Styling
Polestar has pulled off a blinder with the 5, because the production version looks almost identical to the Precept concept unveiled in 2020. All dramatic proportions and looking otherwordly sitting on its exquisite 22-inch wheels (£3,200, 21s as standard), our only complaints with the P5's fabulous aesthetic are that it idiosyncratically has no rear windscreen, like the smaller
Polestar 4, and it's only available in four monochrome paints - when a nice blue, green, red or even gold would suit it down to the ground. Aside from those observations, it's easily this company's most gobsmacking creation since the slinky
Polestar 1. Kudos, also, to Polestar's UK PR team, which has put the private plate PS05 UFO onto one of its demo cars; nothing could be more apt.
Interior
The interior of the Polestar 5 is beautifully appointed and comes with some sustainably sourced materials in some places to lower the car's cradle-to-grave carbon footprint. These include B Comp, a hemp-based material said to be as strong and durable as carbon fibre, for the seatbacks and inside of the bootlid, and then Ultra-Silent fabric for all the front sound-deadening.
Yes, spec it in the charcoal finish and the interior can be dour for ambience, but there's a lovely light-leather option which lifts the piece, while the Performance gets full Swedish Gold seatbelts.
The infotainment, meanwhile, is presented on a 14.5-inch portrait touchscreen and it all works well, although too much is run through it and the haptic buttons on the 5's steering are, once again, inexplicably unmarked. Also, adjusting the steering column and door mirrors via the infotainment on any car ought to be illegal; it's like the Polestar is three highly affordable bits of switchgear away from being spot-on within.
Practicality
The high-tech armrest in the rear of the Polestar 5 folds up to form an occasional-use 'jump-seat', which sits forward of the two fully sculpted back chairs. Still, best to think of the Swedish EV as a four-seater rather than a full five, and moving rewards the lack of a back windscreen is said to improve boot space. We'd say 451 litres as a result isn't incredible, but there is a very useful under-floor storage zone of 73 litres back there, as well as another 62-litre storage cubby under the Polestar's flowing bonnet.
Performance
You can choose from 'stupendously fast' or '[expletive deleted] fast' versions of the Polestar 5 from launch, both utilising twin electric motors for all-wheel drive and a 106kWh usable NMC battery pack. The opening gambit is the Dual Motor, with 748hp and a claimed 421-mile range, but this Performance offers astounding, well, Performance.
It has fully 884hp and 1,015Nm, and you don't need it in any daft drive mode to access those outputs. What's so brilliant about it, though, is that there's the tiniest trace of 'bleed-in' to the throttle response, so instead of the full torque output hitting you square in the chest when you deploy full acceleration and thus making you and all your occupants feel nauseated/nauseous (accordingly), the acceleration is instead organic and wonderful.
And utterly relentless. The 5 Performance pulls hard well into deeply illegal speeds and turns every single half-overtaking opportunity on give-and-take B-roads into a drama-free process. It is fabulous to drive, with whopping, amazingly judged 400mm front/370mm rear Brembo brake discs ensuring the Polestar is almost as good at rapidly decelerating as it is speeding up like it has just gone into warp.
You, er, won't get nearly 350 miles from the Performance if you work deep into its throttle on a regular basis. We were enjoying it on some sensational roads on the English-Scottish borders and getting just 1.7 miles/kWh from it. That's OTT consumption due to our driving style, but even a much gentler-driven pootle in a Dual Motor later in the day only elicited 2.5 miles/kWh. You're therefore looking at a realistic real-world range of about 250-270 miles to a charge.
Ride & Handling
The Polestar 5 Dual Motor is passively sprung, while the Performance comes on MagneRide adaptive dampers. From our back-to-back experience, it's the Performance which is the clear dynamic winner.
It's not that the Dual Motor is bad, but it doesn't have the same effortless grace at covering off woeful road surfaces as the Performance does, while in the corners there is more body movement too, and more sense that you're trying to heft 2.5 tonnes of prime Scandi tank into shape.
The Performance, though, is comprehensively majestic, a fluid delight from start to finish. Simply epic ride comfort and rolling refinement at all conceivable road speeds and in all conditions, and phenomenal body/wheel control with just the right amount of informative squidge without becoming excessively restless on its suspension, make for a devastatingly talented long-distance GT.
It doesn't even need rear-axle steering for its immaculate agility, and we can't honestly think of many luxury cruisers with a sporting angle we've driven that are as splendid as the P5 Performance. It's so good, in fact, that we think it might even dynamically outshine the Porsche Taycan, even if its (excellent) steering isn't quite operating at the same level as the German car's helm.
Value
We got a lot of flak on social media when we listed the £105,000 price of the Polestar 5 Performance, with many saying it was overpriced. It's not; in fact, it's a bargain.
The 5 range begins with the £89,500 Dual Motor (748hp). A basic 435hp single-motor
Porsche Taycan is £88,400, and to match the Performance's 884hp then you'd need the
Turbo at a minimum £135,200.
Moving to the Audi e-tron GT, it starts at £88,605 for a
quattro (585hp), but the 857hp RS e-tron GT is £126,475, while if you want to eclipse the Polestar you'll need the
925hp (lower-case) performance variant of the Audi at an astonishing £167,425.
Even the
Lotus Emeya kicks off at £84,990 for a 603hp 600, but the 918hp 900 Sport is again considerably dearer than the Polestar, at £129,990 before options.
The 5 is therefore a sizeable £20,000-£30,000 cheaper than any of its comparable equivalents, while the standard equipment list is extremely generous on the Polestar. And all of these top-end, four-door EVs are going to depreciate savagely, before you single the Swedish machine out as some kind of special case in this regard.
Verdict
The Polestar 5 is slightly too touchscreen-obsessed for its own good, plus it is possibly a set of physical climate controls, a mirror-adjusting stalk and a steering-column knob away from true greatness. It's also a shame you need the £15,400-dearer Performance to get the absolute best from it, and then if you enjoy said 'absolute best', you're not going to get anything like 347 miles from the car to a charge.
Otherwise, the P5P is a fantastic electric GT, operating at the very apogee of its parent manufacturer's know-how. In fact, we think it's the finest car of its type on the market right now. Yep, better than the Taycan and e-tron GT.
