Porsche Taycan Review (2019-present)

The Porsche Taycan is a pure electric, four-door sports GT car. Rivals include everything from cheaper, more conventional petrol performance cars like the BMW M5 and Mercedes-AMG E63, to pricier ones like Bentley's Continental GT and even Porsche’s own Panamera. The Tesla Model S is arguably the Taycan's most direct rival, as is the closely related Audi e-tron GT, but you might also be considering electric SUVs such as the Jaguar I-Pace and Audi e-tron.

The Taycan is offered in five variants: a standard model, 4S, GTS, Turbo and Turbo S. Ignoring for a second that the Turbo badging is inaccurate, since an electric vehicle cannot be turbocharged, both the Taycan Turbo and Taycan Turbo S are both stupidly fast; you just get to pick what level of stupid you fancy.

Packed with innovative technologies, such as a powerful 800-volt electrical architecture, the Taycan was a little later to the EV party than some, but it was worth the wait. Not only does it boast a decent range, a luxurious interior and plenty of desirable kit, it sets new standards for electric car driving excitement.

In 2021, the range was expanded to include the Cross Turismo, which added a dash more practicality. More of a lifestyle oriented Shooting Brake than a true estate car, it also packs some rugged SUV cues to make it one of the fastest and best driving crossover models (quite a lot) of money can buy.

The Taycan’s interior is a joy. Everything from the curved, frameless digital display behind the steering wheel, to the dual touchscreen system and minimalist dashboard feels precisely built and expensively finished. The electrically adjustable front seats are supportive and comfortable, too, and will suit any shape and size of driver. The only frustration is that the climate control vents are hidden between the infotainment screens, so it’s a faff to adjust the angle on the move.

Visibility out of the back of the Taycan is pretty poor, even on the Cross Turismo, and annoyingly there are a lot of optional extras that you’d expect to be standard, including adaptive cruise control, keyless entry and even the Type 2 cable that is essential for plugging the car into an AC car charger. That last one is not dissimilar to making a fuel flap optional on a 911...

Still, at least you can get two people in the rear seats fairly comfortably, although tall adults may find headroom a touch tight. The Taycan is a four-seat car, so there's only space for two passengers in the back. There’s a decent 366-litre boot that’s shallow, but has a usefully large floor space, so the golf clubs won’t be an issue. There’s also an 81-litre trunk under the bonnet, which is great for the cables.

If you want a touch more space, then the Cross Turismo will happily oblige, not least because its longer roof means an extra 47mm of headroom for those in the rear. It’s also possible to specify an optional ‘2+1’ rear bench that includes a centre seat for occasional use. It also gets a bigger boot, with 446 litres of space up for grabs with the rear seats in place and 1,212 litres with them folded flat.

In terms of real-world range, around 240 miles in varied driving is realistic for biggest-capacity battery models, while the standard Porsche Taycan 4S will likely deliver closer to a 200-mile range. For the longest distance between charges you need the standard rear-wheel drive car with the larger 93.4kWh battery, which should comfortably crack 300 miles if driven sensibly. Cold weather and a lot of high-speed miles will see those range estimates drop on all models.

Plug the Taycan into a home wall box and it’ll take between 11 and 14 hours to charge, depending on which battery you’ve got. The Taycan also lays claim to being the fastest charging car on sale, with the capacity to top-up at 270kW. This means very little to most of us, but know that if you can find one of the super-rapid 350kW DC chargers you’ll need to benefit from these charging speeds, you’ll get over 100 miles of range in less time that it takes you to use the facilities and buy a coffee to go.

The Taycan drives beautifully, too. Sure, it’s a heavy car, but Porsche’s wizardry is in full evidence here, and the Taycan sucks its stomach in and swaggers with improbable daintiness for a car weighing well over two tonnes. It’s neatly tied down, corners with precision and a hint of playfulness, and makes a car that comes with some frighteningly large numbers feel remarkably accessible. In fact, by far the most important thing about the Taycan – more so than the comical performance – is the fact that it is a delight to drive, even at normal road speeds.

It’s also remarkably comfortable thanks to the standard adaptive air suspension, and that civility and stability make it a fantastic cruiser. Unusually for an electric car, the Taycan gets a two-speed transmission to make it more efficient on the motorway. The brake feel is the only slightly underwhelming aspect of the Taycan’s dynamic repertoire, and can be lacking under harder use.

Most Taycans get all-wheel drive courtesy of dual electric motors (one on the front axle, one on the rear axle), and with 671bhp the Turbo will do 3.2sec to 62mph, while the 751bhp Turbo S takes a kidney-bruising 2.8sec.

For all that, the cheaper and less powerful rear-wheel drive model is our pick of the range. Just make sure to add the Performance Plus battery, since it features the 93.4kWh battery pack (the same as in the Turbo models) rather than the standard 79.2kWh unit, as it ups the range to beyond 300 miles.

