Porsche Taycan goes faster and further, costs more

The Porsche Taycan has had an interesting few years in the UK. It started out as an EV superstar, used examples selling for substantial premiums over hard-to-find new cars. But then the gravity of market forces started to work again, taking the Taycan into a period of slipping residuals and apparent signs of oversupply. For the fuller story, you can’t do better than PH’s excellent ‘Lots of brand new Porsches immediately available’ thread. You might even find a bargain.

Yet none of this drama should distract from the most basic point – the Taycan is an excellent EV. Despite its hefty price tag, and the fact that owners may get back less than they were expecting when they sell, it remains the leading electric car in terms of driving appeal. That’s true even when you factor in what has, until now, been relatively poor range numbers. 

Porsche hasn’t been standing still and the Gen II Taycan that you’re seeing here for the first time is set to be substantially upgraded. The visual changes are small enough to barely qualify as a facelift, but under the surface it has been given a comprehensive powertrain makeover with bigger batteries and a new rear motor. This has delivered big improvements in both range and performance, and while most reports will probably kick off with ‘how far?’, this being PH we’ll start with ‘how fast?’

In the case of the revised Taycan Turbo S, the answer is set to be ‘very’, with a headline output of 938hp accompanied by up to 808lb ft of torque. All Taycans will get a lighter and more efficient rear motor – one that still features a two-speed transmission, but which is capable of delivering up to 556hp and 435lb-ft by itself, and with the Turbo S’s new total system peaks being 188hp and 34lb ft better than those of the old car. Granted, they don’t put the Taycan on a level with the monstrous Tesla Model S Plaid (1020hp/ 1050lb ft) let alone the Lucid Air Sapphire (1234hp/ 1430lb ft), but they do put it right at the sharp end of its ludicrously fast segment. Porsche claims the increased output and smarter traction control have taken a full 0.3-sec off the old Taycan Turbo S’s official 0-60mph time, cutting it to 2.3 seconds – with the strong possibility that independent testing will improve on that.  

Not that Turbo S buyers will get to enjoy that full output all of the time. Porsche has replaced the earlier car’s short-term Overboost function with the arrival of a new push-to-pass button, this in the centre of the steering wheel’s drive mode selector dial. This will be standard on the Turbo S, and optional on the Turbo and 4S as part of the Sport Chrono package. Pressing this in the Turbo S boosts total output to 857hp for up to 10 seconds, with a digital countdown timer showing how long remains. Beyond that, the maximum 938hp is only available when using launch control. (Despite push-to-pass Porsche still won’t be offering a single pedal drive mode in the Taycan, reckoning this distracts from the purity of the driving experience.)

While we will have to wait for finalised specs on the 4S and Turbo – and confirmation that the Taycan GTS will get a second iteration – Porsche has released details of the revised rear-drive Taycan that sits at the bottom of the range. This will use the same new motor as the Turbo S, but will be limited to a peak of 402hp. Which is the same as the pre-facelift RWD version’s overboost output, although with it now available all the time. Despite the lack of extra firepower, performance has improved significantly, with Porsche’s claimed 4.5-second-0-60mph time being a full 0.6 seconds quicker than the old car. 

Which brings us neatly onto range, this being the area in which the rear-driver beats the rest of its siblings. As before two battery sizes will be offered, but both are now substantially improved from before. The standard pack now boasts 89kWh, with 83.6kWh of that usable – that figure being just 0.1kWh less than the usable portion of the pre-facelift’s larger Performance Plus battery. The new larger battery, which will be standard on the Turbo and Turbo S, and optional further down the range, increases total capacity to 105kWh, with 97kWh usable. Despite the increase in size, it is actually less heavy, the 105kWh battery being 9kg lighter than the one it replaces. Overall weight has fallen by 15kg, although the Taycan is still going to be paying extra to park in Paris thanks to its 2,290kg kerbweight. 

