Twelve drivers climbed into two versions of the same electric hatchback on a Swedish race circuit this year while eye trackers and heart-rate monitors recorded how their bodies reacted. The cars were both Polestar 4 models, one with a single rear motor and one with dual motors, and the question was whether a spec sheet can explain what a driver feels at speed.
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The results surfaced on Oct. 20, when Electrek’s Fred Lambert reported on the findings. They are small in scale and come with a cautious label from the researchers themselves, but they put numbers on something automakers usually describe with adjectives.
The two Polestar 4 versions in the test
According to Electrek’s report on the study, the University of Oxford’s SDG Impact Lab worked with Polestar to compare a rear-motor Polestar 4 rated at 200 kW, or 268 hp, against a dual-motor car with the Performance pack rated at 400 kW, or 544 hp. The 12 drivers ran both cars at the Gotland Ring, a track built inside an old limestone quarry on Sweden’s Gotland island, covering calm driving and dynamic driving in each.
Researchers logged vehicle telemetry alongside heart rate, eye tracking and psychological assessments, then interviewed every driver afterward. Electrek says the team calls the work a feasibility pilot and states that a larger study is needed to confirm what it saw.
Steering effort, acceleration and cornering loads
On matched fast laps, the 544-hp Dual motor car needed 15% less steering effort than the 268-hp Rear motor car, Electrek reports. The same comparison showed 32% higher peak acceleration for the stronger car, along with larger cornering loads and more hard-acceleration events. The steering figure is the surprising one, because acceleration is the obvious advantage of 276 extra horsepower while steering effort is a measure of how the car communicates through the wheel.
Polestar’s own framing of the project is broader than any single number. In its announcement of the Oxford collaboration, the company described a test of whether the thrill of driving can be scientifically observed, analysed and decoded, using brain activity, heart rate and eye movement recorded at the Gotland Ring. That announcement, dated July 3, reported no results, which makes the October figures the first public output Electrek describes.
What the body signals said
The physiological readings pointed the same direction as the telemetry. In dynamic driving, Electrek says, participants blinked less, their pupils dilated more and they held their gaze longer, which the researchers read as deeper attention. Scores on a performance and dynamics scale came to 89.2 for the Performance car against 67.7 for the Rear motor car, and overall experiential quality scored 93.0 against 77.9.
Interviews added color. Drivers described a blend of physical arousal, trust, control and focus, and several independently used the phrase “controlled roller coaster.” One participant said the car made drivers feel more skilled than they really were, according to Electrek. Thrill, trust and control were tied more consistently to the Performance version than to the Rear motor car.
Max Klapow, a doctoral researcher at the Oxford SDG Impact Lab, offered the study’s central idea in a quote Electrek carried: “Performance is not simply about going faster. It is about giving the driver a sense of confidence.” Christian Samson, Polestar’s head of product attributes, said the company wanted to understand something that cannot be captured by a specification sheet alone.
How the study was set up and what it cannot show
The project began as a pilot program. Automotive World’s account of the launch says six PhD-level innovation fellows from engineering science and experimental psychology were involved, working between March 9 and July 31, 2026, with vehicle testing at the Gotland Ring in June and results to be presented at Oxford in the autumn. Samson said at the launch that the work challenges conventions around straight-line acceleration being the default measure of driving excitement.
The limits matter. Twelve people is a small sample, the cars belonged to Polestar, and Polestar is attaching a documentary series to the project, as Lambert noted. Photos from the track show drivers wearing electrode caps, yet Polestar did not publish any brain-activity results. Accounts of the early plan, including Tarmac Life’s report and Auto Service World’s summary, also describe the aim as building a repeatable framework for measuring driving thrill, not proving that one trim level beats another.
For buyers, the practical reading is modest. The comparison does not say a 544-hp Polestar 4 is the better choice for every driver, and it says nothing about price, range or reliability. It does suggest that steering feel and perceived control, not only 0-60 times, may be part of why a more powerful electric car feels different in the hands of an ordinary driver.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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