Auto Shanghai 2023: Polestar 4 Debuts As The Brand's Fastest Model Ever With 536 bhp

Polestar has unveiled its fastest accelerating car yet - the Polestar 4 coupé SUV. The Polestar 4 - while being less powerful than a Polestar 1 - can still do a 0-100 kmph sprint in just 3.8 seconds. The coupé SUV slots in perfectly between the 2 sedan and the 3 SUV, both in terms of size and price. It is expected to cost around $60,000, and production will begin in China in November 2023, with a European & North-American launch on the cards for early 2024.

The Polestar 4 adopts some design cues from the Polestar Precept concept car, while maintaining an aggressive stance. It gets a low nose, retractable door handles, frameless windows, and rear ‘aero blades’ for better aerodynamics. But one of the most interesting parts of the design is that the SUV has no rear window! Polestar omitted the rear window altogether in the 4 coupé SUV while extending the glass roof to further behind the rear passengers heads for an added sense of airiness and better headroom. The glass roof also gets an optional electrochromic feature, which turns it to completely opaque if the passengers wish, at the touch of a button. The rear-view mirror gets a high-res screen that shows a feed straight from the roof-mounted rear camera. Polestar says that this enables “a far wider field of view than what can be experienced in most modern cars”. And if you wish to, you can also disable the display and look at the rear passengers through the mirror instead.

The Polestar 4 is loaded with tech and safety features. It gets a 15.4-inch horizontally mounted infotainment screen which takes care of most of the controls. The screen gets Android Automotive OS and has Google Maps & Google Assistant built-in, amongst other features. It also supports Apple CarPlay. Then there’s also a 10.2-inch instrument cluster behind the steering wheel, aided by a 14.7-inch head up display (HUD). The EV gets a 12-speaker Harman Kardon music system as standard, while the optional ‘Nappa’ pack also adds 2 speakers in each of the front headrests, taking the count up to 16. On the safety front, the EV gets 9 airbags, 12 cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and one radar system to keep things in check.

Geely’s Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA) forms the underpinnings of the Polestar 4, which is 4,839 mm in length, 2,139 mm in width, and 1,544 mm in height. It also has a 2,999 mm wheelbase. Polestar only revealed the details of one battery option, and since Polestar called it the ‘long-range’ version, we can expect a smaller battery version to hit the market sometime next year as well. As for now, the long-range version gets a 102 kWh battery pack, of which 94 kWh is usable. The battery in the Polestar 4 can be charged with up to 200 kW DC fast charge, or 22 kW AC. Find a 200 kW charger and you can top up the coupé SUV from 5-80% in just 32 minutes. The EV also gets bi-directional charging with vehicle-to-load (V2L) capability, meaning you can power electrical appliances like an electric stove or some big speakers using the car’s battery.

The battery pack is paired with two motor options - single- & dual-motor. The dual motor setup is obviously the faster one, and the motors combined generate 536 bhp & 686 Nm of torque, which is good for a 0-100 kmph spring of 3.8 seconds. The single-motor variant on the other hand has exactly half the output at 268 bhp & 343 Nm torque. The dual-motor variant also gets a disconnect clutch, so when you set the car on the ‘range’ mode, it can disconnect the front motor from the drivetrain and drastically aid the range. The dual-motor variant also gets a semi-active suspension, for that added bit of comfort or sportiness, depending on the drive mode. Polestar is targeting a WLTP range of around 560 km for the dual-motor variants, and a 600 km range for the single-motor variant.