- Doors and Seats
4 doors, 4 seats
- Engine
Perm Magnet, LI
- Engine Power
460kW, 1050Nm
- Fuel
43h 0m chg, 482km range
- Manufacturer
4WD
- Transmission
Auto
- Warranty
3 Yr, Unltd KMs
- Ancap Safety
NA
2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo S review: Porsche’s flagship electric spaceship!
Welcome aboard Taycan Airways. We go belts on and tray tables up in Porsche’s flagship Taycan Turbo S performance EV
- Staggering and repeatable performance
- High quality fit and finsh
- Good ride compliance makes it a daily joy
- Fingerprints. Fingerprints everywhere!
- Front seat access around the B-Pillar can be a challenge for some
- Well implemented on paper, but lacking character in reality
2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo S
The 2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo S is the German brand’s ultimate statement of what can be done with electric performance in a usable package.
The five-door, four-seat grand-touring saloon blends stylish usability with mind-crushing and (crucially) repeatable performance capability. It is the ‘Porsche’ of electric cars, and an electric Porsche at the same time.
But for $351,000 before options and on-road costs, the Turbo S represents a product for a very exclusive and select group of owners. It’s a halo product with a halo price tag, but as we’ve already discussed, you can get plenty of Taycan thrills much lower in the range, so is the ‘fast one’ everything it needs to be?
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How much does the Porsche Taycan Turbo S cost in Australia?
Like most other cars, the Porsche Taycan range has seen a price rise this year with the Turbo S stepping up $12,500 (from $338,500) to $351,000 before options and on-road costs.
That places it a whopping $68,000 above the next-most-expensive model, the Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo wagon, and more than twice the price of the entry-level rear-drive $158,100 Taycan.
You get a lot of kit for your spend, but you’ll still have to spend more to get what you want.
Case in point, our Carmine Red ($5000) Turbo S with gloss black ($2500) 12-inch Mission E Design wheels, ($6470) SportDesign front apron and ($3370) fixed panoramic roof is already approaching $400,000 on-road.
Yes, you get a mighty 560kW and 1050Nm from the car’s twin electric motors, a claim of 405km from the 93kWh battery and a 225kW fast charging capability, along with plenty of technology, carbon fibre and engineering prowess, but even in context of other Taycan models the Turbo S feels pricey.
Key details | 2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo S |
Price | $351,000 plus on-road costs |
Colour of test car | Carmine Red |
Options | Metallic paint – $5000 SportDesign front apron – $6470 Porsche Ceramic Composite Brakes – $1720 Gloss black 21-inch Mission E wheels – $2500 Panoramic roof – $3370 Passenger display – $2150 TOTAL – $23,710 |
Price as tested | $374,710 plus on-road costs |
Drive-away price | $399,107 |
Rivals | Mercedes-Benz EQS53 AMG | Audi RS e-tron |
How much space does the Porsche Taycan Turbo S have inside?
Before we jump inside the Taycan, it’s worth talking about ‘jumping’ inside the Taycan.
The position of the car’s B-pillar is such that stepping into the driver’s seat requires a limber movement around the structural body element. While this initially feels awkward when getting in the car, it’s a bit of an obstacle when getting out again.
This says nothing of your driving position, which in a very Porsche-like way is great, but just the comfortable ingress and egress from your swoopy and low saloon. Given the slightly more mature skew to Porsche’s buyer set, it is definitely worth trying a few ‘in-and-outs’ in the showroom before you commit.
Once you’re in, the layout of the Taycan’s cabin is impressive, with the triple-screen setup (the passenger screen is still a $2150 option, even in the Turbo S) really cementing this as a ‘car of the future’.
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The backlit haptic panels all feel very Kubrick, especially when you first step in, but the glass and gloss need a considered press rather than a featherlight tap to interact, and after a few short minutes the place becomes a fingerprint farm.
It’s here, when the pristine veneer of science fiction lifts, that the Taycan becomes a little colder. There are no knurled dials or metallic elements that you may expect at this price point, just a hypermodern spaceship cockpit.
Everything is nicely done though, the leather upper dashboard, contrast stitching and carbon inlays of our car all very well constructed and cohesive. As Porsche want to do, everything here is customisable to your taste and budget, and frankly you are better off turning the dial up a bit as black-on-black feels a little staid.
This car deserves some colour and contrast, so be bold with your own spec.
