The 2026 Polestar 4 still has no rear window

The nose will not tell you. In the Stuttgart photograph the front is a slim daytime lamp over a blank panel, with an intake lower down. Polestar’s U.S. spec sheet lists daytime running lights on the car. An illuminated front logo is a Plus-pack item. The missing glass is not on this face.

The tail is a panel. A light bar crosses the hatch, and a housing sits at the top of it. That is the spot the 2026 U.S. manual gives the rearview camera, on the upper part of the trunk hatch. There is no back window to sight through, which is why the mirror has to be a screen.

Polestar’s U.S. support page says the absent window began on the Precept concept and is how the Polestar 4 is built. Taking the glass out let Polestar extend the rear header and run the panoramic roof back behind the rear passengers, for headroom and a brighter cabin. The spec sheet lists that roof in laminated glass that cuts UV and noise, on a body 190.5 inches long and 60.4 inches high with a 118-inch wheelbase, and it describes a roof-hinged tailgate. Electrochromic glass, the dimming roof, is an option and requires the Plus pack. The solid tail does not say the roof can darken. Rear passengers sit under the glass. The luggage space behind them does not look out, so the support page’s route to more light back there is to remove the divider shelf or fold the 60/40 seat.

These photographs are not a U.S. model year. The nose was taken in Stuttgart on September 14, 2024. The tail was taken in Stuttgart-Vaihingen on March 16, 2025. The side view is an indoor frame from November 4, 2023. A photo date is not a model year. Polestar’s U.S. overview already says the pictures on that page are a European model, shown for illustration. What the U.S. pages fix is the car in the current offer. The lease and the purchase note, valid from October 1, 2026, through November 2, 2026, are written for a new 2026 Polestar 4. The page calls the car a Polestar 4 coupe, and the support page ties that coupe name to the sweeping roofline. EPA’s 2026 Polestar 4 page lists the model year in U.S. fuel-economy data. The solid tail is the shape those pages describe. It does not sort Rear motor from Dual motor.

What the mirror will and will not show

From the seat, the mirror is a display with two jobs, and they do not run together. The 2026 manual says camera mode shows the view from the hatch camera, with a camera symbol on the screen while that mode is on. Mirror mode turns the display into an ordinary mirror aimed at the rear seats, and the manual is blunt about the trade: you will not be able to see anything behind the vehicle. The safety page calls the camera roof-mounted, says the housing is shaped to keep water and grime off the lens, and gives the mirror 1480 by 320 pixels. Polestar’s claim there is that the screen shows more than a rear window would. The spec sheet lists one rearview HD camera in a camera housing and an 8.9-inch two-way mirror: the live feed, or a regular mirror so the rear passengers are visible. A tab on the underside, on the safety page, does the switching. The manual calls the control a mode control switch on the bottom of the mirror.

The support page says that feed comes from the car’s roof. The safety page calls the camera roof-mounted. The manual puts it on the upper part of the trunk hatch. On the car in the rear photograph, the housing is at the top of the hatch, which is the corner those lines describe. The manual also says what the picture does while the car moves. A turn signal shifts the view toward that side. Reverse tips it down. The support page treats that sideways change as the frame moving inside a wider camera image, not a fault in the mirror. Brightness and camera height are settings on the mirror, and the manual wants the camera-display settings made before driving. It will not let the screen pretend to be eyes. The field of view is limited, distances are easy to misjudge, and a dirty lens makes the aid worse. None of that is readable from the curb. From the curb the car is a solid tail and a roof that kept going after the rear seats. From the seat it is the road behind you, or the people behind you, and not both at once.