Porsche Panamera
REPORT 6
£85,865 OTR/£103,815 as tested/£1,086pcm
WHY IT’S HERE
It’s one of the world’s cleverest PHEVs. But will it stay relevant?
DRIVER
Tom Harrison
SEVERAL WEEKS SINCE I AGREED TO LOOK AFTER THE BOSS’S Panamera for “a few days”, it’s still here. Sat on my driveway, with mainly semi-regular trips to the supermarket to look forward to. Pity.
The 22-mile round trip to the nearest big Tesco is a journey the Sport Turismo ought to be able to do – just – without calling on its thirsty V6. Except CT still has the cable and said Tesco doesn’t have a charger. Ah.
So, for the moment, the Panamera is subsisting entirely on unleaded, for which it has a voracious appetite thanks to 280kg of batteries and e-motors I can’t use, but have to carry around with me regardless. Good thing super unleaded is so cheap these days...
It’s not the Panamera’s fault of course, as CT wrote last month, but a broader issue with plug-in hybrids. On an environmental level, they only make sense if you have somewhere to charge them on a regular basis. While on a financial level, they only really add up if you run them as company cars, and can therefore take advantage of low BIK rates. A Panamera like ours would cost a 40 per cent taxpayer about £6,500 in company car tax this financial year. The equivalent purely petrol Panamera would run you almost twice that.
But assuming you are a well-to-do business person with a plug at your disposal, or the maths add up in some other way we haven’t anticipated, I can’t think of a PHEV I’d rather own than a Panamera Sport Turismo (except maybe a McLaren P1).
The only real issue is its sheer size, which is a problem when half your journeys end in a supermarket car park designed to fit Morris Minors and Ford Cortinas. It’s longer and not much narrower than a Range Rover. And it’s not as if that size means it’s massive inside. Fine for passengers, but a Focus Estate has a bigger boot. Probably for the best. Less space for beer.
SPECIFICATION
2894cc, V6 & 100kW electric, 4WD, 456bhp, 516lb ft 80.7mpg, 66g/km CO2
0–62mph in 4.6secs, 170mph 2265kg
GOOD STUFF
I can see the Panamera from my kitchen window. Preeeeetty car.
BAD STUFF
I haven’t got the charge cables, which kinda defeats the point.