Polestar 4 - long-term review

When the Jaguar I-Pace was new I ran one for several months. Loved it. The Polestar 4 reminds me of that car. It's not just the general proportions and pared-back yet classy cabin. It's in the fluency of the suspension over lumpy roads, the engaging connection with it when you corner on a greasy road. Anyway, a couple of secondhand I-Paces are owned by my friendship circle now, and I travelled in Tim's and Jules' one the other day when Tim drove the Polestar so I could take some action photos. And yes, my memory wasn't playing tricks. They have a lot in common, and that's good.

On the way to that meet-up, going along the M4 I heard that sharp click we all dread. Sure enough a small stone chipped the windscreen. But it was on the passenger side, above the area swept by the wipers, so I decided to leave it. Bad choice. A month or so afterwards, a crack in the top laminated layer spread from the chip outward to the A-pillar and inward to the glued section that houses the mirror and forward cameras.

So I went on the Polestar app and clicked 'service booking'. This sent me to the website, where I could choose any of the Volvo and Polestar workshops near to me. So far so good. It let me enter the problem too.

Not so good, I tried all those dealers and the soonest available appointment was more than seven weeks away. Huh? Imagine if I had a problem that made the car undrivable.

Fearing the crack would get bigger and the car would indeed become undriveable at some inconvenient moment, I'm afraid I pulled strings and rang Polestar UK, owners of the car, and let them sort it out.

That's partly because I know modern windscreen replacement is an exasperating business. Workshops don't usually do it themselves, they bring in a specialist like Autoglass. But that's not the end of it. The workshop then has to recalibrate the ADAS cameras. That can involve a technician taking it for a lengthy drive with a laptop plugged in to the car.

Mind you it's like the Polestar's ADAS was never properly calibrated in the first place. It's one of the worst cars I've ever driven for saying the limit is 30mph when it's 70. Or in one case recently 80 in a 30. I've installed a couple of OTA updates that are supposed to make it better but they haven't. And neither has the new windscreen.

Which is why I'm glad a simple (if unmarked) steering wheel button cancels the bonger – the down-arrow on the left spoke. While the work was being done I was lent a Polestar 2, which uses a different unmarked wheel button for the same job – the left-arrow. Also, on the 2 if you want to raise the cruise speed by 1mph it's a long press of the up button, and a short press to raise it by 5mph. On the 4 it's the other way around: a short press for 1mph and long for 5mph. All of the Polestars, the 2 and 3 and 4, show multiple such inconsistencies in their driver interfaces because they all use different electronic platforms.

It's actually another reason I'm happy in the 4. In my humble opinion (internet speak for 'I'll yell at you IN CAPS-LOCK if you have the temerity to hold any other opinion') the Polestar 4's interface is the best of them, partly because it's the most customisable in its screen shortcuts and tiling. That's because the underlying operating system owes very little to the awful Volvo EX30/EX90 one that's used by the more expensive Polestar 3.