Slide into the driver’s seat and the sense that this is more coupé than SUV is only emphasised. Sure, you sit higher than in ‘classic’ saloons or coupés, but not by much.
The dashboard has strong horizontal lines, complete with hidden vents that you adjust via the touchscreen (annoying), but thankfully there’s a simple instrument display behind the steering wheel, and if you add the Plus Pack, you also get a head-up display.
The material palette is made up of some rather lovely textured textiles, or nappa leather if you prefer. There’s definitely that unmistakable, restrained, Scandi-chic feel in the materials and design, and it feels refreshingly different to the obvious German rivals – another selling point for any Polestar fans that may well revel in a car that’s anything but the norm.
The landscape-orientated touchscreen uses a reskin of the infotainment software from the Volvo EX30, and there are some neat touches to it. The icons are fairly big, and the adaptive dynamic functions light up orange when they’re activated, so they’re not too difficult to hit and it’s easy to see what’s active and what’s not. Configurable shortcuts on the homepage mean that you can have your lane-keeping assistance, regenerative-braking modes and more all a single prod away. The in-built Google Maps sat-nav is very good, too.
But there are some properly irritating usability issues. Yes, you can choose what ambience you want according to planetary theme (pick a planet and the car’s ambient lighting adjusts accordingly), but you still have to go three or four prods into the menus to change some adaptive drive features and find ways to turn on your foglights or adjust a mirror. It’s not as hard to navigate as the EX30’s system, but it's still not a user-friendly delight – and there's no mistaking that a few too many physical controls have been taken away by those who would worship at the altar of touchscreen tech.
There is fairly generous head room in the second row, although not quite enough for a 6ft 3in tall adult to sit without finding with the glass of the roof or that moved header rail with the top of their head. The back seats do recline, but reclining them doesn't create any more space. The material ambience is very plush and luxurious back there, however, and for passengers of more average height, it's roomy enough.
It's also a bit dark. Who’d have thought that’d happen with no rear windscreen? The standard glass roof stretched back over rear passengers’ heads helps to alleviate this, but there’s still a weird sense of looming claustrophobia.
The hatchback boot has a very healthy 526 litres of space, including 31 litres under the floor, so there’s some useful SUV-ness for you right there. A 15-litre frunk adds further useful cable storage, too.
Overall, when it comes to space, the 4 really is reasonably impressive – whichever of its many potential identities and rivals you choose to measure it against. It isn't the most comfortable or luxurious EV you might spend £60,000 on, however, nor any particular packaging sensataion.
Visibility is, after all, a key part of safety and practicality - and it's frankly annoying to not have a view out of the back of the car. While the rear-view camera that makes up for the solid metal shell at the back is high-definition by the standards of such things, it’s not as crisp and sharp as a traditional mirror; you can't use it like a mirror to judge distance by slightly moving your head (because a video camera give you no parallax effect); and it's problematic if you happen to wear glasses to correct long-sightedness (because you will need to look over your specs to focus on the screen where in a mirror you'd be focussing farther away). Visibility to the rear three-quarters isn’t brilliant, either.
