Polestar’s Taycan Rival Costs Half As Much And Delivers Just As Much Punch

Targa Tasmania’s tricky Molesworth stage is no place for a big car. It’s a narrow ribbon of patched bitumen over the back of Mt Wellington, the kind of road the tarmac rally uses to sort the brave from the merely quick. It’s tight. It’s bumpy. Today, with October snow on the mountain, it’s wet, too, with rain sitting on coarse chip-seal and sheeting off the camber.

And I’m pointing five metres and 2500kg of Swedish electric GT at it.

Within a kilometre, the Polestar 5 has shrunk around me.

If the shape looks familiar, you’ve seen it before. Polestar showed the Precept concept back in 2020, and the 5 is about as close to that car as production reality allows. Long nose, low roof, four doors. Like the Polestar 4, there’s no rear window at all; a camera does that job.

It’s the brand’s new flagship, and Polestar isn’t coy about the target. Every comparison it invites leads straight to Stuttgart and the Porsche Taycan.

I’m driving the 5 Performance, at $193,100 plus on-road costs. A Taycan Turbo S is $376,600 before on-road costs. That’s a gap of more than $180,000 before you’ve ticked a single Porsche option box. And Porsche option boxes aren’t cheap.

The Polestar 5 looks the part. From behind it’s broad and planted, with a hard shoulder line, a proper diffuser and a light signature that looks more Millennium Falcon than anything else on the road. Up front, it’s low and shark-nosed, framed by Polestar’s ‘dual-blade’ headlights.

Coming up behind you, it looks like trouble. The good kind.

This is a car for the buyer who could easily have a Porsche, but would rather not be the fourth one parked outside the café.

Our Tassie launch route seemed designed to find the 5’s weak spots. We started in Molesworth, then headed down to New Norfolk for lunch at the Agrarian Kitchen. From there, it was the back roads of the Coal River Valley, through Campania, Colebrook and Oatlands, then up the highway before a right turn at Campbell Town onto Lake Leake Road, all the way to the east coast.

It didn’t find many.

Start with the steering. Most electric cars feel remote, like you’re piloting a very expensive simulator. Not this one. There’s real feel through a small, chunky wheel that wouldn’t look out of place in a sports car, and despite the size and undeniable mass, the nose goes exactly where you point it. On tight Tassie roads, that matters more than any power figure.

Then there’s the ride. It’s firm, but beautifully supple over the big hits. That’s remarkable given what’s at each corner: 21-inch Michelin Pilot Sport EVs, 40-series up front and 35-series at the rear. Rubber-band sidewalls on Tasmanian back roads should mean a crashy ride. It doesn’t.

With 650kW on tap, straight-line shove is vivid, as you’d expect. But on Lake Leake Road, the 5 really shows its hand. It’s one of the great drives in this country, all rhythm and blind crests, and the Polestar takes it with a calm, fuss-free composure that a big four-seat GT has no right to. As much commitment as you’d sensibly want on a public road, and it never put a wheel wrong.

The closest thing I’ve driven to this blend of ride and handling? A Taycan.

Then the 5 shows you its other side. On the highway, in heavy rain, on coarse chip-seal, you’d expect the roar of tyres and the constant hiss of water thrown up off the road. Onboard the 5, you hear almost nothing. Wind noise barely registers.

Overtakes are over in a blink, without drama. Acceleration is supercar level. And the car sits on the road like it’s been bolted there. Grand tourer by name, grand tourer by nature.

Inside, you sit low. Very low. For someone of my modest stature, getting in is a drop into the seat that feels more 911 than four-door sedan. Once you’re there, headroom is generous, even for the lanky.

The seats are Recaros developed for this car, and they sit on the sporty side of plush, exactly where they need to be. Polestar calls the 5 a 4+1, and that’s honest. Fold down the big centre armrest and the rear becomes two proper buckets. Five adults for any decent journey would be a stretch.

Bowers & Wilkins and 21 speakers handle the sound. The doors pull themselves shut. The glass roof is huge… and I mean huge.

The catch?

But the 5 isn’t flawless. Drive it the way Lake Leake begs you to, and the range drops quickly. At the end of our 300km day, we rolled into Bicheno with 15 per cent and about 50km showing. The Porsche might not have made the distance.

Regeneration does most of the slowing, so the big mechanical brakes rarely work hard on the road. How they’d cope with sustained punishment in a car this heavy is a track-day question.

My range question aside, the Polestar has one more thing over the Porsche. You won’t see yourself coming.

Polestar isn’t stockpiling the 5. Cars are built to order, and so far every buyer has gone for the Performance. Polestar Australia boss Scott Maynard is in no rush to change that.

“Our expectation is low. We don’t expect to sell many Polestar 5s. We’re expecting to keep it really, really tight,” he told DMARGE at the launch.

That’s despite pressure from head office to push harder. Maynard’s answer is simple. “Rather than build it and then try and flog it, we’d rather build what we think we’ll sell.”

The 5, as he puts it, is “an extraordinary display of just how capable this brand is”. Rarity is part of the deal. His other line? It’s Polestar turned up to 11.

So, is it better than a Porsche Taycan?

In a straight line, a Turbo S will probably still have it covered. Point to point, and in how it makes you feel, only a back-to-back test will settle it. That’s a test I’d love to run.

But that we’re even asking the question about a Polestar is the story. And the serious wedge of change from a Turbo S buys you a second very good car.

Ferrari, meanwhile, wants a million dollars for its own electric four-door GT, the Luce. Is the 5 better than that? Nobody knows yet. Nobody’s driven the battery Fezza. The 5 is certainly better looking, though. And at a fifth of the price, the Polestar doesn’t need to be better. It just needs to be close.

And it’s already here.