Look out, Porsche! The Polestar 5 is a gorgeous electric grand tourer

Five years on from the Precept show car, Polestar has finally revealed the production-ready Polestar 5.

A sleek, long-legged electric grand tourer, the Polestar 5 is primed and ready to take on the Porsche Taycan and Lotus Emeya. Available to order now, the Polestar 5 is priced from £89,500, while a more powerful variant starts at £104,900. These are both dual-motor ‘Launch Edition’ cars, suggesting more affordable variants will join the lineup later.

The 5 is the first Polestar to use an 800-volt electrical architecture – this means it’s the Swedish brand’s quickest-charging car to date, filling its 112 kWh battery from 10 to 80 percent in as little as 22 minutes when using a 350 kW charger.

Raw power

It’s also the highest-performance Polestar yet, and by quite some margin. The base car produces 550 kW (748 horsepower) and 812 Nm (599 lb-ft), which is enough to launch it to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds. Step up to the Polestar 5 Performance, and power leaps to 650 kW (884 hp), while torque crosses the four-figure threshold, at 1,015 Nm (749 lb-ft) and the sprint to sixty takes just 3.1 seconds. Both variants have a top speed of 155 mph, while the all-important range figure is 351 miles for the Performance model and 416 miles for the standard car.

Arguably more impressive than all that performance is how the Polestar 5 looks. It’s a properly striking car, even in Polestar’s famously understated paint options, and the rear three-quarter view is especially distinctive. The sharp shoulders, lack of rear windscreen and bold tail light design mean there will be no mistaking this for anything else on the road, even as Polestar continues to paint its badge body colour.

The lack of a rear screen isn’t new, of course. The design, which uses a camera instead, debuted on the Polestar 4 last year and, while it looks a little awkward there, it better suits the elongated 5, where it’s flanked by a pair of buttresses. Or perhaps I’ve got used to seeing bodywork where before there was glass. Either way, it’s a stunning bit of design that promises to benefit rear-seat passengers. Since the header rail at the tail end of the panoramic roof sits further back than in conventional cars. Freeing up headroom. The pano roof is worth a mention too – the largest yet fitted to a Polestar, it’s just over 2.0 metres long and 1.25m wide, and promises to bathe the cabin in light.

A tech-ed out cruiser

Polestar describes the 5 as a “4+1” car. This means that, while there are three seats in the second row, a large central arm rest – complete with touch-sensitive controls for seat heating, ventilation and massage – suggests this is primarily a car to carry its driver and three passengers, not four. That arm rest also houses illuminated controls for rear cabin temperature and fan speed, while those up front are to access their controls from the central touchscreen.

A portrait-oriented, 14.5-inch panel, the display will be familiar to anyone who has driven other models of Polestar. It runs Android Automotive with Google services (Maps, Assistant, etc.) and Spotify baked in. It’s joined by a 9-inch driver display that’s smartly attached to the steering column, so should remain in view regardless of how the driver positions their seat and steering wheel. A 9.5-inch head-up display is also available.

The Polestar 5 comes with a 10-speaker sound system as standard, but I’m excited to try out the optional 21-speaker system by Bowers & Wilkins, complete with the British audio firm’s tweeter-on-top design and 1,680 watts of power. When fed with high-quality Dolby Atmos content, the B&W system in the Polestar 3 was among the best car sound systems I’ve ever experienced, so I’m hoping for a similar experience from the 5.

Laid back

Also piquing my interest is how Polestar refers to the driving position of the 5. It’s described as “deliberately reclined, with a performance focus, thanks to the low-sling seats and upright angled steering wheel brought close to the driver.” Add this to Polestar’s claims of the 5’s bespoke aluminium platform producing torsional rigidity “higher than that of a two-seat sports- or supercar," and it sounds like this five-metre-long grand tourer could be fun in the corners, not just devastatingly quick in a straight line.

On a similar note, there’s an adaptive damping system that’s said to read the road 1,000 times per second, then react within three milliseconds to the benefit of body control and comfort. Braking is by Brembo – to the tune of massive, 400 mm two-piece discs – and the bespoke tyres come from Michelin for wheel sizes ranging from 20 to 22 inches.

Having been wowed by the Precept back in 2020, I’m seriously impressed by the Polestar 5. I think it looks fabulous, inside and out, and if Polestar’s performance and efficiency claims are proven accurate, it should be sensational to drive too. As always, I suspect the more affordable and less powerful variant will be the one to go for. Will it draw buyers away from Porsche and Lotus? I can’t wait to find out.