‘I drove UK’s first car without a rear window and there were just two weird things about it’

You might not have heard of Polestar, but at the same time you'll probably think that the look of this car is familiar. The company started life in Sweden as a motorsport team in 1996. There's your first clue - Sweden.

Known for Abba, Ikea - and Volvo. Volvo owns Polestar, having bought it in 2015. Prior to that, it had become an official partner of the car manufacturer, turning some of its humdrum everyday motors into performance machines.

In 2017 Volvo started to reposition Polestar as an eclectic vehicle (EV) brand and that's where we find ourselves today. Volvo has always been known as somewhat of an innovator - it was the first to fit a three-point seat belt into a car, the first to introduce rear-facing child seats and the first to fit safety features such as blind spot warnings, inflatable side curtains and side-impact protection to its cars. And Polestar is very much continuing with that tradition.

The car in question is the Polestar 4 - and one feature makes it unique on UK roads. The manufacturer claims that it is the first passenger car on our roads to be lacking in one thing - a rear window. Instead, you get a digital rear view 'mirror'.

Why has it done this? It says it's down to overcoming limited rear visibility often seen in modern car design, as well as improving aerodynamics for better efficiency - which is no bad thing when you're trying to maximise your EV range. Polestar said a survey is carried out among 2,000 drivers in the UK found that a fifth were concerned about how little they could see out of the back of their cars.

So, when you look in the rear view 'mirror', you're actually seeing a high-definition screen showing a real-time feed from a roof-mounted rear camera. Polestar says this gives a far wider field of view compared to what you can see out of the back of many modern cars.

It also has other benefits, it claims. No rear window means the full-length panoramic roof stretches beyond the heads of those sitting in the back seats, so there's plenty of light inside.

What is also gives you is a rear seating experience that is sublime. There's ample legroom and the opportunity to truly sit back and enjoy the ride. Unlike in many cars, the rear seats are fully adjustable - like they are in the front - enabling your rear passengers to truly relax.

If you're driving, you will envy them. Now, at this point anyone who's driven a van recently will be shouting "so what,big deal". That's because it's not uncommon on vans to have a rear view 'mirror' that's actually a camera.

Of course, vans don't have rear windows by virtue of their function and design and back in the day the driver relied heavily on those massive wing mirrors you see on such vehicles. I actually experienced this myself a while back in a hire van. It took me a while to click that it had a 'rear view mirror' and then click once more that that was impossible.

What makes the Polestar 4 futuristic and apart from other EVs

It's all very simple.

As long as you have the key fob about your person, you simply get in - it unlocks as you approach - select 'drive' and off you go. There are no buttons - everything works via the large touchscreen, from the climate control to the heated seats to the various drive settings. You even open the glovebox via the screen.

The drive is rapid, with very quick acceleration and a silent glide makes you feel like you've genuinely travelled in time to some perfect, shiny age. It'll get you to 60mph in less than four seconds, with the dual-motor version boasting a meaty 536bhp. The interior is beautifully minimalist.

There's a whole lot of nothing and I personally love it. The lines are smooth and uninterrupted. It really does feel like a step into a movie or something.

And it should make you feel like that - this isn't a cheap car. It's full of tech. You can choose your interior 'ambience' (ie lighting) based on different themes named after the planets in the solar system.

The seats will warm you, cool you and massage you. There's full Google integration and you can connect your house tech to your car to check on its charge and so on while you're at home. It's got a premium sound system, including a speaker in the headrest.

You name it, it's here.

The long journey equation

Now, when it comes to everyday driving - where you're maybe doing the commute or pottering around - EVs are great. Plug them in at home overnight on a cheap tariff and you're a winner when it comes to cost versus petrol or diesel. For me, the big question mark that continues to hang over electric power is long journeys.

The tech and the infrastructure has made big strides in recent years. The first EVs on the market would barely get you 100 miles before needing a charge, whereas now 300 or more miles is common - and you're never far from a charger. But 300 miles is still well short of many petrol and diesel cars - meaning using an EV on a cross-country trip needs a bit of thought.

I like to test this notion on a regular drive I do that is 175 miles each way. For a start, the claimed range of most EVs is a fantasy that doesn't translate to the real world. The figures that manufacturers claim are done in perfect lab-like conditions and are primarily so you can compare one vehicle to another.

