When Polestar unveiled its Precept concept the slick styling and sustainable interior was almost overshadowed by one feature: the car’s coach doors. These awesome doors looked great and opened the concept’s cabin up to the elements. The car is now heading for production as the new Polestar 5, but those sleek doors are nowhere to be seen and Polestar has a few good reasons for that.
The Precept concept first wowed car fans back in early 2020 with its slick sedan styling, sharp split-blade headlights and all kinds of safety tech and sensors packed into a new module on the car’s roof. Inside the car, the interior was packed with sustainable materials made from recycled plastics, which Polestar said helped save weight and the planet. Nice!
Most of those features will make it onto the Polestar 5, which the Swedish company confirmed would be based on the Precept concept. However, as production of the 5 nears, Polestar has confirmed that the awesome coach doors that were a highlight of the Precept won’t make it onto the real car.
“Nobody actually notices the step from the show car to the production car,” Polestar CEO Thomas Ingenlath told Jalopnik during a tour of its UK design center. “Except for that the doors don’t open that way and now they open this way.”
“This way” refers to the traditional, front-hinged doors that you’ll find on pretty much every other car you can buy today, including the soon-to-launch Polestar 5. When asked if the Swedish automaker ever considered fitting the 5 with coach doors, Ingenlath simply replied “no.”
“The reason why the show car had it was not because we felt like ‘oh it’s such a great gimmick’,” Ingenlath explained.
“I hope you are not too disappointed, but the only reason why we do that on show cars is because, at a fair, that’s the way you can get lots of photographers, lots of folks seeing the interior. That B-pillar is otherwise in the way.”
There was more to the choice than aesthetics, as well. Sure, the doors would have looked awesome when you’re picking up kids from school or getting a ride to the airport, but the design brings with it all kinds of “technical hurdles” that Polestar’s team of designers and engineers would have had to overcome.
The challenge is particularly tough due to the safety requirements and forces that car doors must be able to withstand. Here in America, there’s a side-impact test that cars must pass that simulates being t-boned by an SUV. Passing this test in a low-slung sports sedan like the Polestar 5 is hard enough, doing so without a B-pillar to absorb some of the impact would be nearly impossible.
“That has been probably the single most challenging point of the safety program,” adds Pete Allen, head of Research & Development UK at Polestar. If we didn’t have a B-pillar, I’m not saying it’s impossible but your doors would weigh 150 kilograms (330 pounds) each.”
As Polestar’s cars are all designed around messages of safety and sporty performance, there’s no wonder that it put these weighty, unsafe coach doors on the back burner for now.