Storage functionality works well, with two large cup holders in the console and a shelf below. The central cubby is deep and useful, but the ‘clip in’ phone charge cradle is next to useless. You really have to jam your phone in there if you have any kind of cover on it, so I found it easier to run a USB cable and do it the old fashioned way.
Room for front passengers is reasonable (once you get past that B-pillar), but it isn’t long-leg roomy in the back. Consider this a squashed electric Macan rather than a silent Panamera in terms of size.
Accommodations are fine for kids and adults around town, but a long haul for taller riders may start to get tight.
The liftback styling gives you a 366-litre boot in the back and an 81L compartment in the front. They aren’t huge numbers but I personally found them both very useful for day-to-day duties. I didn’t move house in it, but it swallows the shopping and school time goodies just fine.
2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo S | |
Seats | Four |
Boot volume | 366L rear 81L front |
Length | 4963mm |
Width | 1966mm |
Height | 1378mm |
Wheelbase | 2900mm |
How big is the screen in the Porsche Taycan?
Porsche has done well to translate the traditional five-dial instrument cluster to the digital age, with the 16.8-inch binnacle, 10.9-inch media display, 8.4-inch charging and climate control panel plus the additional 10.9-inch passenger screen all well integrated within the Porsche’s ecosystem.
For the driver, the configurable ‘dials’ are easy to adjust thanks to the roller-ball inputs on the steering wheel. There’s plenty of information on hand, from the map and radio station to energy use and G-Force data, all easily selectable while on the move.
Where the driver display is clear and slick in its communication, the central screen feels a little underdone in terms of user experience. It’s a vanilla interface, that can often be hard to understand ‘where’ you are in terms of navigation.
Device projection is well integrated and there are lots of functions, but tapping and touching a myriad of near-identical looking menus to find functions for the car can be fiddly on the move.
Plus the voice-activated virtual assistant is very persistent and will chime in at the very mention of the P-word. What’s the point of owning a Porsche if you can’t remind your occupants by talking about it all the time?
What is cool though, is the DAB digital radio shows you album cover art for the song that is currently playing.
The Taycan range includes remote telemetry capability through the Porsche Connect app. Here, you can monitor charging status and send navigation destinations to the car remotely from your phone.
Is the Porsche Taycan a safe car?
Porsche has not crash tested the Taycan through ANCAP or the equivalent European EuroNCAP testing body.
There are eight airbags plus a host of driver assistance technology features on the Turbo S. This includes high-speed Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB), rear cross-traffic alert and active lane change assistance.
2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo S | |
ANCAP rating | Not tested |
Safety report | - |
How much does the Porsche Taycan cost to maintain?
Taycan buyers receive a three-year subscription to the ChargeFox high-speed public charging network as part of the vehicle’s purchase price.
Further, Porsche bundles in the wall mounted home charger for all buyers, although installation is at the owner’s cost.
Servicing is quoted at $395 per visit with the first interval at 15,000km then each subsequent service 30,000km or two years apart. This means the Taycan Turbo S costs $790 for three and $1185 for five years of ownership.
In terms of insurance, a $400K electric Porsche is a bit of a bespoke proposition, and our usual online quote-generation wizard suggested we make a call to a broker.
At a glance | 2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo S |
Warranty | Three years, unlimited km |
Service intervals | 24 months or 30,000km |
Servicing costs | $790 (3 years) $1185 (5 years) |
Energy cons. (claimed) | 26kWh/100km |
Energy cons. (on test) | 27kWh/100km |
Battery size | 93.4kWh |
Driving range claim (WLTP) | 482km |
Charge time (11kW) | 9h |
Charge time (50kW) | 93min |
Charge time (max rate) | 22.5min (0-80%) |
Is the Porsche Taycan energy efficient?
Charging can be completed at 11kW AC at home (a 22kW AC function is optional) and up to 225kW from a high-speed DC charger.
Conveniently, there are charge doors on both sides, and Porsche claims a charge time (at maximum rate) of under 23 minutes from 5 to 80 per cent capacity.
While the claimed range of 482km assumes an average of 19.3kWh/100km from the 93kWh battery, we were averaging around 27kWh/100km for our time with the car. This matches Porsche's 'real world' claim on their Taycan technical data sheets.
The car regularly sat in the low 20kWh/100km range when pootling around, so the larger distance claim feels entirely achievable.
What is the Porsche Taycan Turbo S like to drive?
The Taycan Turbo S redefines your conceptual understanding of fast. Being told the car can perform the 0-100km/h sprint in less than three seconds (2.8sec) is almost cursory to what the experience feels like.