It must be said that the same is largely true of miles-per-gallon figures claimed for petrol or diesel cars. There are many factors that affect an EV's range - the outside temperature for one, which can be an issue in the UK, as EV batteries work best when it's somewhere between 15C and 35C. Then there's how hard you drive it, how much tech you have switched on, etc.

Even the Polestar was showing 320 miles of range one day and 265 the next when it hadn't even moved off my driveway. And that was on a fairly mild day. There's still a slight anxiety and inconvenience about long journeys, not only in terms of range, but charging time and cost as well.

While chargers are now rife across the UK, public ones are hugely expensive when compared to charging at home. This is something I've done in more detail before, when I did the same long journey in a Volvo[1] and then put the lessons learned to the test in a Kia[2]. Right now long journeys are simply not as easy as in a petrol or diesel.

I can fill my 17-year-old diesel BMW up and do 500+ miles before needing to do so again. EVs are barely half that. But one day the balance will shift and we're getting closer all the time.

As I said, there have been massive strides in recent years. When you do need to stop for a charge, rapid charging tech means you usually only need to do so for 30 minutes or so, which is fine on a long journey as it gives you a break, but it doesn't beat two minutes at a petrol station. On this particular journey in the Polestar, I set off with a full charge having topped up at home.

The car was showing 262 miles compared to its on-paper claimed 385 miles - despite it being a mild day with temperatures in the mid-teens. But that's a fairly decent range nonetheless and it would mean just one quickish stop in each direction for a top-up, in theory. I did have some 'range anxiety', as the previous EVs I'd done this with 'lost' 40 or 50 miles of range once I was cruising at motorway speeds.

Best laid plans and all that.

At my first stop there was a problem - all the chargers were in use. I only had to wait about 15 minutes, but that meant I was stationary for 35 minutes instead of 20. On a two-and-a-half-hour journey that I rarely stop on normally, that's a fair chunk of extra time.

Anyway, with charge back from 149 miles to 239 miles after topping back up to 86% battery, I was on my way again. I was stopping at my destination, Bristol, for a good seven hours or so and so decided to plug in at a relative's house for the duration. Although topping up in this way is notoriously slow, it added a useful 60-odd miles to the 177 miles I had arrived with, meaning I departed for the return with 234, more than enough to get home.

I did top up again with a stop, but this was more to ensure I arrived home with a decent amount of charge rather than being nearly empty upon my return. In all I spent around GBP50 topping up with public chargers, which is more than the entire trip costs me at current diesel prices and probably nearly 10 times what it costs to do it at home on a cheap EV tariff, but that's the balance of EV ownership - plus there are various schemes that will reduce the cost of public chargers for those that need to use them regularly. There was one marked difference to doing the journey in the Polestar compared to my escapades last year and that was down to the car itself.

I mentioned that last year I 'lost' range, with both cars taking me less far than they said they would at the start of the journeys. No such drama in the Polestar. Its range indicator was very accurate, to within a few miles when compared to the mileage I was driving.

This gave me a lot of confidence in the car and how far it would take me before needing a charge. That made it the least stressful day out in an EV I've ever had. There were just a few niggles with the car - having the controls for almost everything on the fairly large touchscreen actually can make it a bit of a distraction.

I'd say the glovebox thing is a step too far. Not everything needs a techie solution when an old-school release catch works just fine - although there is a security benefit to be had. I also struggled with turning off the driver aids I didn't want, such as the function that tries to drag you back into your lane on a motorway when you don't want it to - but these sorts of things are ironed out when you get to properly know a car over the course of longer than the week that I had it for.

Does this car have too much tech for its own good? Maybe. That's all down to personal preference.

And the weird bit?

I said there were two weird things about driving the UK's first car without a rear window.

The first is, as much as the view in the "mirror" is familiar, you'll find yourself looking over your shoulder when reversing, for example, only to be met with a black void behind the rear seats. When you've been driving for more than 20 years like me, that takes some adjustment. You have to trust the cameras in the "mirror" and on the screen.

And the one really weird thing?

You can't check your complexion in the rear view mirror - and that takes more getting used to than anything.

UK deliveries of the new Polestar 4 started in October, with on the road prices starting from GBP59,990[3].

References

1. ^ in a Volvo (www.bristolpost.co.uk)
2. ^ in a Kia (www.somersetlive.co.uk)
3. ^ starting from GBP59,990 (www.polestar.com)