Taycan the lead
£115,858 FOR Does an impressive impression of a sports car AGAINST Not cheap, and options are costly
Not just Porsche’s first electric car, but the first production EV from a legacy manufacturer that puts performance first. OK, at £116,000 for this Turbo, it’s too expensive for most of us, but the Taycan is doing that all-important missionary job of softening up the cynics and inducting the masses. You’ll be seeing enough of these around in the next few months to start accepting them as part of our motoring landscape. It’s a serious looker from every angle, and the tangible quality of the thing is outstanding. Onboard, it feels like you’ve taken a giant leap into the future of motoring, leaving internal combustion a smoky relic in your mirrors.
Same goes for the drive. There’s 627lb ft of instant torque on tap, enough to pin you to the headrest at half throttle. It’s a serene experience though, even on the UK’s less than perfect Aand B-roads. Porsche has invested heavily in intelligent adaptive damping and the Taycan just glides about, despite those sporting pretensions and a 2.3 tonne kerbweight.
Let’s get one thing clear: the Taycan is no 911. It’s almost a tonne heavier, and no amount of suspension management or rear-axle steering is able to disguise that fact in a fast corner. But you really are comparing apples and oranges. Get in the Taycan like it’s a clean slate, the completely new concept that it is and, well, I’m prepared to stick my head above the parapet and say that the Taycan is a sports car – just one that operates within a different set of parameters. The steering is superb, you can hustle the Taycan along with otherworldly ease, and nine times out of 10 you can sling it through bends without being reminded that it weighs as much as a Range Rover.
Then noise. The Taycan comes with Electric Sport Sound, an artificial whine straight out of Blade Runner, but it’s not needed. The silent delivery of frankly frightening grunt doesn’t need augmenting via the surround sound. The range (Porsche says 241 miles, we say around 200) is what it is, but letting it rip doesn’t seem as detrimental here as in other performance EVs. Charging is still the issue. Porsche’s 800V system and 93.4kWh battery enables it to draw a mighty peak of 270kWh from an Ionity fast charger, but there are fewer of those in the UK at the moment than you have fingers on one hand, so best stick to home charging right now. We’d be tempted by the lesser 4S, a snip at £83,367, and use the savings to justify a Cayman GT4 for the weekends. Use the Taycan as your guilt-free transport, but know you have a real sports car lurking at home, too. Matt Master