingly quick, hitting 60mph from standstill in less than four seconds – which puts it well into Porsche 911 territory in terms of acceleration, although top speed is limited to (a still licence-losing) 124mph.

What also surprised me about the car is the way it’s put together – which is extremely well. As the owner of an old Porsche, I’ve always loved the way my car feels as though it’s hewn from a solid lump of metal, meaning no rattles or creaks and a confidence-inspiring feeling of solidity on the road. To my initial annoyance, the Polestar 4 felt just the same – although much of its invincible demeanour is down to the fact that, thanks in part to the weight of the 100 kw battery pack, tips the scales at a whopping 2.5 tons, which is about the same as a Rolls-Royce Phantom.

Not that I noticed the Polestar’s weight problem on the road, especially in the version with high-tech ‘adaptive dampers’ that took out any signs of skittishness and guaranteed smooth passage across bumps, ruts and potholes (Austrian ones, at least – we can’t vouch for how it handles the more impressive irregularities of the King’s highways over here….).

It’s a practical car, too, both in terms of being a genuine five-seater (the back ones are nicely reclined for comfort) and because you can fold the rear seats flat to create more than 1,530 litres of load space.

Normally configured, you still get a useful 526 litres, plus a 31-litre storage bin beneath in which to stow the car’s mighty charging cable and another 15 litres up front (what they call a ‘frunk’) , so enough for a decent bag of shopping.

So the Polestar 4 is practical, comfortable, rapid, good-looking and will get you a decent distance on a charge. But only when we took advantage of the Austrian winter to go crunching through the landscape on snow-shoes did I appreciate the most obvious aspect of the 4. While snowshoeing is surprisingly noisy, the Polestar is eerily quiet…