The all-electric Porsche Taycan
The most important car of the year arrives at its end
You might remember The Simpsons episode when Homer joins the Stonecutters, a secretive and influential masonic-like society whose club song boasts, “Who holds back the electric car? Who makes Steve Guttenberg a star? We do.”
Guttenberg’s career has long since slid out of sight, and now with the launch of the Porsche Taycan (pronounced “tie-khan” to save your blushes), we can finally say the electric car has been held back no longer. Why now? It’s hardly the first electric car on the scene after all, but it makes a strong case for being the most significant.
For a start, it’s the first all-electric production supercar from one of the industry’s true heavyweights. Yes, the Tesla Model S is already on the scene but Porsche, whose flagship model the 911 has been an unofficial ambassador of the combustion engine era for over 55 years, has unveiled a car that they hope will do a similar job in the new dawn.
And pound for pound, it can stake a strong claim to being the most advanced car on the planet. Graceful, unflappable, astonishingly fast; as a technical feat of engineering, the execution and detail on show put this car into a new category. Perhaps most tellingly, it manages to feel both completely different to any Porsche that has come before it, yet still you know it’s a Porsche. For this reason, the decision to keep the styling and interior design pretty familiar looks a smart one. That most petroleum-based word “Turbo” has even been retained to denote the fastest car in its range, electric or otherwise. We’re going to need our hands held into this coming epoch, and Porsche understands that.
We can almost say that the Taycan is practical, too. Size-wise, it’s closer to a Panamera and as the first electric car with an 800v power system (most have 400v) it can charge an extra 62 miles in just five minutes, making it increasingly viable for long trips where its quiet poise and technical know-how should come into its own.
And it’s worth pointing out that this is no limited-edition niche designed purely to grab some headlines — Porsche could make as many as 40,000 of these in its first year.
The Taycan is certainly a big deal for Porsche. Even picking the name took a year-anda-half. It’s the first marker down on a €6bn (£5.18bn) investment into its electric future, after all.
“My vision is that the Taycan will become the icon of this new era, almost like a synonym for a purely electric sports car,” says the company’s head of styling, Michael Mauer. “Just like what the 911 has achieved in its segment over the past decades.”
Electric cars still have limitations and are certainly no panacea for our environmental woes, but in strictly technological terms the shift has arrived and the Taycan is its poster child. Don’t expect a Steve Guttenberg comeback anytime soon.
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