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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
A number of years ago, I did something unusual. For the first time in my 25-year career in journalism, I considered doing a different job. In 2018, I was invited to an interview with the chief executive of an early phase start-up, which was looking for someone with “storytelling skills”. When the time came, I met Thomas Ingenlath, a German car designer-turned-CEO, in his studio outside Gothenburg, Sweden. Trim and intense, and dressed in pure black, Ingenlath cut something of a Steve Jobsian figure.
We sat on high stools at an Apple Store-style wooden table, illuminated from above by diffuse museum lighting, and he gave me the pitch for Polestar, a newish Volvo subsidiary focused on perfecting electric cars. The start-up, the theory went, would benefit from access to the 91-year-old company’s engineering and manufacturing expertise, but be totally free to rethink outdated industry shibboleths. Its vehicles’ technology wouldn’t be 10 years behind, and its dealerships would be minimalist Scandi cathedrals.
I quit a few short months later, having done little besides interview a lot of very intelligent, very earnest Swedes about what they do all day. I never even drove a Polestar. The closest I got was sitting in a largely non-functioning prototype for its first all-electric vehicle, the Polestar 2.
So when the company offered to lend me its most recent model this summer, I was curious to see what had become of that early vision. I knew a lot had happened. Ingenlath is gone, and so is the Volvo-branded incubator. After a few tough years, including catastrophic tariffs and a reported $1.1bn of losses, Polestar was spun out into its own company last year. (It still shares technology and manufacturing resources with Volvo and its Chinese parent company Geely.) It also added the Polestar 3 and 4 SUVs to its range. Next week at the IAA Mobility show in Munich it will reveal a luxurious, four-door Polestar 5 grand tourer, and a 6 and 7 are in the pipeline for later in the decade.
The 4 that I drove is a premium SUV coupé, with a base price from £60,000. The standout design choice here is the absence of a conventional rear window. Instead, the glass is replaced with a camera that feeds a video display in the rear-view. I was initially sceptical of this set-up and it took a little while to adjust, particularly because of the difference in depth perception between what you expect to see in a mirror and the flatness of a 2D image. If you can get used to that, as I did after two days or so, the reward is a cabin that’s exceptionally airy and notably more aerodynamic.
The Polestar 4 rides on Geely’s SEA platform and offers two powertrain options. The single-motor, rear-wheel-drive delivers around 268bhp, while the dual-motor, all-wheel-drive set-up makes an exhilarating 536bhp. The single-motor configuration provides impressive real-world range, estimated at up to 385 miles, whereas the dual-motor variant offers blistering acceleration. Driving dynamics and comfort were excellent.
The interior is a standout, with premium materials, some recycled and others responsibly sourced. A large 15.4in landscape infotainment screen offers vibrant graphics, seamless integrations with Google apps and Apple CarPlay, and mostly intuitive controls. There are clever little details throughout, such as the flip-switch on the video rear-view that lets you surveil what the kids are doing.
Even though it may have been conceived in part to fight Tesla, the company that comes to mind most frequently with regard to Polestar is Apple. Most companies that try to emulate the Cupertino tech giant fail because they stop short at talking about their products in the soul-deadened third-person that – done poorly – reads like the K just hit. But, spending time with the Polestar 4, it appears that the company, whether intentionally or not, seems to have grokked what people meant over the years when they wished for an Apple car.
What are people really asking for when they say they want an Apple car? They’re talking aesthetics, of course. And technology that actually works. They’re also likely to be talking about a better sales experience. No one has ever walked into an Apple Store only to be approached by a sweaty guy, packing a comb-over and desperation, asking, “What do I have to do to get you into this iMac today?” Year on year in the UK, Polestar’s largest market, sales are already up 203 per cent on 2024; worldwide is also 51 per cent up.
Whatever ambitions Apple once had in the automotive space have reportedly been abandoned. Which is beside the point, because a lot of the irritation Apple’s entry into the electric car market was supposed to alleviate – overly complicated technology that’s difficult to use or painful to buy – are largely solved problems with Polestar. Turns out there already is an Apple car; it’s just not made by Apple.