Styling
Before we get onto the big talking point of the Polestar 4's looks, we'll start at the front of the car. The company says this is an SUV, but it doesn't give off the impression of being as such as you walk up to it. The 4 is undeniably long, at 4,840mm with a wheelbase one millimetre shy of three metres, but a height of just 1,534mm its stance is more car-like than towering - it's about as low as a
Cupra Formentor, another crossover which veers towards the car side of things.
The Polestar 4 has plenty of presence, though, because it has the futuristic-looking split headlights that will form the corporate appearance of future models from the Scandinavian outfit, as well as the smoothed-off and sleek front end of an EV, and a vaguely coupe-like form that features striking cut lines and scalloped-out shapes to give the car a healthy dollop of visual interest. It's certainly a car which draws attention out on the roads, although that's possibly currently due to its novelty, and we think it - like every other Polestar - is a good-looking thing. And then we come to the back of the vehicle.
It would appear a rear windscreen is a dealbreaker for some people, which makes the Polestar 4 contentious because it simply doesn't have one. To be fair, this design talking point doesn't feel as jarring in real life as you might first think, mainly because the panoramic roof of the 4 comes a long way back and is visible from the rear of the car, but it's ultimately something quite different in the automotive world. Rearwards visibility, in case you're wondering, is handled by a high-def camera mounted on the roof, which is said to be less susceptible to being obscured by rain and road spray due to its height, but it's an absolute given that if you buy a Polestar 4, you're inevitably going to be asked where the rear screen has gone. If that really bothers you, then yeah... dealbreaker, like we said.
Interior
The Polestar 4's cabin is sumptuous and lovely, yet with that stripped-back minimalism to the design that is uniquely Swedish. It's especially nice inside if you get the upholstery and parts of the door cards in a light colour to contrast the black upper sections of the well-built dashboard, while the materials used for the major touchpoints are quality too. That's despite the fact that, like the Polestar 3, much of what makes up the 4's interior is either made of recycled or recyclable materials, but the way they've been zhuzhed up by the company's interior designers is most commendable.
And sitting in the back is not a gloom-fest. The whole reason for deleting the rear windscreen is to move the rear structural beam of the roof backwards, which in turn makes the electrochromatic panoramic ceiling longer. So light floods into the back of the Polestar 4's cabin and it is no darker nor oppressive in the back than any other car - although we suspect the white leather in our test vehicle helped, which is why we doubly think it's the way to go when specifying up your 4's upholstery. The rear seats also recline, which is a nice touch to further reinforce the 'no glass at the back is good' subliminal messaging.
Back up front, the P4's cabin is noticeably button-light, which means most functions run through the central 15.4-inch landscape infotainment touchscreen with Google built-in. As we said in our recent review of the Polestar 3, this system works well enough and looks really sharp, but it's still a pity there's not a bit more physical switchgear for various key controls. Another difference to the 3 is that the 4's 10.2-inch instrument cluster is not mounted on the steering column itself, but instead is embedded into the upper fascia, while of course the interior 'mirror' is in fact a screen to show the feed from that rear-oriented camera on the roof. It can be flicked to a plain glass face, so that you can look at occupants in the rear seats (handy for parents with kids, or even just adults with mischievous friends for passengers), but most of the time it is displaying what the camera sees. To be fair, the footage shown feels organic and natural, rather than like some odd AI video juxtaposed with reality, so you don't miss a conventional interior mirror and up to this point, we can't really discern any major drawbacks of getting rid of the rear windscreen on the Polestar 4.
Practicality
That long wheelbase results in a generous amount of legroom for rear-seat passengers in the Polestar 4, and while headroom isn't exactly voluminous, there's more than enough of it on offer to ensure that taller people onboard won't be banging their heads on the glass ceiling. Also, on paper, the 4 has a usefully large boot - it's rated at 526-1,536 litres rears seats up/down (delete accordingly), although those numbers do include 31 litres of underfloor stowage. There's also another 15-litre covered cubby at the front of the car under the bonnet, so the 4 SUV scores strongly for overall practicality.
Performance
Like the other two existing models in Polestar's growing range of cars, the 4 comes with either one motor or two, and on the latter powertrain then buyers can choose to do without a Performance Pack or add it in. All P4s are Long Range cars with a bigger battery, though, in this instance a 100kWh unit with 94kWh of that usable, which results in a 367-mile maximum range for the Dual Motor.
Unlike with the Polestar 3, however, here the Performance Pack doesn't add any extra power or torque - it's simply a styling exercise, in the main, with 22-inch wheels included in the price along with the use of Swedish Gold for the brakes, seatbelts and tyre valve caps. There are some mechanical updates included, though, including four-piston Brembo brake callipers and some Polestar Engineered chassis tuning.
It's not like the Polestar 4 Dual Motor craves additional grunt, however. This is the most powerful car the company currently has on sale and the most accelerative in its (admittedly short) production history. The twin propulsion units make 200kW each, which works out as 544hp - and that, in turn, is enough to deliver 0-62mph in just 3.8 seconds. In a machine weighing the best part of 2.4 tonnes, that simple printed metric gives you some idea of just how
fast the Polestar 4 is.
