Until now, Polestar has been something of an iconoclastic brand.
Having grown into its own self, having started out as a high-performance offshoot of Volvo, Polestar has been through a difficult adolescence, making cars that are genuinely impressive – the 2, 3, 4, and the new ultra-fast 5 saloon – but equally cars that are sometimes a bit too quirky for the mainstream – the 2, 3, 4, and the new ultra-fast 5 saloon.
Hitherto, Polestar has been the brand you’ve gone for if what you wanted was a compact sports saloon with the ride height of a crossover (that’s the 2), or a large SUV with a low roof and a surprisingly small boot (that’s the 3), or a halfway house between an SUV and a sports saloon with no rear window (the 4).
The low-slung, sleek 5 saloon is arguably Polestar’s most conventional car to date, and a truly gorgeous thing. But it’s aiming at a staggeringly slim slice of the market: those people who want a fast, capable, expensive electric saloon but who have decided that the Porsche Taycan isn’t quite right for them.
So now, here comes the Polestar 4 SUV, and the rather predictable name is applied to a generally quite predictable car. It’s built on the same bones as the lowslung Polestar 4 but is taller, more practical, and actually comes with rear glass as standard.
Polestar’s chief executive, Michael Lohscheller (formerly the head of Opel), said: “Polestar 4 SUV broadens the appeal of our most successful model and extends our product offering in one of the industry’s most important segments. With more space, more utility and more opportunities for adventure, it stays true to the design, technology and driving experience that define Polestar. Production has started in Busan, South Korea, and the first shipment of cars is on the way to our customers.”
At the front, the Polestar 4 SUV is clearly related to the existing 4 – the same “twin blade” headlights which look like a neat pair of blades from ice skates, the same needle-style nose, and the same illuminated Polestar badge. Of course, this being a taller SUV, that nose rises slightly more sharply towards the windscreen.
Behind that, the Polestar 4 SUV’s shape is pretty conventional, but executed as we have come to expect from Polestar, with a sense of deliberate sharpness and a lack of needless detail. It’s clean, neat, and handsome, just not especially memorable.
Neither is the interior especially different. There’s the same “negative space” that Polestar applies to most of its models, which does away with large, hefty panels in the cabin and instead uses concave, scooped-out surfaces backlit with subtle mood lighting instead.
The same big landscape-style touchscreen is on the dashboard, and the same slim driver’s display behind the steering wheel. There’s also the same lack of buttons, but that sadly seems to be the way of the world, at least until the new Chinese government rules kick in from January.
Car review: The Polestar 4 is simply stellar when it comes to comfort
Most of the materials used in the cabin are made from recycled stuff, including PET plastic bottles reworked into seat fabric. If you really want leather it’s an expensive cost option, though it comes from Bridge of Weir in Scotland, which meets some of the highest standards around for having happy herds of cows (well, happy until they’re turned into burgers and seat covers anyway).
For the Audiophiles there’s a 12-speaker 1,400 Watt Harmon Kardon sound system. This Polestar comes with a regular rear-view mirror, but you can still have the digital mirror of its lower-slung brother if you fancy.
Practicality is clearly better than in the standard Polestar 4. That car doesn’t lack for rear legroom, but the taller bodywork of this 4 SUV allows for more headroom – 2.5 centimetres more – and a less laid-back seating position.
There’s a standard panoramic glass roof, which blocks more than 99 per cent of UV rays and which dims electrically. Above that is a pair of roof bars which can handle a 100kg load. The boot, surprisingly, is only fractionally bigger. Measured up to the luggage cover, there’s 530 litres of capacity, which is a gain of a mere four litres compared to the standard Polestar 4. True, if you fold down the back seats and load to the roof, there’s more space again – up to 1,665 litres – but even that is only a marginal gain compared to the existing model.
What, then, is the point of the Polestar 4 SUV? Well, arguably, as above, it’s to de-weird the Polestar lineup a bit and make it more in keeping with the expectations of more customers, even at the risk of putting the car into direct competition with the new Volvo EX60.
Mind you, the Polestar 4 SUV can’t match its cousin from Volvo for range. The single-motor, rear-drive version with 272hp goes for a claimed 630km on a full charge of its 100kWh battery, while the twin-motor 544hp version goes for 600km.
Decent – but no longer exceptional. Charging power is up to 200kW on DC fast chargers, and 22kW on AC slow chargers, and you can use it as a mobile power bank with 3.3kW of external power for other devices.
If you want to sleep in your Polestar 4 SUV, there’s the Camping mode, which gives you access to all the touchscreen functionality and the internal and external power sources when you’re parked up. Not something that many Irish buyers will bother with, we suspect.
Probably of more use is a 2,000kg towing weight. Will a lower lifetime CO² figure sway buyers? Polestar claims that the 4 SUV’s total “cradle to grave” emissions are estimated at 21 tonnes of CO², which would make it one of the most carbon-efficient whole-life cars around. Finding a buyer who cares enough about such things will be the challenge.
Google’s Gemini AI assistant is built into the dash, but we suspect keen drivers might be more interested in the additions of the Performance Pack version, which includes recalibrated active dampers from ZF, high-performance Brembo brakes with callipers in Swedish gold colour, and a new 22-inch wheel equipped with Pirelli P Zero performance tyres.
How much for all this? Actually, the Polestar 4 SUV is pretty competitively priced, especially if you include the likes of the BMW iX3 and Mercedes GLC electric as rivals.
Irish prices for the Polestar 4 SUV start at €56,690 for single-motor variants and at €66,690 for dual-motor variants. The Polestar 4 SUV with Performance pack is available from €79,490. All prices exclude delivery and related charges, of course.
What remains to be seen now is where Polestar goes from here. Banished from the US market recently because of its Chinese ownership (even though Volvo has not been chucked out and is part of the same Chinese Geely group) Polestar could really do with a hit in Europe to underpin its business case, which has wavered in spite of it making some truly excellent cars. Will going more conventional be the secret to Polestar’s success? Or does that just leave it sitting too close to Volvo?