After first revealing the Polestar 5 at Goodwood Festival of Speed, and now after first ride impressions have gone up (with a demo teased back in early 2022), you can definitely call me excited for the Swedish EV maker’s new flagship model – but unfortunately, the car, which has taken most of its design from the spacey Polestar Precept (which itself had design similarities to the Polestar Electric Roadster concept) includes one thing that has me particularly worried – a windowless rear.
Back when the Polestar 4 was first announced, I had a little bit of a rant. I truly don’t believe that any car is better off without a rear window. I’m fully appreciative of the fact that some luxury and high-performance cars, particularly those from McLaren or similar supercar brands, shed the rear window for performance reasons, and it looks like the Polestar 5 is removing it with this similarly performance-oriented car. That’s fine, but they’re still driven on our roads, and I’m worried about driver safety on said roads.
It’s not something that’s improved by a camera instead of a window, so why bother removing it? “The 5’s design and the need to get the rear roof crossbar behind the rear passengers to preserve headroom conspired to eliminate a rear window, so a camera and digital rearview mirror are fitted,” according to Motortrend. Sure?
I really hope that this doesn’t just become a defining feature of Polestar going forward.
Although, it would make sense – Polestar has been undergoing a bit of a shift. Back in December, Polestar Australia’s managing director Samantha Johnson told Gizmodo Australia that the brand wanted to start moving in the direction of Porsche rather than Tesla. “When we talk about the Polestar 3 onwards, we’re really going into that more luxury space at the high end,” she said at the time.
Which is a shame, in my opinion. The Polestar 2 was such a compelling car because it wasn’t particularly high-priced (although let’s be realistic – the $60,000 price point is out of reach of many drivers, but at that price, it’s a strong contender against Australia’s most popular EV, the Tesla Model 3). The price was one of the reasons we thought highly enough of the Polestar 2 to call it our car of the year.
Anyway, it’s not all dread around the Polestar 5 from me – it is a sexy thing. It’s expected to launch in Australia in 2024, with its range expected to exceed 600km (whether or not this is the reality, we’ll have to wait and see). Like Motor Trend points out, it’s built to be a GT, not merely a sedan or SUV like the Polestar 2 and 3, and to that end, it’s built to demolish the Porsche Taycan and Tesla Model S (or Roadster, if that ever comes out). It even has a muscle car-like front end that I absolutely adore – this was one of the things I loved about the Polestar 2, and it’s a shame that’s being chopped off the upcoming facelift.
In Carsales’ impressions piece (where they were a passenger as this beast was fanged around), they noted that the panoramic roof would make the interior much hotter during the summer, but that it was a much more pleasant experience than the Porsche Taycan. Additionally, it’s worth noting that the car was an RWD, though as the car’s not out yet, an AWD model may yet come.
Car and Driver reckons it’ll cost about $US100,000, which translates to about $150,000 – but with the Porsche Taycan starting at $174,000 locally, the Polestar 5 may be priced similarly down under.