Motoring

TAYCAN IS A FAMILY SEDAN DESIGNED TO LOOK LIKE A STREAMLINED COUPE 2021 PORSCHE TAYCAN TURBO S

EWAN KENNEDY

The German car makers are all very serious about the need to lower the emissions of greenhouse gases, so are working hard on reducing them by designing electric vehicles. As a highperformance marque Porsche is one of the

Hence the introduction of the all-electric Taycan high-performance sedan – yes sedan, this is a four-door family car, not a two-door coupe.

Porsche tells us the name Taycan is composed of two terms of Turkic origin and can be roughly translated as “soul of a spirited young horse.” Porsche tells model will be: “lively, impetuous, vigorous, light-footed on long stretches without tiring, and free-spirited.”

Okay, this may sound like a bit of over-blown earth Aussies, but once we drove it, we did tend to agree with the way the Porsche Taycan felt. See our comments on this in the Driving segment of this report. Taycan looks slightly odd at the front to my eyes, with its slightly bulbous “bonnet” and the vertical lines beside the headlights. Beauty is of course in the eyes of the beholder and others may love it.

I reckon the rear is much better from a styling point of view,

with a swooping coupelike tail and a large black sunroof which merges beautifully with the black glass of the rear window.

INTERIOR

There’s a very wide dash array, with three screens. The one in front of the driver is large and contains plenty of information on the Taycan’s state of play. The centre screen gives access to numerous features, including speed, current power consumption, distance to empty, navigation and temperature control.

The left screen is in front of the passenger and lets them keep an eye on the map to assist with navigation.

There more space inside than you might expect, partly due to the metres long. There’s seating for four and those in the back won’t have to ask those in front of them to give up any of their space. However, tall people in the back might brush against the roof.

The front seats are heated and cooled and are nicely shaped to support without being too aggressive.

INFOTAINMENT

A 14-speaker Bose audio provides excellent output and we found it easy to adjust it to our preferences.

POWERTRAIN

There are two electric motors one at the front the other at the rear. The front has a 175kW/400Nm on the Turbo S, the rear provides up to 335kW and 550Nm when it’s over boosted to give even more grunt.

The range of the Turbo S is rated as 390 to 416 kilometres by Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicles Test Procedure.

As a strong selling point the Taycan in Australia is that it comes with a free three-year Chargefox subscription.

safety rating by Euro NCAP in 2019.

DRIVING

We have always enjoyed the way electric powered vehicles leap off the line and have tremendous torque - but the Taycan is something else again. Zero to 100 km/h in 2.5

seconds! my head was thumped back into the headrest and my neck felt strained. I didn’t make that mistake again, making sure it was against the headrest - thereby avoiding the neck strain and enjoying to the full the dragsterlike performance.

Back when I was a young fella road testing high-performance cars in the 1970s anything under six seconds to 60mph (97 km/h) and quicker than 15 seconds for the quarter mile was the goal. And that need a large hot V8.

This electric Porsche is well under three seconds to 100 km/h, and single mile. How times have changed.

On the road Taycan has clever electronics to assist cornering by feeding just the right torque front and rear and side to side. You can feel it happening but we didn’t have access to a race track to test it to the limits. Maybe some other time…

Comfort is good for a

high-performance car and keep in mind that this is a four-door sedan not a two-door sports coupe. On some surfaces there a fair bit of tyre noise, on others it’s as peaceful as any upmarket mid-size luxury vehicle.

THE FIRST PORSCHE ELECTRIC CAR

Porsche electric car. In 1898 Ferdinand Porsche

designed the EggerLohner C.2 Phaeton. The vehicle was powered by an octagonal electric horsepower. It had a top speed of 25 km/h.