Polestar 4 Review 2024
Written by Ivan Aistrop
Quick overview
Pros
- Looks utterly fantastic
- Good practicality and quality
- Pleasant to drive
Cons
- Infotainment system is very complicated
- Lack of rear window might take getting used to
- Not a cheap car
Overall verdict on the Polestar 4
"New Polestars are a bit like buses, but not in the way you might be thinking. You see, since the brand was launched with the Polestar 1 in 2019, and followed up with the Polestar 2 in 2020, things have been extremely quiet for the Swedish/Chinese firm on the new model front. Then, four years later, two come along at once."
Yep, in the UK, the brand’s two new SUV models, the Polestar 3 and Polestar 4, arrived at pretty much the same time. Which makes the firm’s explanation of its rather confusing naming convention all the more hard to swallow. The bigger the number in a car’s name, the bigger the car, right? Well, that’s the case with most manufacturers, certainly, but Polestar does things chronologically. So, the Polestar 4 is actually slightly smaller than the 3 despite what convention would suggest, and although the two cars arrived in the UK at the same time, things are that way around because the Polestar 3 had its global reveal before the 4. Confused? We don’t blame you.
Anyway, back to the Polestar 4 specifically. This is a large, luxurious coupe SUV that’s designed to be the electric performance brand’s sportiest car to date. And it certainly looks it, with theatrically swooping lines and aggressive details that deliver proper visual drama. Climb inside, and you’ll find Polestar’s trademark minimalistic design and lots of tech, along with impressive space and practicality, and an impressively plush feel.
Surprisingly, given that there’s only a few millimetres between them in size, the Polestar 3 and the Polestar 4 use different platforms. While the former shares the Volvo EX90’s SPA2 platform, the latter uses an extended version of parent company Geely’s SEA platform, which also underpins cars such as the Volvo EX30 and Smart #3. The driving experience of the two Polestar models is rather different as a result, but we think the 4 has precisely the character that Polestar was aiming for, with sharp handling and direct steering, allied to a reasonably forgiving ride.
Two powertrain options are offered, a Single Motor version with 272PS and a range of 385 miles, while the Twin Motor variant hikes power to 544PS, but range drops to 367 miles.
Is the Polestar 4 right for you?
If you’re looking for a super-stylish electric car, and you fancy something a bit different to the norm, then there’s a heck of a lot to like about the Polestar 4. Its handsomely striking looks are complimented by the Polestar brand’s stylish and unconventional image, and if you don’t get bored with explaining what it is to people all the time, then you’ll most likely find that individuality appealing.
What's the best Polestar 4 model/engine to choose?
Having tried both the Single and Dual Motor versions, we reckon the Single is plenty fast enough to suit most buyers while delivering a significant purchase advantage and providing slightly more range. Plus, you’re still getting the Polestar 4’s theatrical looks, plush interior and generous equipment. That said, we wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to go the whole hog and go for the super-fast Twin Motor version.
What other cars are similar to the Polestar 4?
That’s a tremendous question, and the answer will likely depend on whether you agree with Polestar’s assertion that the Polestar 4 is an SUV. If you do, then a Porsche Macan could be seen as a worthy alternative, while if you don’t, then a Taycan might be a more appropriate rival. One thing is for sure: prestige rivals such as Audi, BMW and Mercedes have no shortage of all-electric models on offer, in all sorts of body styles, depending on which way you see it.
Comfort and design: Polestar 4 interior
"The interior design of the 4 is typically Polestar, which is to say it’s about as minimalist as you can get. Aside from some electric window switches and a volume knob, you’ll see virtually no physical switchgear."
This means that pretty much all other functions have to be operated through the touchscreen infotainment system, and we’ll wait until the infotainment section of this review to talk about the effect this has on ergonomics. We will say at this point, however, that the interior does look very smart and stylish as a result.
Seats have been a Volvo strong point for many years, and thankfully, Polestar has also benefited from that experience. The chairs are supportive in all the right places, so you can drive long distances without aches and pains setting in. Mercifully, there are electric seat adjusters on the side of the front seats, which allow you to find a comfy position quickly and easily. In the bigger Polestar 3, meanwhile, you adjust your chair through the touchscreen, which is ridiculously distracting and takes a ridiculously long time.
One of the more curious features you’ll notice about the Polestar 4 is that it has no rear window. It’s been sacrificed so that the car’s designers could achieve a swish coupe-like look without decimating rear headroom.
