Polestar 4 Long Term Review

Report 1 - January 2026

The Polestar 4 that we're running is the VERY lovely Long Range Single Motor in Electron Blue. So it delivers its power to the rear wheels only. That means 268hp, and 0-62mph in 6.9 seconds. She’s modest(ish) but she does the job. It's a bit of a culture shock from the AWD excellence BYD Seal I had previously with its 3.8s 0-62 time, but hey, maybe I need to chill for a few months and no longer need a natural facelift when I leave the traffic lights. I’m okay with that. 

The power itself is released in a polite manor which I am a fan off. Its not a ‘WHALLOP!, LETS GO’ kinda vibe, its a ‘off we go then’ kinda personality.

Range? Well, on paper it manages a very impressive. WLTP range of 372 miles. But we have to remember that’s WLTP so I actually haven’t seen those numbers yet. Here’s what I like about Polestar, they don’t lie. When the 94kWh usable NMC battery is fully charged to 100%, the driver instrument screen will give you the honest range estimate. 

I'm writing to you from deepest winter, right now. It’s very cold here in the UK and best I’ve seen so far is 326 miles. Now, here’s where things get interesting. Yes it says 326 miles and yes it will actually do 326 miles. The Polestar 4 is realistic with its range estimate, and I like that. I’m sure once spring rolls around then the numbers will just get better but I'm finding that range anxiety is not a thing in the Polestar 4. She’ll tell you exactly what you’re getting, right from the start, and it WILL give you that number. Impressive.

Few more numbers for you! Deep breath.... The Polestar 4 is  4.84m long, which is fine. It's 1.53m high, which is also absolutely fine. The width including the mirrors is 2.14m which is... kinda fine? It's actually slightly slimmer than the BYD Seal with mirrors… but WITHOUT MIRRORS? The Polestar 4 is 2.08m! The actual body of the 4 is over 13cm wider than the BYD Seal, and boy do you feel it. You know those giant comedy sunglasses people wear in photo booths? It feels like wearing those. Way wider than you’re prepared for. Taking corners I’ve been so wary and don’t get me started on tiny car park spaces, and tight country Sussex roads. Arghhhhhhh, the stress! On the plus side it does make it extremely roomy inside, more on the interior later.

Style wise, completely inoffensive. Lovely Thor hammer headlights, which are smart headlights that automatically put on the full beams but block out the other cars coming towards you so nobody gets blinded. They work well, and I like that. 

The charge port is on the rear left, which is handy for my driveway, and the big thing you’ll notice is the lack of rear window. Yep, no rear window at all. This does take a bit of getting used to. Has it given me rage? Yes. Yes it has. At the start I would keep looking back to reverse, I’m 'old skool' like that, but I eventually got out of the habit. But the rage comes from the camera itself. On cold mornings the camera is fogged over so there’s been a handful of times where I’ve had to go on my tippy toes, lean over the back of the car and wipe it clean. First world problems, eh? If you can get past that annoyance then I reckon you might like it. It does do a party trick too. When you indicate left or right, the camera slightly shifts your view so you can see your blind spot. It's so handy for motorway driving.

At 526 litres I've found the boot to be really decent! There’s space under the floor for your cables or you can always chuck them in the tiny 15 litre frunk to get them out of the way. In all honesty, It’s mostly been Tesco shops and chucking my muddy dog walk boots under the floor, so I’ve not really asked much of the practicality, yet.

Rear seats - according to my mother-in-law they're “very nice.” There’s a mini screen to change your climate back there and rear heated seats too which is lovely. When I drove with her to the cinema (we saw Wicked For Good btw -  great film, we cried) she was mostly impressed by the ambient lighting. On the main screen at the front of the car you can pick your planets and each planet changes the ambient lighting. This car really comes to life at night, its a glorious place to be. 

Personally I’m a fan of ‘Jupiter’ and its deep pink/purple vibe but also I need to give a shout out to ‘Neptune’, also stunning. The way it shines through the rear of the back seats (where the window should be) its beautiful.

Report 2 - February 2026

So far you’re probably thinking “why has she been angry at this car? Its all pretty positive so far”.

Ok.

Story time.

Once upon a time there was a girl named Nicola. She got to drive a Polestar 4 and report back on what it's like to live with. On the first day of driving the car, Nicola experienced her first software issue. Little did she know, this would be the first of many.

