[Auto] Porsche Taycan

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Was it WC Fields or George Best who memorably claimed “to have spent half of my money on gambling, alcohol and wild women, but squandered the rest”? 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 revised Taycan’s case, however, we were indeed told. Exactly a quarter went on extending the car’s electric range, it transpires, and a little over a quarter on extending its performance. Everything else, it seems - from exterior styling, to interior equipment, 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 development budget, of course. Even so, it’s amusing 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 this all-new super-Taycan among things unlikely to boost the range or efficiency of a revised electric car. If you’ve seen photos of the Turbo GT already, though, you’ll no doubt agree that somehow they're very clearly worth having in any case.

Aside from that new, near-1100bhp, ultra-high-performance derivative, however, the Porsche Taycan has certainly received some key mechanical and technical improvements, which we’ll go on to explore here. The 2019 version was codenamed J1 by Porsche; this revised version is referred to as J1.2 - and it can be expected to extend the lifecycle of the car way out towards the end of this decade.

 

Of chief significance among the technical content of the Porsche Taycan’s facelift are a pair of new nickel-manganese-cobalt drive battery packs, now with either 82kWh or 97kWh of usable capacity, depending on which derivative you buy (and whether you option Porsche’s Performance Battery Plus). The packs have new cell chemistry and can discharge and recharge more quickly (the 97kWh one at up to 320kW at a DC rapid charger of sufficient power). 

Allied to this is a new, higher-power and more efficient power inverter, along with a new primary electric drive motor for the rear axle, with differently arranged permanent magnets and more effectively wound stator wiring than the one it replaces, and it can output up to 107bhp more. Single-motor cars are driven by this motor alone, and via a two-speed automatic transmission; twin-motor cars add a second unit on the front axle, driving through a single-speed transmission.

Both the batteries and new rear motor are lighter than their predecessors. So, thanks to a lot of wider design detail improvements besides, the electric range of the longest-striding Taycan model (the entry-level Taycan, with optional Performance Battery Plus) rises from 277 miles to 422 miles on the WLTP combined lab test. A pretty darned impressive result for a mid-life facelift, that.

Elsewhere in the model line-up, electric range takes comparable hikes - as does peak power output (which, in the Taycan’s case, is available for short periods of time only, during launch control starts and driver-selected moments of push-to-pass-style motor and battery overboost). The Taycan 4S can now develop as much as 590bhp, the Turbo 872bhp and the Turbo S a whacking 939bhp.

The Taycan range is mostly structured as it was. So there’s a single-motor base model at the foot of the line-up and, above that, incrementally more powerful twin-motor 4S, Turbo and Turbo S models, leading up to the new range-topping Taycan Turbo GT. For bodystyles, you can still choose between regular four-door saloon, five-door Sport Turismo wagon and five-door, high-rise, all-surface Cross Turismo wagon versions (although there’s no single-motor Cross Turismo, but instead a Taycan 4 model in its place). Thanks to the aforementioned upgrades, the 0-62mph sprint for the single-motor Taycan is cut from 5.4sec to 4.8sec, while for the Turbo S it’s trimmed from 2.8sec to 2.4sec.

All versions of the car, right down to the entry-level rear-wheel-drive model, are now air suspended and all get more comfort and convenience features (a reversing camera, heated front seats, a heat pump for the powertrain and a wireless smartphone charger) as standard.

 

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