With ‘just’ 469bhp it’s still a stunning performer, with the 0-62mph sprint taking just 5.4 seconds, while the reduction in weight thanks to only having a single, rear-mounted motor means it feels more agile and engaging.

The Taycan Cross Turismo feels largely the same on the move, although its 20mm increase in ride height brings longer travel suspension and even more supple progress over bumps. Go for the Off Road package and the Cross Tursimo is jacked-up by a further 10mm for greater ground clearance when tackling the wilderness. That said, the car is really only designed tackling rutted tracks and snowy mountain passes: it certainly doesn’t have the rough-and-tumble, go-anywhere chops of a Range Rover.

The days of a poorly-equipped Porsche are largely over, with all versions of the Taycan getting LED headlamps, powered and part-leather trimmed seats, climate control and parking sensors among other things. Move up the range and you’ll get larger alloy wheels and different trim materials, while the Turbo models add a neat matrix function to their LED headlamps that effectively ‘masks’ oncoming traffic so that you can use the main beam without dazzling others.

Yet while there’s more kit included in the price, Porsche still hasn’t missed a trick with the optional extras list, as you can see below. Either way, it’s important to remember that unless you show restraint, it’s easy to increase the cost of your Taycan by at least a third just by adding options. That said, if you’re in the market for one of these cars, then it’s unlikely saving a few pennies will be at the top of your priority list.

All Taycan models get a pair of touch screens - a 10.9-inch infotainment display and a smaller unit for the heating and car settings below it. The former gets sat nav, Apple CarPlay, Android Auto and plenty more besides, including numerous apps and an ability to update information using real-time updates. It's a little confusing at first, but once you’ve got your head around the cabin settings and shortcuts being on the lower screen, and other media being on the upper screen, it does become more intuitive.

The Taycan is one of the few Porsche models to have been assessed by EuroNCAP, yet unsurprisingly it was awarded the full five stars by the safety specialists. It scored an impressive 85 percent for adult occupant protection, 83 percent for children, 70 percent for pedestrian safety and 73 percent for its active safety systems.

One highlight is the optional InnoDrive system, that effectively offers semi-autonomous driving through adaptive cruise control, lane keeping aid and overtaking assistance. And for the ultimate bar-room bragging rights there’s also the availability of a night vision camera.

The Porsche Taycan will be much cheaper to fuel than equivalent petrol and diesel luxury cars. A full charge for the 93.4kWh battery will cost under £13, which with a real-world range of 240 miles works out at just over 5p per mile. A petrol car doing 30mpg will cost around 16p per mile, so you’re saving some two thirds on fuel; far more than that if you use off-peak tariffs to reduce charging costs by as much as half.

Charging at public rapid chargers is a different situation altogether, and in fact electricity here can cost almost as much per mile as petrol or diesel.

The Taycan is also free of Vehicle Excise Duty, saving some £4,500 over equivalent petrol rivals. Even plug-in hybrid alternatives such as Porsche’s own Panamera E-Hybrid will cost thousands to tax, because only pure electric cars get these kinds of tax breaks. You also get free entry to London’s congestion zone.

A major service is due on the Taycan every two years or 20,000 miles, so you'll save a little on servicing costs compared to petrol and diesel rivals, but beyond that it won't be cheap to run. Naturally, it has enormous tyres that it'll chew through fairly quickly given the monstrous levels of torque (1,060Nm in the Porsche Taycan Turbo S) that they’re dealing with. Insurance is, of course, in the top group 50.

It’s early days to be forecasting depreciation, but the Taycan is expected to hold its value very well, certainly better than most conventional luxury GTs, which typically lose value very quickly.

The Porsche Taycan is too new to have featured in owner or reliability surveys, but as an overall brand, Porsche was rated a disappointing 23rd out of 31 manufacturers rated in the 2019 What Car? Reliability Survey.

It is very difficult to judge the Taycan on that basis, though, since it's a totally new piece of engineering with a new powertrain, and typically, electric cars are more reliable than combustion-engined cars since they have far fewer moving parts. That’s not to say that they aren’t susceptible to electric gremlins, though, and charging hardware can suffer faults as well, but we’ll have to wait and see how the Taycan fares on that front.

It's covered by a three-year, unlimited-mileage warranty, while the battery is covered by an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty.

Battery longevity is often cited as a major concern with electric cars, but EVs have proven that modern lithium-ion batteries have a far longer life than most will ever need. The Taycan’s battery will, as with any battery, lose performance over time. As a very rough guess, you could well see the maximum range of the car drop by some 15% to 20% over 100,000 miles. You can also help to maintain battery life by keeping it topped up between 20% and 80% in routine use, and only using 100% charge when you need it for longer journeys.