Polestar 5 (2025 - ) Electric review
Fast, futuristic and eco-conscious, how does Polestar's new flagship shape up against the competition?
Words by: Erin Baker
Published on 6 October 2026 | 0 min read
The Autotrader expert verdict:
Available new from £89,500
Polestar, once the performance sub-brand of Volvo, has transformed itself into the intellectuals’ intellectual electric-car company. Its idea of downtime is reading back copies of The Architectural Review, and its fantasy night out is a lock-in at the library with the periodic table in hard copy. What Polestar doesn’t know about CO2-equivalent savings isn’t worth knowing. And thus, reader, I love it. The problem comes when trying to sell its luxury coupes and SUVs to the general public who are still all “ooo, I’ve got bigger screens and more shades of the rainbow for my interior lighting than you”. If that’s your bag, go buy a Mercedes (or Porsche Taycan or Audi e-tron GT, which are the natural competitors to this car). If however, the more subtle things get, the classier you feel, step this way. Think Loro Piana. Engage cashmere brain. Welcome to the Polestar 5: the stealthiest high-performance car ever (or “supercar in a GT format, as Polestar describes it). Shhhh…
Reasons to buy:
- Insanely quick
- Fab sound system
- Great carbon footprint
Green Rating
Full marks at brand level: Polestar leads the way in innovative solutions to climate change for the car world. It is so ahead of the curve that it is aiming for a zero-carbon production car by 2030 by going back to the periodic table and eliminating all greenhouse gases from the supply chain and production. However, we can’t award a large car featuring such a huge battery the full beans: no one needs a car this big or powerful. That said, such is Polestar’s success in carbon reduction, the cradle-to-gate footprint of the 5 is 23.8 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions, compared with 26.1 tonnes for the much smaller Polestar 2 when it came out.
Running costs for a Polestar Polestar 5
“If, however, you have a home charger, and can therefore get 200 miles of charge for a fiver while everyone queuing at the pumps is paying almost £2 a litre, you start to feel happier”
Reliability of a Polestar Polestar 5
“Dealer support appears to have improved significantly, and transparent battery-health data is now one swipe away on the car’s screen”
Safety for a Polestar Polestar 5
“We don’t like the electronic rear-view mirror (compulsory because there is no rear window) however: there is no depth perception with it”
How comfortable is the Polestar Polestar 5
“I can confidently say this is one of the most satisfying cars in which to pass the time on a long road trip”
Features of the Polestar Polestar 5
“Surfaces are sculpted to thin, hard lines covered in technical weaves and sustainable fabrics. Colours are muted, the touchscreen is the size of an iPad”
Here lies Polestar’s central issue: it is too smart and too restrained for its own good. It is ahead of its time in terms of design, materials and what it chooses to leave out of its cars, and in a decade or so I’m sure we will all have reimagined our concept of luxury to look more like Polestar’s vision, but at the moment, customers paying six figures for a car want a blingy, glitzy, shiny interior with huge glass screens covering the entire dash, multi-coloured strips of lighting and surfaces covered in huge swathes of wood or leather. This is not Polestar. Surfaces are sculpted to thin, hard lines covered in technical weaves and sustainable fabrics. Colours are muted, the touchscreen is the size of an iPad. You could be in any of Polestar’s family, which leaves you feeling slightly short-changed. There should be a nod to the fact you have bought the flagship of the range.
We do, however, love the colour palette of orange, grey, cream and black, with yellow seatbelts for the Performance version (see below). And it’s a huge tick for the superb Bowers and Wilkins surround-sound audio system, with an entire sound bar behind the rear headrests. Ditto the inclusion of Gemini, Google’s AI system.
Most of all, though, we value Polestar’s industry-leading sustainability credentials, which is incorporated into its design, with the amount of CO2e saved through the use of recyclable lightweight materials printed onto the materials themselves inside the car. The brand has even found a decent alternative to carbon fibre, B comp, which is made from flax, and features in the seat backs.
Power for a Polestar Polestar 5
“If you’re after the best range, however, the cheaper Dual Motor version will serve you better”