As a result, a traditional rear-view mirror wouldn’t be of much use to you, and instead you get a small screen that looks just like a regular rear-view, but which displays a live feed from a rear-facing camera mounted on the roof. When parking, meanwhile, you have 360-degree cameras and sensors to show you any obstacles around you. It all feels a little odd at first, but it doesn’t take long to get used to.
Quality and finish
It’s not just the minimalist design that makes the Polestar 4’s interior feel stylish and sophisticated: the materials help on that score, too. All the surfaces and textures you feel have a plush finish, and the way everything is assembled feels impressively solid. And that’s despite many of these materials having had a previous life: lots of the plastics, fabrics and carpets used are recycled from a variety of sources, including plastic water bottles and reclaimed fishing nets. Specify the optional Nappa leather pack, and your upholstery is also animal welfare-secured.
Infotainment: Touchscreen, USB, nav and stereo in the Polestar 4
Like we said earlier, Polestar’s minimalist interior design has seen the purging of almost all physical switchgear from the cabin, meaning that pretty much all of the car’s functions have to be operated through the large 15.4-inch landscape-orientated infotainment touchscreen. This is mounted on the centre of the dashboard, and has all the regular infotainment functionality you expect, such as Android Auto, Apple CarPlay, Bluetooth, and DAB radio. Wireless phone charging and four USB-C ports (two up front, two in the back) are also provided, along with a 10.2-inch screen behind the steering wheel to serve as your driving instruments, and another touchscreen in the back seats to give those passengers control over media and climate functions.
The operating system that powers the Polestar 4's infotainment has been co-developed with Google, which brings a number of benefits. The navigation is based on Google Maps, you have Google Assistant voice control, and built-in Google Play store means you can download a variety of different apps directly onto the system. There’s also no doubting that the whole thing looks very cool, with stylish and sophisticated graphics, smooth screen transitions and a generally slick feel. And, navigating the complex system is made slightly easier by the fact that you never have to scroll up and down menus, or swipe between them.
That’s not to say it’s easy, though: far from it. There are just so many different menus, widgets and screen layout that you just can’t help but get lost, and on an irritatingly regular basis. Trying to find a minor function is proper needle/haystack territory, and you’ll likely try four or five menus before you eventually find it, all while your attention is being diverted from the road ahead. The screen sensitivity isn’t what it might be, either, so once you finally find the on-screen icon you’re looking for, it might take several jabs of your finger before your input registers.
Space and practicality: Polestar 4 boot space
The Polestar 4 might be smaller than the range-topping 3, but there really isn’t much in it, so this is still a very large car. In terms of dimensions, it’s 4,840mm long, 2,139mm wide (including door mirrors) and 1,534mm tall, while the wheelbase stands at 2,999mm.
Like we said earlier, Polestar’s designers decided to do away with a rear window on the Polestar 4, so that they could achieve the theatrical coupe-like roofline, and maximise rear headroom at the same time. With no glazing to accommodate, they’ve been able to push the structural parts of the rood further back towards the very rear of the car, so that the full-length panoramic glass roof extends over the heads of the rear-seat passengers.
Between the clever design and the enormous proportions of the car, the Polestar 4 feels like a very roomy car. Headroom is generous in any of the five seats, while legroom is absolutely vast all-round, too. The cabin’s impressive width also means that three burly passengers will fit comfortably along the rear bench, helped further by well sculpted seats and a perfectly flat floor in the rear.
The boot is usefully large, too, with 526 litres of space on offer, 31 litres of which comes in the form of an underfloor compartment. This can be used to store your cables, or you could choose to keep those in the 15-litre ‘frunk’ compartment under the bonnet.
Drop the 60/40 split rear seats down, and a total of 1,536 litres of loadspace is freed up. The folded backrests lie flat and sit flush with the boot floor, too, so the load area you get has no steps or slopes, which is handy. There is a small load lip to negotiate at the entrance of the boot, though.
Handling and ride quality: What is the Polestar 4 like to drive?
"Precisely how your Polestar 4 behaves on the road will depend on whether you go for the Single Motor version or the Twin Motor version, and that’s because there are more differences between the two than just the amount of power sources on board and the amount of horsepower they develop."
The key difference is that the Single Motor has passive suspension dampers as standard, while the Twin Motor has electronically adaptive ones. There’s also a slight difference in weight distribution between the two cars: it’s 50/50 on the Twin Motor, while on the Single Motor, it’s 48% at the front and 52% at the rear.
On the Single Motor variant, the suspension strikes a really good balance between comfort and control, with enough pliancy to keep things feeling comfortable and sophisticated, but enough firmness to keep body movement well tied down and deliver the feeling of involvement that’s utterly appropriate given the car’s sporting pretensions.