On an open freeway on-ramp, stab the throttle and the Porsche can literally take your breath away. It’s quite seriously bonkers, and great for stopping incessant chatter from teenage children. Miss Thirteen described it as like being in a rollercoaster.
No sound, no build up, just wind noise and crushing pressure.
You need to hold on too as the front wheels try and grip whatever they can, translating a sort-of but not-quite sensation of torque steer through the wheel.
Relax the throttle then peg it again, and the delivery from the twin motors continues to be immense. This is 560kW and 1050Nm at an instant, and in a 2.3-tonne vehicle is almost impossibly impressive.
That said, do this once or twice to understand the capability of the car, and you’ll operate well within its envelope from that point on. You simply don’t need this amout of speed on a daily basis.
Even in traffic, needing to move around, you need to consciously measure your inputs so as to avoid traffic many car-lengths in front. Easy to do, mind you, but perhaps more telling to why the 4S is the volume seller and the entry-level rear-drive Taycan the one that makes the most overall sense.
Being a Porsche, the Taycan Turbo S has performance credentials beyond a straight line push.
On a country tour, the way the car’s two-speed transmission can keep it feeling fast all the time is hugely impressive. Grip is immense (265mm tyres at the front, 305mm at the rear), and I can only describe the experience on a spirited run as being like a 1-to-1 scale slot car.
To be honest, driving the Taycan fast is quite exhausting. The forces exerted on your body as the car offers almost complete digital performance in any direction at any time, can really only be sustained for a short amount of time. It’s like taking all the little pieces from the Operation game and putting them in a cocktail shaker.
I’m curious as to when we’ll see the breaking news report of the future noting that all this high g-force acceleration was bad for us, but until we do, this thing is a hoot!
Once you’ve rearranged your organs and settled to a regular driving pace, the Taycan’s holistic approach to being an electric sports sedan becomes apparent.
The three-chamber adaptive air suspension provides a compliant and easy ride when left in the Normal setting. It still makes the car feel sporting and agile, but it can soak through speed humps and the like without stress.
In many ways it makes me look forward to the next-generation electric Macan, which with a taller stance and even more compliance, will be a brilliant round-town runner.
You can sharpen the Taycan up through both Sport and Sport Plus drive modes, that as Trent found, gives the Porsche a really impressive handling characteristic on a race track, but for urban and even extra-urban running, these are essentially unnecessary.
Steering is both light and sharp, with the Turbo S surprising nimble in carparks thanks to the rear-axle steering system.
Our car also includes the Porsche Ceramic Composite Brake (PCCB) option ($1720) which allows it to stop almost more painfully than it accelerates. These aren’t your best option for a commuter car though, so I’d suggest leaving this box un-ticked.
Key details | 2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo S |
Engine | Twin electric motors |
Power | 460kW standard / 560kW overboost electric |
Torque | 1050Nm |
Drive type | All-wheel drive |
Transmission | Two-speed transmission |
Power to weight ratio | 244kW/t |
Weight | 2295kg |
Spare tyre type | None |
Tow rating | N/A |
Turning circle | 11.2.m |
Should I buy a Porsche Taycan?
The 2022 Porsche Taycan Turbo S is a masterful piece of engineering. The way the car can repeatably change from docile prestige golf-cart to four-seat railgun in short, sharp seconds is nothing short of astounding.
But like a piece of pristine architecture, for all the form-lead beauty, there is a coldness to the Taycan that subtracts from its appeal. It’s almost too perfectly laid out and presented, great as a showpiece and perfect for a catalogue, but without a personality of warmth.
This car is a solution.
A solution that feels like it could accelerate beyond Earth’s gravitational pull, sure, but a solution all the same. It’s clever and capable, but cold and clinical. A technology product not an emotive one.
The Taycan Turbo S is the ‘because we can’ car, where lower in the range you start to discover the ‘because you should’ options. Hell, even Porsche is doing that with Macan and Boxster/Cayman destined for all-electric futures. Both platforms where the technology and personality start to make more sense.
We all want the top-tier electric Porsche to provide top-tier performance, and this one does, but it’s not your best way to enjoy Taycan Airlines (or more accurately, Taycan Spaceways).
Know what this car can do, park that knowledge in your head, and consider Taycan or Taycan 4S (ideally as the Cross Turismo wagon) as the car to buy. Your lunch will thank you.