Polestar 4 production kicks off in China
With Polestar announcing the start of production today, the Geely-owned company is well on schedule. Customers in China will get their hands on the Polestar 4 before the year’s end, less than a year after the car debuted at the Shanghai Auto Show in April 2023. Polestar, therefore, called it “the fastest Polestar production car to date” when announcing the news today.
The company also confirmed the schedule for launches in Europe, North America and Asia-Pacific set for early 2024 at around 60,000 euros or 65,000 dollars. As reported, it will also roll off the production line in Busan, South Korea, by mid-2025 for the local and North American markets through contract manufacturing by Renault Korea Motors.
In China, the first series Polestar 4 has the colour Snow with the “signature Swedish gold details” of the Performance Pack. It is the first Polestar manufactured at the Hangzhou Bay factory operated by Geely Holding.
“The first Polestar 4 rolling off the production line today is the culmination of hard work from countless colleagues and partners,” said Thomas Ingenlath, Polestar CEO. He added that the Polestar 4 was “a remarkable SUV coupé in many ways” and played a “very important role in our growing line-up of exclusive performance EVs. It illustrates the value of our diversified and asset-light approach, making use of our partner and major shareholder’s development and manufacturing expertise.”
The model is based on Geely’s Sustainable Experience Architecture (SEA), which has formed the basis for numerous electric vehicles in recent years. From the platform, the Polestar 4 takes over the permanently excited synchronous motors; in the all-wheel-drive version, these come with a system output of 400 kW and a torque of 686 Nm. In addition to the dual-motor model, there will be a single-motor variant with rear-wheel drive – 200 kW of power and 343 Nm of torque. The battery contains 102 kWh for ranges of up to 600 kilometres.
Set at Geely’s Hangzhou Bay factory, Polestar adds that the plant’s green credentials had played a “significant role” in reducing the environmental impact of Polestar 4, which at 19.4-21.4 tCO2e has the lowest carbon footprint of any Polestar car at launch. The plant gets electricity from hydro and solar power. The workshop adopts further methods of reducing harmful waste, including water-based paint, a dry paper box filtering in the paint shop, or a non-chrome passivator to reduce water pollution.
As Polestar numbers its models chronologically, deducing the size or segment from the label alone is impossible. In fact, the Polestar 4 is positioned as an SUV coupé – both in terms of size and price – between the Polestar 2 mid-size saloon and the larger Polestar 3 SUV.
The model sits in the D-segment, and with a length of 4.84 metres and a width of 2.14 metres, the Polestar 4 is no small car. It is 1.54 metres high and has a wheelbase of 2.999 metres. The vehicle was designed as an SUV coupé from the outset rather than derived from an SUV model. According to the company, there should be no compromises in rear headroom; there are also adjustable seats in the rear.
One of the most striking features of the Polestar 4 is the lack of a rear window – the Polestar 5 saloon will also do without. Ingenlath describes “a virtual rear window with world-class digital rear-view mirror”.
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