Major upgrades to the motors, battery and chassis are designed to make one of the best EVs even better
MATT SAUNDERS @thedarkstormy1
TESTED 19.3.24, SEVILLE, SPAIN ON SALE MAY PRICE £95,900
Was it WC Fields or George Best who memorably claimed “I spent half of my money on gambling, alcohol and wild women, and the rest I squandered”? Right now, I can’t remember – but something that happened on the press launch of the facelifted Porsche Taycan reminded me of it.
It’s not often that a car maker reveals exactly how the budget for any given model facelift has been spent when introducing it to gathered hacks. In the case of this luxury EV, however, we were indeed told. Exactly a quarter went on extending the car’s range, a little over a quarter on extending its performance; everything else, from exterior styling to interior equipment to snazzy new decals and natty alloy wheels, got quite a lot less cash investment.
It may be that all-new model derivatives like the one Porsche has just added right at the top of the Taycan range – the Turbo GT – come with their own budget, of course. Even so, I rather like to think that, in substitution of the aforementioned notable expenses of that famous libertarian line, we might well count the carbonfibre wings, carbon-ceramic brakes and ultra-sticky Pirelli Trofeo RS tyres of the all-new super-Taycan among things unlikely to boost the range or efficiency of an electric car yet somehow very clearly worth having in any case.
All of those feature on the Turbo GT when fitted with the Weissach Package, and in accordance with Porsche’s international publishing embargo schedule, I’m afraid you will be reading about them next week and not a moment before.
The lesser Taycan models have had a great deal of improvement wrought upon what we might otherwise refer to as their oily bits too, however. Of significance among the technical content of the car’s facelift are a pair of new nickel-manganese-cobalt batteries, which have 82kWh and 97kWh of usable capacity, depending on which derivative you buy (and whether you add the Performance Battery Plus option on lesser models), have new cell chemistry and can discharge and recharge more quickly (the latter at up to 320kW at a sufficiently powerful DC rapid charger).
Allied to this is a new, higher-powered and more efficient power inverter and a new primary drive motor for the rear axle, with differently arranged permanent magnets and more effectively wound stator wiring than that which it replaces, whi