Along the bottom of the screen you’ll find your heated seat and steering buttons. Tap it. Not working? Ah, I see. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t? So far, I’ve found it doesn’t work on the days when I really want it to. I tap and it should open a mini menu along the bottom to select your levels, 70% of the time in the last 6 weeks it opens nothing. Nothing! So, next option would be to either go through the menus or to use voice control right? Well, I’m driving so I wanna avoid menus if I can. 

Tap the voice control on the steering wheel “turn on my heated seat”… Wait… Wait a bit longer… I get a reply “okay turning on heated seat for the driver”… Wait… Wait even longer…Wait again… Wait some more… Eventually it turns on. Now, I don’t know if this is just my version of the P4 with the software pickle but it's a very long and frustrating wait just to have a warm bum. Maybe this is a me problem and I need to learn to be more patient.

Then.

Apple CarPlay. Surely, once you’ve connected once it should connect every time you get in the car, right? Nope. Id say 40% of time time it does, the rest of the time you have to go into the menu again to connect it.

THEN.

Then there was one of my big trips… 

I drive a lot. I spend most of my time on the M25 and I’m the kinda person that if anything is under 90 minutes away I’d class it as ‘around the corner’. I was on a two hour trip up to Bedfordshire recently, about an hour into my journey. I was cruising at 50mph on the M25, everything was working fine, car was driving smoothly and quietly. As usual, I was listening to a podcast, then suddenly everything went blank. Both screens turned off. Main infotainment screen and driver screen turned to blackness. The car carried on driving like there were no issues and the head-up display stayed on, too. 

So I stayed patient and eventually it all rebooted itself. Fine, right? Not quite. After 10 minutes of it trying to reboot, the instrument cluster came on, the main infotainment screen came on but no sound. No podcast, no radio, not even an indicator noise. It was so strange. Nothing triggered it, to just randomly went down. 

After half an hour more driving in silence with a confused look on my face, I pulled into the services to turn the car off and on again. Voila, back to normal and I got back to my podcast. But what was all that about? That’s a new experience for me. Important to note that it didn’t make me panic as it didn’t affect how the car was driving, it was just annoying! 

Considering the short time I’ve had with the car so far, the software needs a big re-jig. It did have an over-the-air update about a week into me having it, but hasn’t solved much. Hopefully I can report back again in a month and it’ll all be fine and dandy with a new update - this, after all, is the joy of OTA updates, is that you can walk out to your car one morning and find that the bugs have been fixed. 

All in all, so far the Polestar 4 has been a mixed bag. The camera takes a bit of getting used to, it has plenty of power even it feels heavy at times, adaptive cruise control is a dream and the range is superb. It's just those software niggles that concern me the most, so far. Watch this space to find out if the Polestar 4 can fix itself! 

Report 3 - April 2026

Hey team, Nicola back again with life in the Polestar 4 and we’ve now officially moved out of the freezing cold, can’t-feel-my-fingers era and into spring. Brighter days, slightly warmer mornings, and in theory… better range. In theory.

So let’s start there, because this one caught me a little off guard. When I first had the car in winter, we were seeing around 326 miles on a full charge, which I was actually really impressed with given the temperatures. Now that spring has arrived, I was fully expecting that number to climb. You know, closer to that claimed 372 miles WLTP. But… it hasn’t. Right now, on a full charge, I’m seeing around 282 miles. Yeah. 

Now before we all panic, let me explain — because this is where the Polestar 4 still does something I really respect: it’s honest. That number isn’t trying to impress anyone, it’s telling you exactly what you’re going to get based on your driving, conditions, and recent usage.

And in real-world driving? The range is still solid. I’m still doing big miles, still cruising up and down the M25 like it’s my second home, and I’m not sitting there stressing about where the next charger is. So even though the number on paper looks lower than expected, the experience of living with it hasn’t suddenly become worse. If anything, it’s still one of the easiest EVs I’ve lived with when it comes to range confidence.

Now speaking of living with it — we need to talk miles. I’ve now done around 6,000 miles in the car. Six. Thousand. Which I feel like gives me a pretty solid leg to stand on when I say… it is still a joy to drive. And I don’t say that lightly.

Because with all the frustrations (and we’ll get to those again in a second), when you’re actually just driving the thing — it’s great. It’s smooth, it’s quiet, it’s comfortable, and it just eats up miles without making a fuss. Long journeys? Easy. Daily driving? Also easy. It’s one of those cars that doesn’t tire you out, which for the amount of driving I do is a big tick.

