Polestar 4 - long-term review

It's customary in running reports of EVs to bellyache about range and charging. In the Polestar 4 they're perfectly satisfactory. I mean, 290 miles is enough for me, and after all most 500bhp+ petrol saloons don't have a very long range either. I've never suffered a failed charge. I have absolutely no desire for it to be a PHEV, because I don't commute and have no home charger so a PHEV becomes a gruesome combo of bad EV (short range, slow charging) and bad petrol car (200kg overweight, small fuel tank, small boot).

So moving on…  to other bellyaches of modern-car life. But to stress, none of which have anything to do with the Polestar's electric powertrain.

Motorised door handles. So they emerge when you walk up to the car. Well, usually. If they don't, you touch a little dimple on the part that was supposed to emerge. Out it comes. But if you then accidentally touch the dimple again while wrapping your fingers around the handle to open it, it motors in again, biting your fingers. Meanwhile if you've stopped to collect someone, you need to remember to press the unlock button on the driver's door armrest to motor the handles out, or they'll be denied entry.

Meanwhile the Chinese authorities are banning fully electric handles from January because if something goes wrong the rescuers can't open the door to get you out. Genius. 

I think there have been some very attractive regular door handle designs in the history of the car, some ornamental, some minimalist, all far easier to use than the motorised kind. 

As an adjunct to the handles, we have what is often described as 'convenience locking'. The car is meant to unlock as you walk up to it, key in pocket. Great if it works. As with most cars with this feature, in the Polestar it… mostly works. Other times the car just sits there, sullen, airing you. So you get the key fob from your pocket and press the unlock button – except the Polestar's fob has no button. So you kinda wave it about and hope for the best.

There's also a keycard, which I keep in my wallet. Holding this against the door pillar is another means to be vouchsafed ingress. And finally after some faff I got the Polestar Phone app working, so I can unlock with that, giving the possibility to remotely let someone else unlock and drive. That might come in useful, but I struggle to see the convenience of denying me a keyfob with buttons.

Moving on… door mirrors without switches. You adjust them using the steering wheel buttons. Press the menu button, press OK to confirm it's mirror adjustment you want, choose right or left, now use the wheel's directional buttons to adjust. Actually that's just about doable on the move if you remind yourself between each step to look up from the menus and back out through the windscreen. But when manoeuvring it's a right palaver.

I have the mirrors set to drop automatically on reversing because I nearly always parallel-park. But both mirrors drop and sometimes I want the one opposite the kerb to be raised so I can see what's coming down the road towards me. To make that happen, it's back to the menu dance.

At least the Polestar doesn't have camera door mirrors. They have several serious flaws, some of which apply to the camera rearview mirror (I'm coming to that) but with an extra one thrown in. Camera mirrors give the same field of view wherever your eyes are. Next time you're parking, see how often you instinctively move you head to change the view in the door mirror. I rest my case.

Now, the Polestar's camera rearview mirror. I accept that even if this car had an actual rear windscreen and a normal mirror and it'd have a narrow angle of view because of head restraints and rear passengers and an inevitably small glass area and the possibility of a tall load. 

But as mentioned you can always move your head. Meanwhile the camera mirror offers no binocular depth perception so I end up using the door mirrors more than usual. And the camera's lens is often flared by sunlight, and to look at the screen you have to refocus and converge your eyesight versus looking forward at the road, which you don't in an actual mirror. "You'll get used to it," they said.

Finally, electrically adjusted air vents. I believe the purpose here is each driver has their own key and profile and so when they get in the car the vents motor their jet to suit the driver just as the seat and mirrors adjust. Very well. But I often adjust the vents while I'm driving. Doesn't everyone? And adjusting the vents via touchscreen swipes, with attendant delay, while your head is out of position because you've stretched to reach the screen so now you've got to move back and see if you've done it right. It's like driving a remote-control car while driving a car.

So five features, none of them EV-exclusive, that no-one asked for and which taint a car that in the round I actually very much like. All expensive, complex and user-hostile. Or maybe I'm just being a neophobic old git here? No. Somebody make this madness stop.