Even in an age of mega-powered EVs, this Swedish machine feels one of the more brutal. You barely ever need much more than about a quarter-throttle to start picking up some serious roll-on acceleration, so two-lane-road overtakes and merging out into faster-flowing lanes of traffic on the motorway are generally both non-events. Flatten the right-hand pedal at your own (and your licence's) peril. Give the dual motors on the P4 free reign and this car will very quickly be nudging triple figures on the speedo, even if the top speed is limited to a modest-looking 124mph.
The more you stretch the Polestar's legs, though, the more you'll eat into range. But from our experience of the car on this drive, it looks mighty impressive for real-world usability. The quoted 367-mile maximum might not be a total pipe dream, because we got into the car with 87 per cent battery and an indicated DTE of 302 miles on the screen, and 85 rather hard-driven miles later, it was still saying it could go another 188 miles on the remaining 54 per cent. Our rudimentary maths therefore suggests we were getting three miles per kilowatt-hour out of the 4 during the trip; that would work out at a genuine 282 miles for 100 per cent, but of course you wouldn't drive a Polestar 4 as rapidly for as long as we did on the test, so 300-miles-plus seems genuinely achievable with regular use.
Maximum charging rates, incidentally, are 200kW DC and 22kW AC. A 10-80 per cent charge would take 30 minutes at the former speed, while 0-100 per cent would be done in 5.5 hours on the latter. More regular 11- and 7.4kW (AC) home chargers would need 11 and 17.5 hours respectively for a full top-up, however.
Ride & Handling
This is where the Polestar 4 isn't quite as impressive as the Polestar 3, weirdly enough. The 4 is ostensibly the sportier car, given its coupe shape, lighter weight and more potent dual-motor set-up, but it sits on the SEA chassis whereas the 3 is on SPA2. This means the Polestar 4 doesn't have fully adaptive air springs - it has semi-active suspension only instead - and there's no torque-vectoring dual-clutch rear axle either.
But it does still come on massive 20- to 22-inch wheels with a Polestar Engineered chassis tune as this flagship model, which results in a driving experience that is very good, if flawed in a few areas. So as satisfying as Polestar's steering calibration is, and as well-judged as the throttle and (regenerative) brake pedals feel underfoot, the 4 is best described in handling terms as immensely talented, yet not massively engaging. The body control is a little more bobbly in the 4 than it is in the bigger, heavier 3, while there's less feeling of chassis adjustability once the car is midway through and then exiting a corner. With those mammoth 544hp/686Nm reserves to call upon, along with oodles of grip and traction, there's little doubting the Polestar 4 is phenomenally quick point-to-point on a twisting road, and it's definitely enjoyable to a degree. But it's rarely thrilling.
And the payoff seems to be a lumpen ride. This semi-active suspension doesn't soak up the lumps and bumps, or indeed cater for the unsprung mass of a set of 22s, anything like as well as the Polestar 3's more advanced hardware. The result is that on the same sort of bouncy British B-roads, the Polestar 4 always feels that little more unsettled, while the comfort levels are frequently upset by thumps and bangs from all four corners of the car. In the wider scheme of things, the ride quality of the 4 is by no means bad - on smoother surfaces and at higher speeds, it's in fact excellent - but there are times where you just wish the Performance Pack had a plainer set of 20-inch rims with bulgier tyre-sidewalls on them. As a positive counterpoint, thanks to its slippery shape, upmarket aspirations and lack of a combustion engine, rolling refinement in the Polestar 4 is superb, aside from those times the wheels encounter a fairly sizeable imperfection in the road surface.
Value
As we said earlier, the 4 does not sit above the 3 in the Polestar hierarchy, but rather slots in between it and the 2. This makes the coupe-SUV about £10,000-£14,000 more expensive model-for-model than the latter, but also usefully around ten grand cheaper than the equivalent 3 with the same drivetrain, despite the fact the 4 is more powerful. As with the other Polestars, the P4 has a Single Motor Long Range entry level with 272hp for less than £60,000, but if you want the punch of the Dual Motor then prices kick off at just shy of £67,000 without options. The Performance Pack is precisely £4,000 so a 4 like our test car would have a figure beginning with a seven, with a few options pushing it up to £75,040 as here. At least the well-equipped Polestar 4 has those concept-car looks, a magnificent interior, the crushing performance and plenty of one-shot driving range to justify that lofty expense.
Verdict
Once you've got past the 'shock value' of the whole rear windscreen thing, the Polestar 4 is a highly talented EV. It has much going for it and the sheer speed it can summon up is almost worth the entry fee alone. For our money, we'd like it to ride with a little more good grace from time to time, while the adoption of some of the 3's fancier chassis tech might sharpen up the drive a little more. But those issues aside, this is another great product from Polestar and one that is sure to garner plenty of sales success for the company. One thing's for sure, we look forward to trying other derivatives of it soon to find out more about its character.
