The archive · Product Ideas · Product decision · 2023–2025
Polestar 4 deletes the rear window — Red Dot Best of the Best 2025
Polestar's coupe-SUV is the first production car with no rear window: a roof camera feeds the mirror, glass roofs the cabin — and it wins Red Dot's top prize.
Polestar
What it had to solve
Polestar wanted a sleek, aerodynamic coupe-SUV, but a sloped rear deck makes a traditional rear window small and hard to see through. The idea was previewed on its 2020 Precept concept.
How it works
A coupe-SUV rear window is often a token: a small, steeply raked pane that frames the bumper more than the road. Polestar's answer was to not have one at all. The Polestar 4, revealed in 2023 as the brand's first production model to delete the rear window, substitutes a roof-mounted HD camera feeding a digital rearview mirror.
The deletion unlocked the rest of the design. With no glass panel to preserve, the roofline could flow into a long, aerodynamic coupe silhouette, and a panoramic glass roof could run past the rear seats, giving second-row passengers unusual light and headroom. Polestar had trailed the idea on its 2020 Precept concept, and the production car committed to it fully.
In 2025 the Red Dot jury gave the Polestar 4 its highest honour, Best of the Best in Product Design, praising the omission as the model's most striking and most debated feature — one that shapes its recognisability — while noting the camera system delivers a precise, clear view. The award turned a polarising choice into a talking point about whether rear glass still belongs in EVs.
Why it lands
- It converts a weak traditional component — the coupe's near-useless rear window — into the car's most memorable design signature.
- The camera mirror is functionally credible: wider, more consistent and better in low light than glass, so the subtraction never reads as a gimmick.
- Removing the glass freed the silhouette and made room for a full glass roof, improving both aerodynamics and rear-seat experience at once.
- Going first — no other production model had done it — forced the conversation instead of following it.
What it did
Won Red Dot: Best of the Best in Product Design 2025; the jury called the omitted rear window the car's most striking feature, following clear, defensible logic. It also triggered broad industry debate about camera-based visibility replacing glass.
What you can take
Removing a component nobody can use well can liberate a whole design — subtraction, with a credible substitute, becomes identity rather than compromise.
Since then
The no-rear-window design drew both praise and scepticism, with commentators debating the failure modes of camera-only visibility, and early reviews described the digital mirror as mirror-like with a wider angle. As more EVs pursue low-drag silhouettes, Polestar's decision became a reference point for camera-based rear visibility across the industry.
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