Combining the rear-drive powertrain with the Performance Plus battery will dramatically improve the Taycan’s range. On WLTP numbers it is now rated to 421 miles, a huge 108-mile improvement on its predecessor, while the Turbo S’s WLTP number goes from 290 miles to 391 miles. While those figures need to be put through the usual WLTP to ‘real world’ filter – feel free to debate the numbers – journalists in the U.S. have already managed to get 340 miles from a pre-production RWD Performance Plus car driving in Southern California.  

Porsche’s powertrain engineers are equally proud of the improvements that have been made to the Taycan’s charging speed, this being equally important in trimming the total time for long journeys. Thanks to its 800 Volt architecture the Taycan will now be able to take DC replenishment at rates of up to 320kW if you can hook it up to a suitably beefy 800 Volt charger. The battery can also support faster charging at lower temperatures, and will take high rates for longer. Under the most optimal conditions, it is possible to take the battery from 10 per cent to 80 per cent in just 18 minutes, and I saw an indicated peak of 322kW when a pre-production car was plugged into one of Porsche’s own ultra high-speed chargers at Weissach. The new batteries and motors also allow much better rates of regeneration when slowing; the all-wheel-driven Taycan will now be able to harvest up to 400kW when braking from high speeds. 

The other big hardware change is the arrival of what will now be standard air suspension, steel springs no longer available even on the RWD. The reason is both for comfort and control, but also because the ability of the air springs to reduce ride height is another way of improving range. The Taycan also gets standard adaptive dampers, but there will be the further drive-sharpening option of what is now called Porsche Active Ride, effectively a replacement for the outgoing Taycan’s Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control option. 

PDDC was an anti-roll system that used 48V motors to apply torque to the car’s anti-roll bars to counter lean under cornering loads; Active Ride is a new electro-hydraulic system that uses an 800 Volt pump to direct high-pressure fluid to each corner to achieve the same effect. But not just that, because Active Ride will also be able to work against longitudinal loads, compensating for pitch under braking and dive under braking. There will also be a ‘curve tilt’ function that will counter-lean the car into a corner (like a bike) to help reduce lateral loads; this sounds similar to the Curve mode that Mercedes offers with its own electro-hydraulic anti-roll system. 

Last and least are the design changes, summarizing which really won’t take long. At the front the Taycan gets revised headlights, these now being full LED units as standard with more advanced auto-shuttering matrix lights an option. The lights are slightly flatter and have required a slight redesign of the front bumper and wings. At the back, the changes are restricted to more expensive versions. Firstly, and most importantly when it comes to spotting a pricier one, is the PORSCHE legend on the rear light bar, which will now illuminate in red on the Turbo and Turbo S. Secondly is one that even some of Porsche’s engineers sounded less convinced about – the arrival of what appear to be vents on each side of the rear bumper. But which, on closer inspection, turn out to be textured fakes. The official reason is that the shape and size do improve aerodynamic performance; the designers decided they looked better with horizontal strakes. 

Interior changes are equally slight. The digital instrument display has been revised and will now show a prediction of the maximum charging speed the car should be able to take given the current state of its battery pack. The navigation system has also got smarter in terms of planning journeys around different chargers, points of interest and a preferred battery level for the end of the journey. 

The Taycan is also set to be one of the first cars to get Apple’s CarPlay+ – this now allowing climate control functions to be managed from within the app. But the biggest change to the interior layout is more of a taking away than an addition. When the optional third display screen on the passenger side is added it will now have a uni-directional filter (similar to the ones sometimes fitted to laptops for security) meaning it can’t be seen from the driver’s seat and can therefore no longer be used for additional dynamic data. The apparent upside of this is that it will be legally possible for the passenger to watch streaming video. The downside is that the driver won’t be able to see anything on the screen in its different modes, and will presumably still have the distraction of listening to Police Academy IV. 

You won’t be surprised to hear that prices are set to increase given the boosts to range, performance and standard kit. The family will kick off at £86,500 for the RWD Taycan saloon and max out at £162,500 for the Taycan Cross Turismo Turbo S.