At the risk of biased sounding, I have always cheered Polestar. This brand is known to win fans of gas cars, too, making Polestar2 one of the earliest reliable Tesla challengers, which is an electric sports sedan that remains a favorite of readers inside. For a while, it seemed like the Volvo spin-off really rests on something. The problem is that Polestar took too long to capitalize on its early success. China-made Polestar2 kept things under control for years, while tariffs, rising prices, delays to major new models, financial upheaval and executive turnover cost it. Finally, Polestar is now in comeback mode with 2 new models.
The first is the Polestar3, a premium electric crossover associated with the Volvo EX90, and the crossover placed as a luxury alternative to the Tesla model Y, it makes an obvious move This takes us to the Polestar4, and it's something really different. It is billed as an "SUV coupe", but in fact it is a tall sedan with a hatchback trunk. It gives you a lot of performance and admirable range. But it does not give you a rear window. Get a roof-mounted camera instead of a traditional rearview mirror. Polestar4 is an incredibly strange swing for a brand that is finally about to become mainstream. Polestar1 was a six-figure, hybrid sports coupe (and barely disguised Volvo) that did not last very long.
The Polestar5 is a grand tourer fighting a high-performance Porsche Tycoon. Polestar6 will be a 2-door convertible. And Polestar7 will be a competitor to the more mainstream price Tesla model Y. Frankly, it's probably the car it should have made before everyone else. But these cars have analogues and competitors in the market, electric or otherwise. P4 is hard to grasp. It is 9 inches long, 6 inches wide and a little taller than Polestar2. Maybe its shape is drawing comparisons with the Kia EV6, but in addition to the strangeness of the P4 it feels larger than its car in certain dimensions and somehow smaller overall, it is a really international machine designed and designed by the Swedes and made by the Chinese parent company and brand and built at the former Renault Samsung factory in South Korea. And finally, the Volvo equivalent without one.
No wonder it is a strange animal that defies the conventional automotive segment. But its specifications are solid. A 100 kilowatt-hour (usable) battery is standard across the lineup. Unlike the updated P3, the P4 can still be done with a 400-volt electrical architecture. The Polestar4 comes in a single-motor rear-wheel drive and a dual-motor all-wheel drive configuration, good for 310 and 280 miles of epa-rated range, respectively. You get a decent 272 hp and 6.9 seconds of zero-to-60mph time in a single-motor car. I offer a dash of 544 hp and 3.7 seconds to highway speed, but would spring for the dual-motor version. I don't care what Paul Star says. The P4 is a tall sedan, not an SUV. It is 3.5 inches shorter than model Y.
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Nevertheless, I like the size and shape of 4 in the real world. It feels like a sedan and drives, so it's refreshing. It is relatively low and wide, giving it an aggressive stance without eliminating visibility at all. Maybe the new Polestar5 Grand Tourer has a little better short claws, but the sleek silhouette, double-stacked headlamps, long hoods and shark-like noses all give this car a very unique vibe. The vibe is one thing, but the P4 is also really fun to drive. At 5,192 pounds, it's not as lightweight as its ev competitors. But it is stable, controlled and directed in the corner with very little body roll. Like my tester, I get good stuff here, such as continuously controlled active dampers and Brembo brakes in the performance pack.
For all the good qualities the Ev has, a lot of them I'm not looking for a good, tortuous backload. It's smooth and linear, dropping all its power in a violent and not sudden way. It continues the P2 mission that always felt to me like a car for the reformed Subaru WRX Brothers with climate guilt. (I mean it in a good way.You also get an adjustable one-pedal drive setting and the option to switch creeping on or off. The main drawback is that the ride is reduced, at least with the performance pack's 22-inch wheels and Pirelli P-Zero tires. The suspension is adjustable (this time from the screen, thankfully, unlike the physical adjustments in Polestar2), but even the softest settings don't help much.
The P4 is not as brutal as the great BMW M car of the European performance car, made by people who really do not understand what bad Americans are to keep their roads, but will feel the seams and potholes of the road. Otherwise, it is very comfortable with a loose seat of the kind that Volvo is better than almost everyone. It is surprisingly quiet and also insulated from the noise of the road. The Polestar5 may be the one laying lap times, but the Polestar4 is what you want for your cross-country drive. The interior materials are solid, high-quality and have a Scandinavian minimalist atmosphere without feeling cheap.
Oh, and the tester's optional 16-speaker Harman Kardon surround sound system makes a great soundtrack. I will cover the lack of a digital camera for the rear window and rearview mirror in a longer breakout. Polestar claims to provide a better view than a mirror. I also never felt claustrophobic in a cabin without a back window, but I occasionally, out of habit, back when behind me It is simply a unique choice of style and technology, and nothing more. It's here, for better or worse, that Polestar is clearly trying to run the Tesla playbook. If you're a big fan of physical buttons, this is not an EV for you. Save for a semi-handy volume knob that doubles as a play/pause button and some familiar steering wheel controls, and all its 15.4I some controls might be easy to use.
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Want to change your headlights settings? Press the car icon, then the exterior light, then select the one you need and check it with the button on the steering wheel. I hate this in Teslas and Rivians and I hate it here too. It is unnecessarily irritating to operate at speed. Still, it's a fairly robust software suite and thankfully quite dial-in. While Polestar shoppers may be wary after the p3 bug, P4 runs a completely different software stack — for me, it has proved to be stable and robust, albeit slightly quirky. I found the menu layout almost easy to figure out. But it has its quirks. The Polestar smartphone app often failed to respond to climate start or remote lock commands, even though I was sitting dozens of feet away in my driveway.
The screen never seemed to give an accurate temperature reading; one morning the car said it was 35 degrees. thirty-five! Readers, it has been in the single digits and lower teens in Upstate New York since about Thanksgiving. I would kill for 35 now. I almost broke my swimming trunk and started making margaritas when I saw it. Thankfully, P4 feels like it was created by people who have deployed anti-freeze measures since the dawn of humanity. The car handles itself well in winter. The heated seat and steering wheel have multiple settings, and the P4's heat pump puts it to work: the cabin is much better than the other EVs I've tested.
For the performance you get, 280 miles of EPA-rated range is pretty respectable. I also managed about 2.2 miles per kWh in this frozen weather — about average, probably a little better than my EV6 has been doing lately. P4 also provides estimates of dynamic (real-world) or certification ranges based on EPA figures, and I preferred the former. Let's say I did not come across any surprises. I hope the P4 comes with a native Tesla-style North American charging standard port, but if you have an adapter and access to the Tesla Supercharger network, that's not much of a problem. But my performance at Supcharger was weird. The maximum charging speed of the P4 is up to 200 kilowatts a bit overwhelming for its price class, I would say and my speed on the Tesla plug was everywhere, bouncing frequently between 89 kilowatts and 125 kilowatts at most, even if the battery was pre-adjusted.
I'd like to test it further, but my P4 tester took almost 14 minutes to go from 75% to 40% with a Tesla plug. Polestar claims a nominal time of 30-10% in 80 minutes, so it might work better in other settings. Still, it's far from the front of the pack these days.The single motor P4 starts from $56,400. The dual motor version brings things up to things $62,900. My car loaded as a press tester came with an electrochroamatic glass roof and Nappa leather the aforementioned stereo options, a performance pack and metallic paint. Total value stands as $80,800 not cheap. But I think it's a very reliable alternative to the BMW i4 or i5, and, in most respects, counting, I like this better. It also reminds me of Volkswagen ID.7. The United States does not get, but has more athletic ability. The downside is, at least in my brief experience, some technical issues that seem fixable with software updates, and potentially inconsistent DC fast charging performance.
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