Polestar’s New Performance Sedan Is Here. But Will It Come to America?

After five years of teasers that began with the Precept concept in 2020, the Polestar 5 is finally here. Polestar’s new flagship sedan debuts today at the IAA Mobility show in Munich, and it’s set to challenge the Porsche Taycan and Lucid Air.

Unfortunately, Polestar didn’t say when, or if, this Chinese-made sedan will come to the US.

As our colleagues at InsideEVs report, the Polestar 5 is built in Chongqing, and engineers say it’s almost impossible to move the tooling to a different location since the 5 rides on a bespoke platform. Chinese EVs are still subject to a Biden-era 100-percent tariff, so the Polestar 5 could be prohibitively expensive here in the US.

In Europe, the base Polestar 5 starts at €119,900 or ($140,000 USD), and the price for the Performance jumps to €142,900 ($167,000). 

A Bespoke Platform

The 5 is Polestar’s first bespoke car, as all its previous efforts rode on shared Geely platforms. It rides on a bonded aluminum platform and wears aluminum bodywork. Polestar primarily developed the car in the UK, with many ex-Lotus and McLaren engineers honing the 5’s driving dynamics.

Both the standard model and the Performance use a 112.0-kilowatt-hour gross (106.0-kWh net) nickel-metal-cadmium (NMC) battery. It’s Polestar’s first 800-volt architecture, too, which enables 350 kilowatt charging capability. That translates to a claimed 10-to-80-percent charge in 22 minutes. The estimated EPA range for the base car is 330 miles, while the Performance will do 300 miles.

Each Polestar 5 gets an in-house developed rear motor paired with a smaller front motor. The base car offers up 748 horsepower and 559 pound-feet of torque, while the Performance ups things to 884 horsepower and 749 pound-feet. Polestar says the base dual motor will run from 0-60 miles per hour in 3.8 seconds, while the Performance will do it in 3.1 seconds, and both have a 155-mph top speed. 

The base 5 sits on passive dampers, while the Performance gets MagneRide dampers—the same sort GM and Ferrari use to brilliant effect. Both get a braking system from Brembo with four-piston fixed calipers and two-piece rotors for lower weight.

Swedish Minimalism

Photo by: Polestar

Polestar considers the 5 a 4+1, meaning it’ll seat four comfortably, or five at a pinch. Inside, it’s the Swedish minimalism we come to expect from Polestar, with a large 14.5-inch portrait center display running a Google-based infotainment system as the focal point.

Like the Polestar 4, the 5 eschews a traditional rear window for a camera display on the rearview mirror, something Polestar says helps with aerodynamics. The company claims an impressive 0.24 drag coefficient, though this is some way off the Lucid Air’s 0.197. 

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Source: Polestar

Is The Polestar 5 Coming To The US?

Regarding US availability, Polestar said in the 5’s press release that the car is “​​[a]vailable to order now in select markets, pricing and availability for North America will be announced at a later date.” That’s ambiguous, so we’ve reached out to Polestar for clarification.

The 5 seems like a compelling alternative to the Taycan and the Air, but tariffs on Chinese EVs may make it totally unviable for the US. Polestar scrambled to get 3 production happening at Volvo’s South Carolina plant and 4 production going in South Korea for this reason.

But for a lower-volume, higher-priced halo like the 5, it may just not be worth it.