Polestar has more than a few issues with the proposed rule, according to its public comment. For one, the definition is too broad and “creates crippling uncertainty for businesses.” A better-defined list would be helpful here, it says.
Polestar also says that “if a large portion of manufacturing or software development is occurring outside of the country of a foreign adversary, mere ownership should not be the determinative factor for applying the various prohibitions within the Proposed Rule.” Polestar is a US-organized company and a subsidiary of a UK publicly limited company that is listed on the NASDAQ exchange in New York. Its HQ is in Sweden, and seven out of 10 board members are from Europe or the USA. It builds Polestar 3 SUVs in South Carolina and will build the Polestar 4 in South Korea from next year. In fact, out of 2,800 employees, only 280 are based in China, Polestar says.
With the company’s “key decision-makers” being in Sweden, there is little reason to believe the national security concerns apply here, the company says, saying that the US Commerce Department should consider whether it has gone too far.
Polestar may be the most affected automaker by the new rule, but it is not the only one. Last month, the Commerce Department told Ford and General Motors that imports of the Lincoln Nautilus and Buick Envision—both of which are made in China—would also have to cease under the new rule.
Enlarge/ The Polestar 4 is the latest entrant into the crowded midsize luxury electric SUV segment. We think it has what it takes to stand out.
Jonathan Gitlin
“If you’re going to make a car and use all that energy, it should be a good car,” said Thomas Ingenlath, CEO of Polestar. Ingenlath was referring to the company’s latest electric vehicle, a midsize SUV with striking coupe looks called the Polestar 4. While Ingenlath is on point from a sustainability perspective, it makes good business sense, too. The Polestar 4 needs to be a good car to stand out as it enters one of the most hotly contested segments of the market.
In fact, Polestar uses less energy to make its latest EV than anything else in its range—the company quotes a carbon footprint of 19.9 tonnes of CO2 from cradle to gate. Like some other automakers, Polestar is using a monomaterial approach to the interior to make recycling easier, choosing the same base plastic for all the components in a particular piece of trim, for example.
The carpets are made from, variously, recycled fishing nets or plastic bottles. The vinyl seats use pine oil instead of the stuff extracted from the ground, and the knitted upholstery fabric—also recycled plastic bottles—was designed to leave no off-cuts.
The headlights are a Polestar trademark now, even though there have been just four models so far.
Jonathan Gitlin
Coupe-like looks, SUV-like practicality.
Jonathan Gitlin
No, your eyes don’t deceive you, there is no rear windshield.
Jonathan Gitlin
The interior is inspired by sportswear.
Jonathan Gitlin
The back seat of the Polestar 4 outdoes rivals from Porsche, BMW, Audi, and Mercedes-Benz.
Jonathan Gitlin
At night, LEDs illuminate the interior from behind textile trim panels. The colors are switchable depending on which theme you have the car set to—more on that later.
Jonathan Gitlin
The fastest Polestar yet
In addition to being the greenest Polestar so far, this one is also the most performant. We tested the $62,900 Long Range Dual Motor version, which can send up to 536 hp (400 kW) and 506 lb-ft (686 Nm) to the wheels. Pick this version and you should see 270 miles (434 km) from the 100 kWh battery pack. In a suitable location like a motorway toll booth, 60 mph arrives in 3.7 seconds (100 km/h in 3.8).
That’s if you’re in performance mode, at least. Switch to range mode, and clutches disconnect the front permanent magnet synchronous motor and remap the throttle pedal for better efficiency. There’s also a heat pump as standard. The car can DC fast-charge at rates of up to 200 kW, which should take the battery pack from 10 to 80 percent state of charge in 30 min. At home on an 11 kW AC charger, 0–100 percent SoC should take about 11 hours.
There is also a Long Range Single Motor variant with precisely half the power and torque but an EPA range of 300 miles (482 km). Driven by just its rear wheels, the Polestar 4 has more modest performance—60 mph arrives in 6.9 seconds, 100 km/h in 7.1—but it also carries a $8,000-cheaper price, starting at $54,900. New tariffs on Chinese-made EVs have come into effect, but Polestar told Ars that it is sticking with the original pricing. Next year, production of US-market Polestar 4s will begin in South Korea, which will mean significantly smaller import tariffs. (This story originally stated there had been a $10,000 price increase; this was incorrect.)
