Polestar Tried to Break the Rear Window and Now It’s Made a Car

When the Polestar 4 arrived in 2023, it did something no mainstream production car had attempted. It removed the rear window completely.

Instead of glass, drivers got a roof-mounted camera combined with a digital rear-view mirror. Polestar argued The change created more room for rear passengers and pointed the direction of automotive design.

Three years later, the company is going in a slightly different direction.

The new Polestar 4 SUV is the more practical sibling of the existing coupe, and it comes with a very familiar feature. A real rear windscreen, made from real glass, doing the job that rear windscreens have always done.

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A small change that says a lot

Polestar’s position is that the new model targets buyers who want more practicality. The higher roofline, larger tailgate and more upright rear end create extra luggage space and make the car better suited to a wider range of families and lifestyles.

Looking closer, it also turns out that removing the rear window was a bolder decision than the market realized. The camera system worked and the design was really distinctive, but a large number of buyers were unwilling to give up traditional rear visibility, no matter how capable the digital option.

Polestar hasn’t said so outright, but the decision to create an SUV version with a rear window alongside a coupe, which still doesn’t have one, tells its own story.

Polestar isn’t particularly interested in placing the new model in a neat category. Whether buyers see it as an estate, an SUV or something in between is up to them. Somehow, the rear window is further back, and the car seems more practical and accessible because of it.

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More practical without sacrificing performance

The changes to the backend don’t come at the expense of what made the Polestar 4 attractive in the first place.

Buyers can choose between rear-wheel-drive and all-wheel-drive versions with outputs up to 536 horsepower, and Polestar carries forward the suspension upgrades recently introduced on the coupe, including revised dampers, springs, anti-roll bars and steering calibration aimed at improving both comfort and handling response.

The more upright body shape is also better aerodynamically in some situations. Polestar claims the longest-range version will go 391 miles on the WLTP cycle, which is slightly ahead of the current coupe’s 385-mile maximum, which is a useful refutation for anyone believing that the practical version would have compromised on range.

Simultaneous production of the coupe will take place at Renault Korea’s Busan factory, with its global unveiling taking place on September 2.

The original Polestar 4 was one of the more daring design statements produced by the EV industry. Removing the rear window was a genuine commitment to a vision rather than a marketing exercise, and it brought attention to the car that it otherwise would not have received.

The somewhat trailing SUV version is not a failure of nerve, but rather a practical recognition that bold ideas and mass market appeal don’t always overlap as neatly as a design team might hope.