Polestar 4 'Chauffeur' Self-Driving Tech Promised For New EV SUV: What It Can Do
Chinese-Swedish EV maker Polestar has just launched its electric SUV coupe — the Polestar 4 — in China, and while the rest of the world will need to wait until 2024 for the vehicle to arrive, we know much more about the car than we did when it debuted back in April. The Chinese variant of the Polestar 4 rolls onto roads with an Advanced Driver Assistance System (ADAS) called SuperVision, featuring 11 external cameras, an internal camera, and a radar module.
While it's a given that its ADAS feature will also make it to the global version, Polestar has just confirmed that the global variant of the EV will also debut "Chauffeur," an autonomous driving system developed by Israeli technology company Mobileye. The Polestar 4 will also become the first production car to deploy Mobileye's Chauffeur when it launches globally next year.
Chauffeur is a hands-off, eyes-off autonomous driving technology that promises to go beyond existing systems like Tesla's Autopilot and Ford's BlueCruise. Once deployed, it will allow Polestar 4 owners to plan completely automated, eyes-off, end-to-end highway trips in the car. Outside of highway driving, it'll power eyes-on automated driving. Chauffeur will be powered using Mobileye's EyeQ6 chips, the same that run the Polestar 4's SuperVision ADAS system.
The road ahead with Chauffeur
Polestar hasn't specified a timeline for the deployment of Chauffeur on the Polestar 4, saying only that its release will follow the EV's launch. As we've seen with other advanced driver assistance technologies, Chauffeur looks like to be an optional upgrade on the SUV, and almost certainly on a chargeable basis. For context, Tesla's "full self-driving" suite costs buyers an additional $15,000, while Ford — which recently announced it would make BlueCruise hardware standard on a number of its models — charges $2,100 for three years of BlueCruise functionality, if added when the vehicle is initially purchased.
As for the Polestar 3, deliveries of the electric SUV are on track to begin in 2024. Interestingly, while the Polestar 3 will have ADAS and — in the future — autonomous driving tech, it will not be based on MobileEye's technology. Instead it'll rely on Luminar sensors, after Volvo invested in the LIDAR startup.
The Polestar 4 is set to be the most powerful vehicle in the company's lineup. We have previously reported that the long-range dual-motor version of the car will feature a motor rated at 544 horsepower with 506 lb-ft of torque. The car also claims a 0-60 mph time of 3.8 seconds and a total range of 438 miles on a single charge. Besides supporting 200kW fast charging, the Polestar 4 also has a 15.4-inch central display and an intriguing design that uses a camera instead of a rear glass window.