Jonathan Gitlin
It’s surprisingly good to drive
It has to be said: Making an electric car go fast is not particularly difficult. Electric motors generate most of their torque almost immediately, and unlike with a combustion motor, if you increase the peak power, there isn’t really an efficiency hit lower down the performance envelope. So even a 3-ton monster can get hurled down the road rapidly enough to embarrass a whole lot of supercars.
The Polestar 4 isn’t quite that heavy—5,192 lbs (2,355 kg)—so it forgoes air suspension in favor of conventional coil springs and dampers. These are passive in the Single Motor, but the Dual Motor is equipped with active dampers as standard, and if you choose the performance pack, it’s upgraded with stiffer springs and antiroll bars and new damper tuning.
Our test car was so equipped, and it was a noticeably firm ride, particularly when sitting in the back. There was also a bit of wind noise at speed, but more tire roar, thanks presumably to the performance pack’s 22-inch wheels.
The Polestar Phone. Someday it will unlock your Polestar car.
Polestar
There are a few Polestar decorations, like the logo on the back and camera specs on each of the lenses.
Polestar
There’s a side Polestar logo too.
Polestar
The box. It comes with a charger.
Polestar
The Polestar UI.
Polestar
This is the “Polestar Link” picture. It looks like three of the phone’s home screen pages are now on the car display?
Polestar
The Polestar Phone is perfect for watching videos about your Polestar car.
Polestar
Polestar, the Volvo offshoot EV company, has made a smartphone. It’s called, predictably, the Polestar Phone, and it’s only available in China. There have been a lot of car-brand smartphones out there (it’s often Lamborghini), but usually, these are licensing deals that the car company ignores. Polestar seems to be proud of this phone, though, making it a bit more involved than the usual car-brand licensing deal. Just look at the new navigation drawer on the polestar.cn site, which has four main items: “Polestar 2”, “Polestar 3”, “Polestar 4” and now “Polestar Phone.”
Why would a niche EV brand make a phone? Maybe all that work on the Android Automotive OS made Polestar’s engineers really enthusiastic about Android device development. The website, through machine translation, promises the phone was “jointly designed by the Polestar global design team and the Xingji Meizu team in Gothenburg, Sweden, and is decorated with Swedish gold details that symbolize high performance.” “Decorated” is probably the best way you could describe Polestar’s contributions to this phone since it seems to be a bog standard Meizu 21 Pro with some Polestar branding. It does look beautiful, with a no-nonsense minimal rectangular design and all-screen front, but the same can be said for the Meizu phone this is based on.
So, how exactly is the Polestar Phone related to a Polestar car? Well, both run Android and have all-electric power systems. The phone has a slightly smaller battery than the EV, at only 5,050 mAh (that’s something like 18 Wh) compared to the 100 kWh battery of something like a Polestar 4. The car also has the phone beat on-screen size, with the phone packing a pocketable 120 Hz 6.79-inch, 3192×1368 OLED, and the Polestars all sporting big tablet screens.
Enlarge/ It’s very pretty, but Polestar can thank Meizu for that.
Polestar
A spec comparison is not a clean sweep for the cars, though. The sad thing about the state of the car infotainment market is that the computer in this ~$1,000 (7,388 yuan) phone is dramatically faster than what powers any of the infotainment systems in Polestar’s $50,000–$75,000 vehicles. The Polestar Phone ships with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. That’s a flagship mobile SoC from 2023 built on a 4 nm process. All the Polestar cars in the Google Play Developer console (which lists all Android devices in the world) are built around an Intel Atom A3960 SoC. This is an absolutely ancient, bottom-of-the-barrel 14 nm x86 desktop CPU released around 2016. This chip was bad eight years ago when it came out, yet is still shipping today. The cars all have 4GB or 8GB of RAM, and the Polestar 2 I looked at had 128GB of storage, all clear wins for the phone spec sheet.
The Polestar Phone and Polestar Car (specifically, the Polestar 4) will talk to each other. Polestar promises that someday the phone will support Android’s digital car key functionality, but not at launch. The Polestar Phone’s “Polestar UI” promises a “rich application icon design [that] is consistent with the Polestar OS in the car.” Something called “Polestar Link” apparently lets you see multiple pages of the phone’s home screen on the big car tablet display, and it sounds like maybe apps will float between the two devices? It’s hard to know too many details because 1) there just haven’t been that many details published yet, and 2) the details that exist are all in Chinese.
There is a chance this phone will be sold outside of China. Like the cars, it is on the Google Play Dev Console, and since there is no Google Play in China, the phone’s registration with Google suggests a plan for international sales.
