Ti Drives: Polestar 5 Performance

Looks aside, what we have here, somewhat late to the party perhaps is Polestar’s answer to the Porsche Taycan, its Audi e-tron GT sister and the Lotus Emeya. And, lest we forget, the Jaguar Type 01 prowling around the paddock, waiting for the call to go to the assembly area. It’s virgin territory for a company whose tenth birthday as a standalone brand remains ahead of it. And I wonder whether it would even have gone through with it, if it had known when the project was greenlit that the company’s Chinese connections would mean it would be effectively be banned from selling cars in the US from this year.

We have established, I think, that it already looks the part, and inside it is as clean and fresh as a Scandinavian fjord in springtime. A lovely place to pass the time. There’s even enough room, just, for four adults to idle away the hours without rampant jealousy breaking out on the back seat.

But what I’d give for a few more switches! I know Polestar and its sister company Volvo aren’t the only ones to have forsaken conventional buttons for the big screen. It does, thank goodness have a physical control for the wipers (unlike the Volvo EX60) but even functions as basic as adjusting the steering wheel cannot be executed without prior reference to the screen. It’s making function follow form at a distance best measured in post codes.

Otherwise, and for a car new to this category, the Polestar 5 barely puts a foot wrong. This ‘Performance’ version has adaptive dampers as standard – surely a must for a car of this size, weight and price? – and it rides as well as its looks suggest. I’d not call it agile, a 2.5-tonne kerb weight, long wheelbase and not even the option of four wheel steering sees to that but it is pleasantly engaging on the right (wide) road, and while conspicuously less sporting in set up than a Taycan, if what you’re hoping for is a car to fulfil its Grand Touring credentials, I’d say it does so with space to spare. And the performance provided by its twin electric motors and the 871bhp they serve up is as vivid and simultaneously devastating yet curiously unsatisfying as we’ve experienced in similarly potent EVs.

And they all need to get their house in order so far as their range is concerned. The claimed 347 mile range is actually quite competitive for the class, but means that on a cold day running at speed you’re probably going to be looking for somewhere to charge after 200 miles or so. When you can now buy a BMW i3 with a 566 mile range, it leaves cars like this looking somewhat last generation and me wondering what their residuals will be like in a few years’ time when 500 plus mile ranges for premium EVs are no longer the exception, but the norm.

Even so, we must judge cars within the category in which they compete and given it’s never been there before, this is a more than credible effort. Put it this way: with a bit more range and a few more buttons, it could lead the class.