This Miserable ‘Feature’ Of The Polestar 4 Feels Like A Symbol For What Is Wrong With Modern Cars

I was just out in Los Angeles for one of our periodic Autopian Leadership Synods and ayahuasca-fueled vision quests that eventually form the basis for our future business plans. While there, we had use of a Polestar 4 press car – you know, the one without the rear window, which is what everyone has been clamoring for, as I’m sure you know. But it’s not that absence of a rear window that I think is the most unsettling and disturbing detail of this car: it’s something smaller and more insidious, and something that I feel is remarkably well-suited to showcase what feels like a pervasive madness of modern automotive design.

It’s just a little detail, but I think its very existence is something we should really be looking at and thinking about, critically. Because the very existence of this feature – and I’m hesitant to really call it a “feature” – implies a way of thinking about modern cars that I feel is fundamentally flawed and deeply annoying, and is a way of thinking that contributes to the modern problems of cars being too expensive to buy, repair, and maintain. Also, it’s just kind of stupid.

It’s this:

See that? It’s that little button there that you use to close the charging port. There’s a motor behind there, and that motor moves the door closed – you know, like what you could do with your hand without even thinking about it, like you’ve been doing to little refueling flaps (gasoline or electrons or hydrogen or whatever, it doesn’t matter) for decades.

The button is very counterintuitive; every single fiber of your soul wants to just close the damn flap with your hand like you’ve been closing doors and cabinets and mailboxes and whatever since you were a toddler, but if you try you can feel the hidden motor connected to that hinge resist and suggest, via subtle tactile cues, that you’ll probably cause hundreds of dollars of damage or more were you to absent-mindedly force it.

Can you picture how maddening this is? It drives me clamshit. Here’s some video evidence of the madness-driving:

 

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Now, having to open the charging port from the inside isn’t great, but there are plenty of cars that have you open the fuel door with some little button or lever, so I can’t really fault the Polestar 4 for that. And besides, it looks like it can be opened manually from the outside, according to the manual:

I mean, they say it’s only for emergencies and you shouldn’t do it regularly, and they mention “prying” which hardly seems ideal. That said, there’s another part of the manual that says you can open it manually, and it’s a little less dire-sounding:

Despite this, though, the preferred way is indeed opening from the center screen’s menu:

I think you can open it from the phone app, too? All of this feels like needless complexity, especially considering that on other Polestar cars, like the Polestar 2, all you have to do is tap the charge door to open it and close it with your hand, you know, like every other freaking car on Earth:

What was wrong with this? Aesthetically, it looks no different from the outside of the car; there are no aerodynamic disadvantages; it accomplishes the same function as the powered door, and does it without the extra complexity of a motor and specialized software. It was fine. Not a problem at all.

I suppose the only advantage the powered door offers is that it can close itself, if you forget and leave it open (which is hardly an Earth-shattering problem), as described in the manual:

So, okay, it can automatically do something that you could have also done essentially automatically. How is any of this worth it? I can’t think of anything I need a car to do for me less than closing a tiny door. But look at all the complexity and complication that gets introduced for this nearly meaningless feature! I mean, look at how many more pages of owner’s manual is taken up just describing how this feature is to be properly interacted with (especially compared to the half-page the Polestar 2 needs to explain how to open and close its charge port), and then there’s the fact that there’s a motor in there and associated wiring and gearing and linkages and the software needed to control it and sense when it’s open or shut and on and on and all for what? So you don’t have to move your hand three inches?

The mentality that led to anyone thinking this is a good idea is deeply and profoundly misguided. Modern cars are so wildly expensive precisely because of this sort of thinking, this concept that every interaction with the car needs to be motorized or interact with the car’s software and screens or be remotely actuated in some inane way – it’s absurd. This way of thinking burdens cars with needless hardware and software and complexity, and the end result is an experience that’s just more annoying than the old manual ways.

Look at the issues with powered door handles, for example: there’s a reason China is banning them. They add complexity and don’t work reliably in emergency situations, and all for what? So rubes can be dazzled when the handle slowly slides out from the car? It’s ridiculous. Door handles were a solved problem, and these new powered solutions only made them worse.

The same goes for this charge port flap. No one was asking for a fucking button to close the door. No one’s experience with this car is improved thanks to the addition of this button or any of the associated rules and systems that the charge flap now demands.

Am I being a luddite? I don’t think so. I like seeing new tech applied to cars, but only if it actually, you know, makes owning and using that car better. And so much of what is being put into new cars is not making them better. Touchscreen-controlled air vents and gloveboxes are idiotic, for example. None of this crap is making cars better, just more complex and expensive. And if you think all this electrical bullshit isn’t going to be a problem as the car ages, then I envy your ability to happily delude yourself.

It’s up to us to speak out and push back when we see this sort of bad design happening. When carmakers seem to be going down a poorly chosen path, we need to make it clear that there are plenty of potential car buyers who don’t want this. I suspect most people are absolutely capable of slapping a charge door shut, and are just fine with that. If there’s something I’m missing here, some glorious joy that comes from pushing a stupid button to get a motor to close a door I could have more easily just shut with my hand, I’m listening.

Until then, Polestar, knock it off, already.

Top graphic image: Jason Torchinsky