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!