Polestar 5 joins the virtual grid in Gran Turismo 7
Polestar’s electric flagship, the Polestar 5, is heading to PlayStation’s Gran Turismo 7. The car made its debut during the GT World Series event in Los Angeles, and from December, players will be able to drive it in-game as part of a free update.
The partnership between Polestar and Polyphony Digital, the Sony-owned studio behind Gran Turismo, went far beyond a standard licensing deal. Both teams exchanged engineering data and opened up their development labs to ensure that the virtual Polestar 5 mirrored the real car’s behaviour with uncanny accuracy, down to the centimetre and millisecond.
To make sure the simulation wasn’t just a collection of numbers, professional racing driver and Gran Turismo champion Igor Fraga joined the project. He tested Polestar 5 prototypes in Sweden and later at the Brands Hatch circuit in England. Using Fraga’s feedback and the engineers’ telemetry, the developers created a digital model whose lap times in-game and in real life are said to be comparable, provided the driver knows what they’re doing.
Polestar’s head of chassis development, Joakim Rydholm, called the digital tuning process a matter of principle. “We wanted the in-game version to feel as authentic as possible. GT players will now experience the same sensation that the real Polestar 5 delivers.”
The update will also introduce the Polestar Time Trial, a special event where the fastest player wins a trip to Fukuoka, Japan, for the Gran Turismo World Series 2025 finals. A short documentary on the collaboration will premiere on Polestar’s YouTube channel at the same time as the competition begins.
The Gran Turismo franchise has long been regarded as one of the most precise driving simulators ever made, with more than 100 million copies sold. Polestar’s arrival in this virtual world carries symbolic weight. It’s proof that electric performance is no longer a futuristic concept but something both real and digital, here and now.
The virtual Polestar 5 may not smell of new leather or tremble under acceleration, but it might just make a generation of players wonder how Swedish engineering would feel if it lived inside their console.