Grip levels feel more or less unshakeable, giving you the confidence to push the car hard through bends, while the steering reacts quickly and accurately to your inputs, and provides a decent amount of feedback as it does so. Unlike many EVs, you don’t get that nose-heavy feeling when you’re hard on the brakes, either, which helps the car flow from bend to bend even more cleanly. It’s a very rewarding car to thread along a challenging road, but it’s also reasonably comfortable on lumpy urban surfaces, and feels steady and solid on the motorway.
The adaptive setup on the Dual Motor car has impressive bandwidth, but generally, on the test car we tried with the Performance pack (which adds further chassis tuning), the Firm mode proved too harsh on typical British road surfaces. In Firm, The car is jostled around too much, so for sportier driving, you’re better off using the middle ‘Nimble’ setting, which strikes a good compromise between comfort and composure. That said, the body roll in the ‘Standard’ mode is far from excessive.
What motors and batteries are available in the Polestar 4?
As we’ve said, the Polestar 4 comes in two rather different forms. The Single Motor variant kicks off the range, and as the name suggests, this has a single electric motor on the rear axle putting out 272PS, and this allows the car to power up to 62mph from a standing start in 7.1 seconds.
The Dual Motor variant ups the ante quite considerably in terms of raw power output. This gets a second electric motor to power the front axle, giving you four-wheel drive, and hiking the combined power output up to a truly stonking 544PS. This cuts the 0-62mph sprint time down to just 3.8 seconds. In both cars, power is stored in a huge 100kWh battery (that’s the nominal capacity, while the usable capacity is 94kWh).
We reckon the Single Motor variant will be plenty brisk enough for most. Okay, so it doesn’t give you that explosive off-the-mark acceleration that you get from some electric cars, but it still pulls away very rapidly indeed - it feels more rapid than its 0-62mph sprint time suggests, in fact - and it generally feels quick enough so as not to betray the car’s otherwise sporty feel.
Like with many electric cars, the level of acceleration you feel when already on the move wanes the faster you go, but it always feels muscular enough to cope with any given driving situation.
If you do want that stronger on-the-move urge, or that organ-rearranging off-the-mark acceleration, we can confirm the Dual Motor version definitely provides that. Almost to the point of excess - you’ll be arriving at the national speed limit seriously quickly, and if you’ve put your phone on the wireless charging pad, you can expect it to make a dramatic airborne departure.
It’s a seriously rapid car, with a sharp, aggressive power delivery in the Performance mode, which ensures both motors are operating. In Range mode, the front motor disengages, and the throttle response becomes softer, so that’s how you’ll want the car set most of the time.
The Range mode’s motor disengaging function means opting for a Dual Motor Polestar 4 only slightly affects how far you can go on a single charge. The official range figure drops by just 13 miles relative to the Single motor, giving a new and still very impressive figure of 367 miles. The extra motor makes a big difference to the price, however, with the Dual coming in at £7,700 more than the Single. The Performance pack found on the model we tested adds a further £4,000, pushing the total price beyond £70,000.
Maximum electric range in the Polestar 4
A full charge of the 4’s massive 100kWh battery will take you 385 miles in the Long Range Single Motor car, according to official WLTP combined figures. The Long Range Dual Motor, meanwhile, will take you 367 miles on the same charge, according to the same figures.
As ever, though, don’t rely on getting those precise numbers in the real world. Long motorway journeys will see a drastic drop-off in the range you can achieve, and so will cold weather.
Refinement and noise levels
As you’d probably expect from a premium-badged electric car - no matter how performance-focused it is - refinement is a major strong point. The car unfurls its prodigious pace accompanied by an almost non-existent soundtrack, with barely a peep to be heard from the drive motor, while other sources of exterior noise are also very well suppressed at all times. This is a very peaceful and serene way of getting around no matter what your surroundings.
Safety equipment: How safe is the Polestar 4?
The Polestar 4 hasn’t been tested by Euro NCAP yet, but given that Polestar is so closely related to Volvo, and given how much safety equipment is on board the 4, we expect top-notch scores once it has.
The high-tech ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) setup in the Polestar 4 has a total of 12 cameras, one radar and 12 ultrasonic sensors, and the car uses all these to build up a detailed digital picture of the driving scenario around you, so it can react accordingly with semi-autonomous inputs.
We won’t bother listing out all of the numerous individual functions that all this facilitates, because we’d be here all day. Just trust us that virtually no stone has been left unturned. We say virtually, because there is one thing missing on the driver assistance front: interestingly, the 4 isn’t offered with the optional LiDAR system you’ll soon be able to specify on the bigger Polestar 3, which adds even more sensors and will allow for fully autonomous driving once it becomes legal.