Charging has also been… dare I say it… drama free? At home, the 7kW AC charging has been doing its thing overnight, no issues, no weirdness. Plug it in, wake up, job done. Exactly how it should be. Also the app is a dream btw! The app for my actual home charger (my Zappi one) has stopped working so its mega hand to see the charging status from home via the polestar app, phew thank god for that thing.

And out and about on rapid chargers, I’ve been seeing between 150–200kW, which is bang on what you’d hope for. When it hits those higher speeds, you really notice how quickly you can get meaningful range back into the battery. Again, no complaints here — it’s been reliable, consistent, and just works.

So credit where credit is due, because that side of EV life with the Polestar 4 has actually been very, very good. BUT. (Oh yes, there’s still a but, a big juicy but) Let’s circle back to a familiar friend… or should I say, “enemy”. The software.

Now, since we last spoke, we’ve had those two additional software updates. Spirits were high. Hopes were up. Dreams were dreamt. And yet… here I am experiencing two more occasions where both screens have gone completely dead. AGAIN! At this point, it’s less of a surprise and more of a “oh, we’re doing this again are we?” moment.

Same situation as before — driving along the M25 (THE WORST ROAD EVER), everything’s fine, and then both the driver display and central screen just… disappear. Black. Gone. No warning, no drama, just vibes = cancelled. The car keeps driving fine (important), head-up display still there (thank goodness), but everything else? Nope.

And I think what’s changed now isn’t just the issue itself, it’s how it makes you feel about the car. The first time, it’s confusing. The second time, it’s frustrating. By this point? It’s a bit like “come on now… we should be past this.”. Oh and also, the built in Google maps decided to not know that Luton airport exists, so again I pull over, lock and unlock the car, set up my phone connection again and away we go.

Updates are meant to fix, improve, refine. And while I do think some of the smaller bits have improved slightly, these bigger issues still popping up does knock your confidence a bit while flaring my nostrils in anger (see the Electrifying podcast episode 100 for details) Because again, this isn’t a budget car. This is a £60k+ bit of kit. You expect it to just… work, right?

Now, while we’re on the topic of things that require a bit of patience — the rear view camera/mirror situation. I’m fully used to the whole no rear window life now. That part? Fine. Normal. Don’t even think about it anymore if I’m honest. But the camera itself? Still has its moments.

Every now and then, especially in the mornings, it’s still a bit… blurry. Foggy. Takes a few minutes to properly clear and give you that crisp view you actually need. It’s not every single day, but it happens often enough that I can’t ignore it. And it’s one of those little things that just chips away at the experience. Because when it’s clear, it’s great. When it’s not, you’re just waiting… again… for something to sort itself out.

There’s a theme here, isn’t there? Waiting. So where does that leave us now? Well, it’s still a bit of a mixed bag. You’ve got a car that’s genuinely lovely to drive. It's comfortable, smooth, and easy over long distances. Strong, reliable charging both at home and on the road, as well as honest (if slightly confusing) range reporting.

But then alongside that, ongoing software gremlins, multiple screen blackouts even after updates and a rear camera that still occasionally has a moment. I think that’s the thing that stands out the most at this stage.

After 6,000 miles, I know this car pretty well now. I know its good days, I know its bad days, and I know what it should be like all the time — because I’ve experienced it when everything is working perfectly. And on those days? It’s brilliant. But we’re still not at that point where you can just jump in and trust that everything will behave itself every single time and I really want to get there. Because there’s a fantastic car in here. There really is. It just still feels like it’s… buffering.

So, as always — I’ll keep driving, keep updating you, and we’ll see if the next chapter is the one where everything finally clicks into place. Fingers crossed.

While I have you, might as well tell ya about the interior materials. Guys, I spilled coffee on the passenger seat. I’m officially an idiot. My plan is to use my husband’s carpet cleaner to clear the stain so pray for me please, many thanks in advanced. So if you have kids of if you’re like me and a spiller, prepare for this. Prepare for the stains, its not a wipe clean situation, I repeat IT IS NOT WIPE CLEAN! WHOOPS.

Plus, I’ve recently been noticing a squeaky sound from the seats which I’ve now figured out is the seat bolsters rubbing against the centre console, so just turn your music louder and you’re good to go.

I've got about a month left with this big boi so it’s still mixed feelings but the dogs seem to like it (pic of Larry living his best life in the rear seats for good measure). Look at him! Look at the ambient lighting, look at that blue sky, the perfect pic I’m sure you’ll agree.