When starting the vehicle and placing it in reverse, the center screen was frozen and did not show the backup camera or other sfaety information. Safety was put at risk because reverse visiblity / backover prevention were impaired. Other functions such as reverse auto brake were likely unavailable, or a least unmonitored (rear cross traffic allert was definitely unavailable as it depends on the center screen). This was resolved by re-parking the vehicle and rebooting the infotainment system / center screen. It has not been independently reproduced or inspected, as it's presenting as random flakiness and the driver stopped and took troubleshooting steps (out of an abundance of caution). There were no warnings or other issues, though it does correlate with switching diriver profiles and may be yet another safety issue caused by the vehicle's underpowered IHU. (The IHU was upgraded for 2026 models, and is backwards compatible, but no upgrades have been made available in the US)
Polestar 2 backup camera problems
425 of the 597 owner complaints about the Polestar 2 describe backup camera failure, most of them for the 2022 model year.
- owner complaints
- 425
- worst model year
- 2022
By model year
Often reported together
What owners say
Center entertaiment touchscreen which provides visiblity for the rear camera as well as the backup sensors and A/C controls for front defogger went is completely blank. Polestar2 logo appears, but no longer boots. This causes the rear camera to be completely useless.
The rear view camera malfunctioned, despite complying with the recent recall. It is available for inspection upon request. Safety was compromised by reduced rear visibility due to the lack of a rear view camera. This is an intermittent issue, not reliably reproducible for a dealer or service center. There has been no third party inspection, and no warning. The failure correlated with switching drivers; this may be part of oingoing issues with the underpowered IHU not handling driver switching well. If you are trying to reproduce the issue on a sample vehicle, I encourage swapping a few times between two drivers.
Polestar has issued the 3rd recall for issues with the Rear Camera not responding quickly enough on vehicle start up. They have claimed they will provide a software fix but that is what they claimed the last 2 times without any improvement in the operation of the camera. They offer a paid upgrade to a newer CPU that actually fixes the issue but they do not want to spend the money to provide this as a free upgrade to actually fix this problem. They should be forced to offer the hardware fix as the software fixes up to this point have not worked.
Well backing out of a parking space at the grocery store. My rear camera failed to activate even after several times trying to get the camera to work. I decided to try and back out by just looking over my shoulder, but could not see through the back window and collided into a shopping cart. None of the advanced systems activated no object detection, no camera and no collision warning.
After installing the recent software update (version 5.0.10) that was intended to fix the rear camera not appearing when shifting into reverse, my vehicle has continued to experience the same problem, now with significantly increased frequency. Nearly every day--sometimes multiple times a day--the infotainment system/center screen will fail to boot up before shifting into reverse and the camera view will not appear. The gap between starting the vehicle, the system booting up, and the camera appearing, varies every time, sometimes up to 60 seconds. Occasionally, the center screen will remain black, with no indication that the system is booting up, for up to 30 seconds after starting the vehicle, even though the screen should wake up immediately upon starting. The issue first occurred the day after installing the update (April 10, 2026), but has recurred nearly every single day since then, up until and including the day I submitted this report. The issue has been exacerbated by the increased summer heat in Arizona, leading me to believe the computer--besides lacking required processing power & memory--is not adequately cooled. The earliest available appointment to have the issue checked out was July 14, 2026, so the vehicle has not yet been inspected. No warning lamps or related symptoms. All 5 attached pictures were taken after the vehicle was shifted into reverse.
A new software update was recently released to fix a previous recall of the backup camera. Ever since that version 5 of the software was released, the display unit computer randomly resets during the drive. During the report, all blind spot, cruise control, lane sensing, sensors, etc are not working and take multiple minutes to turn on and the activate.
The backup camera continues to fail to turn on. The car will intermittently report “Camera is temporarily unavailable”. This persists for minutes at a time. I cannot figure out how to get the camera to turn on when this happens. It already received the OTA “fix” for this but it did not fix the issue.
Polestar 2 software version 4.2.13. While reversing out of a parking spot the rear camera briefly turned on, but after a second, the infotainment system crashed, with the screen shutting off. The infotainment system automatically rebooted after ~1min of driving. This system crash also temporarily disabled rear cross traffic alert and the parking sensors. Backup cameras are a federally mandated safety feature which reduce the risk of collisions when reversing. Without this safety feature, the risk of a collision increases.
The backup camera consistently fails and displays a "Backup Camera is Temporarily Unavailable" message. Polestar is only issuing a software fix for this on model year 2026 Polestar 2s and a solution has not been offered for over 8 months now.
Related recalls
Electrical system: propulsion system: traction battery: management system/energy control module (bms/becm): software
- What is wrong
- Polestar Automotive USA, Inc. (Polestar) is recalling certain 2021-2022 Polestar 2 vehicles. The Battery Energy Control Module (BECM) microprocessor may reset and cause the high voltage system to disconnect.
- Risk
- A disconnected high voltage system can cause a loss of drive power, increasing the risk of a crash.
- Remedy
- Polestar will notify owners, and the software will be updated by a dealer, or through an over-the-air (OTA) update, free of charge. Owner notification letters were mailed April 23, 2021. Owners may contact Polestar customer service at 1‑800‑806‑2504. Polestar's number for this recall is R10079.
Recall number 21V110000 · Recall details
Questions about the Polestar 2 backup camera
Which Polestar 2 years have backup camera failure problems?
The model years with the most reports are 2022 (210 complaints), 2021 (114 complaints) and 2023 (88 complaints).
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