porsche's first ever fully electric car is here, but it's not a lame, save-the-trees kind of vehicle. you know, like one of those affordable electric hatchbacks you see littering liberal-leaning metro areas these days. instead, the 2020 taycan strives to impress the same way other porsches impress: with balls-out performance.
being a porsche, the taycan also offers a flotilla of extra-cost options and personalization choices—and since we can't drive the thing yet, we took to its online configurator to build the taycan we'd buy. buckle in; this ev's gonna be expensive.
model we'd choose
- taycan turbo s ($186,350)
it's easy to whine about porsche's eye-popping pricing, but it works for the company's other cars. at launch, the taycan will be offered in $152,250 turbo and $186,350 turbo s guises. pricey, sure, but porsche says it has 30,000 orders for the car already. so, again, supply and demand is a real issue—don't hate the player, hate the game, that kind of thing.
because we're playing with imaginary money here and the taycan clearly has performance on the brain, we skipped right past the 670-hp turbo model to the 750-hp turbo s. you'll note that 750 horsepower is more than 670. even if porsche sold less expensive and less powerful versions (it plans to introduce such taycan variants later) we'd still go for the turbo s just because it's the most badass model you can buy. yes, we're aware this will likely mean dealing with a lower driving range per charge (expected to be somewhere around 225 miles for the turbo s, up to 270 for the turbo), but did we mention the horsepower thing already?
options we'd pick
- mamba green paint ($0)
- wheels painted exterior color ($1290)
- sportdesign package in carbon fiber ($5660)
- led-matrix design adaptive headlights ($580)
- olea club brown truffle leather interior ($2450)
- seatbelts in limestone beige ($660)
- premium package with massaging front seats ($5490)
- porsche crest for center console armrest ($450)
- owner's manual cover in leather ($560)
- paidao wood interior trim ($0)
- front-seat passenger display ($1130)
- four-zone automatic climate control with rear-seat display ($990)
- burmester surround-sound audio system ($5810)
- heated steering wheel ($280)
- interior trim accents in exterior color ($360)
- vehicle keys color-matched to exterior color with leather pouch ($540)
- onboard 150-kw dc fast charger ($460)
- porsche intelligent range manager ($300)
- adaptive cruise control with porsche innodrive ($3610)
- mobile charger connect with home energy manager ($1120)
- porsche dynamic chassis control sport ($3590)
- ceramic composite brakes ($900)
- night-vision assist ($2420)
- fire extinguisher ($140)
whoa, that's a long list. just as we threw smart shopping to the wind by selecting the pricier turbo s, we decided to indulge in the taycan's extensive options list because, well, that's what most porsche customers do. that's how we ballooned the $186,350 turbo s into a $226,010 turbo s.
the few ev-specific options worth mentioning include an onboard 150-kw dc fast charger, which is a must-have for taycan owners who want to exploit the full fast-charging capabilities promised by porsche. the porsche intelligent range manager feature takes into account any navigation destinations set by the driver and adjusts the energy usage of the drive motors and air-conditioning system to ensure maximum efficiency for reaching that destination. the $1120 mobile charger connect setup allows you to plug in to a 9.6-kw charger on the go, like at a friend's house with a normal power outlet.
everything else we slapped on our turbo s is pure fantasy stuff. the mamba green paint gives the low-slung, big-shouldered taycan a frog-ike look, which is neat, and we color-matched the standard 21-inch wheels to that hue for $1290 and threw on a $5660 bundle of carbon-fiber trim bits because why not? we think the green exterior is set off nicely by the rich olea club brown truffle leather interior option, which we further spruced up with light-colored limestone beige seatbelts, body-color trim accents, and paidao wood veneers.
screens are a big part of the taycan's interior, with a standard curved-glass digital gauge cluster and two center-console displays. but we added even more screens. to get the rear-seat display, one must shell out $990 for four-zone climate control; the front-seat passenger's screen costs $1130. we also "bought" the $2420 night vision, mostly because we feel we'd need some wow-factor feature to brush off annoying tesla-owning friends of ours keen on pointing out stuff like the taycan's lesser driving range compared to that of the model s.
for such a performance-focused car, the taycan offers relatively few performance options. we grabbed those that were available, including the porsche ceramic composite brake rotors with black-painted calipers (a steal at $900) and the porsche dynamic chassis control sport adaptive suspension ($3590). the $590 led-matrix adaptive headlights are sweet, and should u.s. safety regulations change, they could be configured to deliver their full capability (switching individual leds on and off very quickly to "shade" objects you don't want to dazzle while running high-beams—even in urban areas and with oncoming traffic).
the rest of our taycan's build includes little stuff such as the porsche crest embossed on the center console lid, a color-matched key, and a leather pouch for the owner's manual. look, this is what we do when we're excited about a car but can't drive it yet—we go nuts with building it out in imaginary, money-is-no-object fantasyland. you can build your own, too, and if you can afford one of these porsches, look for it to arrive in dealers by the end of the year.