If all those driving aids aren’t enough to keep you out of trouble, seven airbags are provided as standard to help keep you from harm. A further two can be specified as an option.
Polestar 4 charging times: How much does it cost to charge?
"All versions of the Polestar 4 come with an enormous 100kWh battery, of which 94kWh is usable capacity. That means filling it with electricity can take a while."
Polestar quotes an AC charging time of five and a half hours, but that’s because the car accepts AC charging at up to 22kW. However, that’s not very helpful, because the domestic home wallbox chargers that most owners will use only have an output of 7.4kW. On that manner of hookup, expect more like 16 or 17 hours for a full charge.
That full charge will cost you around £26 at home, assuming that you’re paying the UK’s national average price for your domestic power. Bag yourself a domestic tariff that allows overnight charging at a discounted off-peak rate, however, and you can easily cut that number in half.
That situation flips around when you use a public DC rapid charger, though, because the power that comes out of those is a lot more expensive. You can easily double that original domestic cost, and maybe even more. We wouldn’t recommend relying on these regularly, then, but on those occasions when you do need a super-fast top-up, the 4 can take a 10-80% charge in 30 minutes thanks to DC charging speeds of up to 200kW. Provided you can find a powerful enough charging station, that is.
Polestar 4 reliability and warranty
The Polestar 4 is still very new, so there hasn't yet been time for it to feature in the latest HonestJohn.co.uk Satisfaction Index, our go-to source of reliability data. In fact, the Polestar brand itself hasn't featured yet, as it’s a relatively new brand that sells relatively few cars. That means we can’t even give you an idea of the company’s performance in general when it comes to reliability.
We can try and get some idea by looking at the performance of Volvo, because the two brands share platforms, parts and technology. Volvo placed 14th out of 29 carmakers in the latest study, which is about as average as it’s possible to get. However, that result won’t have been based on the all-electric Volvo models with which Polestars share their bits and bobs, so don’t read too much into that result.
Talking of ‘average’, that’s a word that can be applied to the firm’s warranty arrangement. You get three-year, 60,000-mile cover on most of the car, while the battery is covered for eight years or 100,000 miles. However, it is a nice little perk that you get free scheduled maintenance for the first three years or 31,250 miles of ownership.
Polestar 4 insurance groups and costs
All cars are classified in an insurance group between 1 and 50, with group 1 cars being the cheapest to insure, and group 50 cars being the most expensive on premiums. Go for the Single Motor Polestar 4, and your car sits in group 45. Go for the Twin Motor, and it’ll be in group 48. Neither will be cheap to insure, then, but this is a car that’s both expensive and powerful, so you wouldn’t expect it to be.
VED car tax: What is the annual road tax on a Polestar 4?
Because the Polestar 4 is an electric car, you pay no VED road tax on it at the moment. However, the tax laws are due to change as of April 2025, when you’ll very likely be lumbered with the same - or similar - tax liability as owners of petrol and diesel cars.
Polestar 4 price
"Buy yourself a brand new Polestar 4,and you’ll be paying a minimum of around £60,000 for a Long Range Single Motor, while starting prices for the Twin Motor stand at around £67,000. That’s before you’ve added any optional extras, and these can quickly send the price of your car spiralling even further."
As the 4 is still relatively new, the used car market isn’t exactly flooded with preowned examples. It might never be, in fact, because the 4 is likely to sell in quite small numbers. And because Polestar doesn’t have traditional dealerships, you can’t really employ the tactic of hanging around your local outlet, waiting for an ex-demonstrator or pre-registered example to become available.
Choices are limited, then, and discounts will be modest. However, it’s worth keeping an eye out for existing stock on the Polestar website, and on the heycar classifieds, because there are a handful of cars available for a small saving.
Trim levels and standard equipment
We’re already talked about the safety kit and the infotainment kit you get with the Polestar 4 in other sections, so we won’t go over all that again here. On top of all that, the standard equipment list includes LED exterior lighting with automatic high beam headlights, the panoramic glass roof, 360-degree parking cameras and sensors, dual-zone climate control, heated front seats, and a heat pump for making the most of the car’s range in cold weather.
Various option packs are available, and these bundle up desirable extras for a (not inconsiderable) one-off fee. The Plus Pack, for instance, adds flashier interior trim, three-zone climate control, a head-up display, a powered tailgate with kick sensor, and an upgraded Harman Kardon sound system.
Ask the heycar experts: common questions
Is the Polestar 4 a good car?
Is the Polestar 4 electric?
Is the Polestar 4 an SUV?
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