The Polestar Precept is even prettier in the metal
With its first production model, the grand-touring Polestar 1, soon to be leaving production, the Swedish-Chinese electric luxury automaker will soon be down to just one model: the Polestar 2. The next model in the pipeline, the Polestar 5, is a four-door sedan that will sit atop the model hierarchy and should debut in about two years. Polestar has been trickling out information about the upcoming sedan, including news that its bespoke chassis will be Polestar-exclusive and distinct from anything in Volvo’s arsenal. We also know that the Precept concept, first shown a year ago, is more than a mere hint at future design language. All rumors suggest that much of Precept’s sleek design has been greenlit to effectively become the production Polestar 5.
If you’d like to get an up-close look at the Precept, you’ve got one more week to see it in person at the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles. We leveraged our in-person visit to get a feel for the car’s presence and wonder how many of the interesting design elements would endure in final form.
The overall look of the car is athletic but clean, efficient, and without many extraneous lines. The sleek, hardtop roofline will likely be updated with a B-pillar for the sake of rigidity; the recent news of the Polestar 5’s aluminum-intensive chassis also showed B-pillars in the body-in-white. We also wouldn’t expect to see rear-hinged “coach” rear doors such as those that made it to the snazzy Lincoln Continental Coach Door Edition.
Thin strips are located at the trailing edges of the C-pillar glass, with lights that show charging status at a glance. Those certainly add to the design and are an elegant solution we hope survive to production. The headlights and driving lights, evocative of Volvo’s “Thor’s hammer” signature, are split and nearly mirrored horizontally. There’s some family resemblance with the lights on the Volvo concept-derived Polestar 1, but these are much bolder. Finally, slim side-view cameras are mounted where we’d naturally expect to see side mirrors. The side view will be displayed on monitors inside.
Something rather obvious is missing in the Precept, and it took us a moment to realize it: there’s no rear window. Instead, the rear-view “mirror” will be a display that uses video from a rear-facing camera. Given how useless as some modern car and crossover rear windows are, this seems perfectly logical, and many manufacturers (like Cadillac) boast displays that can alternate between a rear camera view and a traditional mirror. It appears that this will be heading to production if Polestar’s body-in-white is any indication. Let’s hope there’s at least a washer built in, because if that camera gets obscured by ice, dirt, grime, or salt it becomes pretty useless.
Finally, there are two design elements from the Precept that we don’t think will make it to production: the center-lock wheels and the protruding LIDAR atop of the vehicle. The center-locks will likely be replaced with Volvo’s traditional wheel bolts. While the LIDAR may stay, we’d expect it to be blended into the roof construction. Could a feature like this be designed to minimize wind noise in such a conspicuous location?
If you plan on visiting the Polestar Precept while it’s still in Los Angeles, make sure you sign up for a tour of The Vault, as the Precept, along with a production Polestar 1 and Polestar 2, are located in a room adjacent to The Vault in the Petersen’s basement. Get your tickets here.
