Porsche Taycan Turbo S Mountain Drive: If This Is The Future, I Want To Live Forever

If Taycan is the future of performance cars, I want to live forever. Ninety miles over mountain roads proved that Taycan Turbo S is not merely a German response to Tesla or possible harbinger of an electric future, but a Porsche Super Sedan that stands on its own merits at this moment in time, delivering that rarest commodity, a unique driving experience.

Taycan Turbo S is hypercar-quick in a straight line, but we’ve seen that trick before with electric cars. Taycan Turbo S impresses most for its balanced performance portfolio. Entirely new in an electric car is its ability to change direction with a grace no 5000-pound car should possess. A low center of gravity, rear-wheel steering, front and rear electric motors with torque vectoring to meter power at each wheel, and Porsche’s Dynamic Chassis Control (PDCC) sway bar system that deftly limits body roll have gifted Taycan with Olympic agility. Hats off and three cheers to Walter Röhrl, 2-time World Rally Champion and Porsche’s stoic speed warrior, who led the team of development drivers.

Last summer Porsche’s other star development driver, Lars Kern, posted a 7-minute 42-second lap of the Nürburgring in a production-correct Taycan, a mere three seconds adrift of his Panamera Turbo lap time set a few years ago. Panamera’s roughly 16-mph higher top speed helped it gain advantage on the Nürburgring’s long straights, which indicates Taycan matches or beats Panamera under braking and in corners, a fact ably demonstrated on my mountain drive—this is a no-excuses sports sedan. I’ve been in a 718 with Lars Kern, and he is a stone-cold speed assassin, and so is this car.

Astounding vector dynamics do not lead to a narrowly purposed car. Taycan has mag-lev ride quality, setting a high bar for not only performance cars but also ultra-luxury sedans, piston-engined or battery-electric. Taycan Turbo S is fast, quick, agile and light on its feet, a worthy accomplishment.

With 774 lb. ft. of electric torque and Launch Control as good as I’ve ever experienced, Taycan Turbo S efficiently hits 60 mph in 2.6 seconds, just a tenth behind a $3 million Bugatti Chiron with 8-liter 1500-horsepower W16 engine. In Launch Control, acceleration was matter of fact, flawless connection between Pirelli and pavement, the car squatting ever so slightly, catapulting. On greasy asphalt, all four tires lit up for a split second. And of course, the smearing of the world in peripheral vision, something only a handful of piston-engine supercars can achieve. All accomplished without the roaring sense of near-disintegration of some piston-engine supercars in Launch Control.

Taycan has no unpleasant electric motor whine, nor that pitchfork ringing of Toyota hybrids. Imagine a mad scientist’s hypersonic drill spinning so fast it creates a sort of music. It’s not Panamera Turbo’s V8 basso profondo, but Taycan covers the quarter mile in the high 10-second range, so the guttural roar is soon forgotten.

Taycan has a 2-speed gearbox for the rear wheels, with a very low Launch ratio. Depending on the performance mode selected—Normal, Sport, Sport+—and the amount of throttle, the gearbox clicks up at anywhere from 15 or 20 mph to just over 60 mph. Under full throttle, the gearshift sound is clinical, a clipped mechanical function punctuating the satisfying whir of the hypersonic drill. There’s a Tobey Maguire line in Sea Biscuit: “Show him the stick at the quarter pole and he’ll give you a whole new gear.” Acceleration from that single shift upwards is no less impressive. Unlike other electric cars that grow sluggish when their batteries are tasked with repeated sprints, Taycan does not fatigue when launched repeatedly at full throttle.

At 192 miles, range is not jaw dropping, but it is enough to easily manage a 150-mile workday starting in my Big Bang Theory neighborhood. Head to Downtown LA (DTLA), then perhaps a 120-mile round trip to a client meeting in Newport or Laguna Beach before reaching home, all without recharging. Taycan issues its first recharge warning at the 50-mile marker, navigation system listing nearby charging stations. Longer trips? The classic LA-San Francisco slog will require full charge at Harris Ranch in the Big Valley, maybe a quick top-off somewhere else, but most people stop at Harris Ranch to stretch legs. LA to Vegas? Not so easy, as a recharge is absolutely necessary, with limited few pleasant stopovers in the Big Empty Mojave desert. Taycan is an urban car, not a long-distance traveler until Electrify America has thousands of rapid-chargers along highways.

Battery-electric architecture liberated Taycan from the crash structures required by heavy piston engines, giving Taycan proportions like no other car. Because the front electric motor is compact, the dash panel is low, the hood fairly short and sloping sharply, unlike the broad “pool table” of the V8 Panamera. Think of a mid-engine sports car morphed into a close-coupled sedan.

From the driver’s seat over the low dash, only the fendercrests are seen and the pavement seems close, though Taycan does not match a mid-engine Ferrari’s go-kart sensation of the road rushing just beyond the pedals. The rear motor/gearbox is smaller than a piston engine—Taycan’s arcing beetle-back roofline rivals a 911’s for purity of line. Structural impossibilities of the Mission e show vehicle like pillarless coach doors were sacrificed to production reality, but otherwise Taycan remains true to original concept, including the headlight eyebrows. Style Porsche created a passionate yet logical Porsche mercifully free of the Green artifice every company has employed since the Prius and Honda Insight nearly two decades ago. Taycan is pure Porsche, from another galaxy.

For tall folks to enter under the low roofline, squat to the doorsill, tuck and aim the head, then leg press to lift and push the hips up and over the extremely high Turbo S seat bolsters. Spry little fellas can simply kick the right leg in and drop the hips, Steve McQueen style, careful to tuck the head. Taycan’s cockpit mixes familiar Porsche switchgear and display/communication components in a new way but adheres to Porsche logic: it’s a different planet, yet you speak the language.

VW Group is committed to battery-electric vehicles, and shares components, sub-systems and mutable architectures better than any other company in the business. Taycan required considerable investment that must be recouped. Imagine a Lamborghini Estoque sedan or modern-day Espada with an airy greenhouse, or a gloriously voluptuous Bentley Continental coupe and convertible, all from remixed Taycan engineering captured in Solidworks. Achim Anscheidt, Bugatti’s design chief and master of the VR goggles, might create a battery-electric successor to the Bugatti “Tank” streamliner, or Jean Bugatti’s masterpiece, the Type 55, perhaps placing the powertrain in a carbon-fiber structure that will allow him to offer new bodywork every six months as he does with the Chiron. Call it corporate carrozzeria.

Taycan begs another question: if an electric Porsche super sedan is this good, will the VW Group’s upcoming ID series of battery-electric commuter and family cars achieve similar levels of excellence at pricing within reach of Everyman? If so, Taycan is harbinger of a future when passenger vehicles for urban, suburban and even exurb environments might all be battery-electric, with large commercial vehicles and farm equipment powered by natural-gas piston engines or hydrogen fuel cells. At $204,000, Taycan is a plaything for a sliver of the population, but engineering thought is to such a high standard, it stimulates what-if pondering of a battery-electric reality beyond the hope and hype we’ve been fed for a decade. Taycan Turbo S is the first electric car that moves far beyond market disruption, good intentions and cult of personality.

Taycan Turbo S stands completely on its own merit, whether or not we ever transition to an electric future. Taycan Turbo S is a brilliant engineering achievement that I’d take over most supercars I have driven in the past five years. Taycan Turbo S delivers hypercar acceleration, supercar handling, and ultra-luxury ride quality in a car that is entirely real. Taycan is extraordinary, unique in the world.