Why The 'Fastback' Polestar 2 Has An Oddly Tall Ride Height

The Polestar 2 isn’t an easy car to classify. Although it has a saloon-like three-box shape, it has a big hatchback boot opening. The electric vehicle also rides quite high, and has an elevated driving position, but doesn’t have a lofty ceiling like a crossover.

Polestar refers to it as a ‘fastback’, which is all well and good, but why does it sit tall like one of parent company Volvo’s Cross Country models? As explained to us during a Q&A session at the socially-distanced UK launch event for the car, there isn’t one reason.

The packaging constraints involved with having a load of battery cells under the floor are a factor, a problem Porsche solves with the Taycan using ‘foot garages’ - gaps in the pack to sit the occupants lower. The 2 has a similar feature, although this is only for passengers in the back.

Another consideration is - perhaps unexpectedly - the big hatchback boot. “Lowering the silhouette any more would have been impossible without having the hinge and the head of the person in harmony!” Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath explained, adding, “Going for a big tailgate was a deliberate choice on having that great functionality and not going for the last centimetre in terms of height.”

Polestar wasn’t necessarily backed into a corner, however; the raised stance is partly a deliberate move to incorporate some of the things crossover buyers are into, without unleashing yet another SUV into the world.

“There are so many SUVs out there - an abundance really,” designer Maximilian Missoni said, adding, “This body style talks more to the responsibility aspect when it comes to aerodynamics, the silhouette, but it gives you the same or very similar properties [as an SUV]”.

The 2, Missoni claims, “gives you some of the presence and stance on the road that SUV owners like but in a more modern, more sleek, more sustainable context”. Polestar won’t be ignoring the SUV trend and its currently lucrative nature entirely, however. The ‘3’ - set to arrive in 2022 - will be a conventional crossover.