Can Swedish EV specialist outwit Porsche with its big new SUV? Definitely maybe
FELIX PAGE @felix_page_
TESTED 19.3.24, HALLERED, SWEDEN ON SALE AUTUMN
spent much of my flight home from Gothenburg trying to cobble together some sort of Oasis-themed introduction to the Polestar 4, which in spite of its objectively compelling technical specification, striking form and futuristic cabin has come to be popularly known as simply “the car with no rear window”.
Polestar’s decision to omit the rear windscreen in favour of a digital ‘mirror’ – thereby negating the need to look back, in anger or otherwise – has provoked plenty of headlines and much intrigue.
However, the justification for the totally opaque stern section is twofold, explains head of design Maximilian Missoni: it allows the rear header rail to be shunted backwards, freeing up more head room for back-seat passengers while allowing a slipperier, coupé-style roofline, and the camera actually offers a more expansive field of rearward vision than such cars traditionally have. Plus, it’s sheltered from the rain so accumulates far less road grime than a big pane of glass.
“It’s not for the headline,” Missoni says firmly. “It’s not a gimmick; it’s really trying to solve the problem.”
Perhaps it suffices to say that after 30 seconds at the wheel, I had forgotten all about it, and the extra head room and subtle ambient lighting behind the headrests make it all but unnoticeable for rear-seat passengers too. It’s less ‘don’t look back in anger’ and more just ‘roll with it’. Done with the references? Good, because it was all starting to get a bit tenuous around the ‘she’s electric’ point.
The 4 sits between the 2 and the 3, because of course it does. Rather like the 2, it isn’t recognisable as an SUV, and nor does it sit quite close enough to the ground to be labelled a saloon, so it’s difficult to immediately pigeonhole. But its £60k starting price and 4.8-metre length line it up neatly to contend with the coming Porsche Macan Electric, and so I imagine it will also be cross-shopped with the likes of the Audi Q6 E-tron, BMW iX3 and Mercedes-Benz EQE SUV.
The 4 is Polestar’s first car to be based on parent company Geely’s SEA modular platform, which means it’s also the Swedish brand’s first model not to use Volvo-derived underpinnings, as do the 2 and 3.
SEA is more a catch-all name for a family of structures than a single modular one, so the 4 is only partly related to the smal
