Polestar says EVs do not need multiple gears

POLESTAR has defended its decision to avoid multi-speed electric transmissions and rear-wheel steering in its flagship models, arguing that added complexity is not needed to deliver the brand’s preferred combination of performance, efficiency, and handling.

The comments come as the Sino-Swedish EV brand prepares to launch the Polestar 5 sedan in Australia as its new performance flagship, above the Polestar 3 large SUV and Polestar 4 midsize coupé-SUV.

Australian pricing for the 5 starts at $171,100 plus on-road costs for the 550kW Dual Motor variant and $193,100 + ORCs for the 650kW Performance, setting the four-door GT against other high-end EVs such as the Porsche Taycan, Audi e-tron GT, Lotus Emeya, and BMW i5 M60.

While some rivals, including the Porsche and Audi, include a second gear for their rear electric motors to manage performance and efficiency demands, Polestar says it deliberately avoided a multi-speed transmission for the Polestar 5.

“There was no need for having a gearbox, really. It adds weight, adds inefficiencies,” Polestar product attributes manager Mattias Svahn told GoAuto.

“The plain and most correct choice we ended up with was to have a single gear.”

In the Taycan, the first ratio of the two-speed gearset allows stronger standing-start acceleration while the longer second ratio assists efficiency and higher-speed performance.

Polestar’s fellow Geely brand Lotus has also adopted a two-speed transmission for the Emeya 900 model, which is unrelated to the Polestar 5, which like most EVs uses single-speed reduction gearing.

Mr Svahn said that the 5 does not require gears because its bespoke 450kW rear motor already delivers a good combination of efficiency and performance.

Polestar developed the motor in-house as it could not identify an off-the-shelf unit with the required characteristics.

Porsche has ended up coming to a similar conclusion with its latest electric models – the Macan and Cayenne SUVs – which dispense with a second gear as they also use new rear motors capable of better efficiency at higher RPMs.

A similar philosophy has been applied to the 5’s ride and handling. Although the bonded aluminium Polestar Performance Architecture used by the sedan could have accommodated rear-wheel steering (RWS), Polestar chose not to fit it.

“The development team specifically in the UK … tried to steer clear of some of the trickery to some extent,” said Mr Svahn.

“The platform could cater to rear wheel steering, but if you don’t need it, if you don’t need trickery, if it can be authentic as the tune is set up, we believe that is better.

“When you go on the limit, (RWS) can behave a little bit strangely versus what a sort of very authentic set-up product would do, so that is one of the choices.”

That decision is notable because RWS has become increasingly common in large, long-wheelbase vehicles as manufacturers seek to improve both low-speed manoeuvrability and high-speed stability.

Polestar does not reject electronic chassis control technologies outright.

The 5 uses brake torque vectoring, advanced traction control, and semi-active MagneRide dampers in the Performance grade.

Mr Svahn said Polestar’s philosophy was not to add more tech for the sake of it, but to integrate hardware and software harmoniously.

“The big benefits are that you can do so much control now over the car dynamics with electrical motors, because now you’re not talking about half a second response times anymore, you’re down to milliseconds response time,” he concluded.