Porsche Taycan Turbo S 2021 Review

The Porsche Taycan is priced from a relatively affordable $156,300, but at $345,800 plus on-road costs the range-topping 2021 Porsche Taycan Turbo S is not only the quickest but most expensive (and only) EV you can buy from the German importer right now.

For that significant outlay you’ll get a genuine 2.5-second 0-100km/h scorcher that will leave you breathless.

The 560kW twin-motor acceleration of the Taycan Turbo S is so full on, so instant and so breathtaking that at first it feels a bit surreal.

Once experienced, its violent standing-start launch performance, time after time, is an automotive experience nobody will ever forget.

The wall of relentless torque from almost any speed is also unmatched by any other Porsche, and few combustion-powered sports cars. Thoughts of ‘is this legal on a public road?’ are common behind the wheel.

Matching its scandalous pace, the curvaceous four-door electric performance sedan has a futuristic interior equipped with loads of luxury and technology features, including no less than five large LCD screens.

The biggest screen is a curved 16.8-inch digital instrument display that looks like something out of a futuristic art gallery, circa 2051. It comes with touch-sensitive buttons at either side and customisable quadrants.

It’s joined by three more screens – yes three – across the dashboard, including two central-mounted units (infotainment and climate control) and a designated touch-screen for the front passenger too, so they can see how quickly you’ve broken the speed limit.

There’s also a touch-screen in the back for climate control, so no-one need miss out on the TFT (thin film transistor) goodness. The distinct lack of physical buttons makes for an intriguing experience inside the car, but overall it’s fairly intuitive during everyday driving, with most functions being easy to access.

I’m still unsure about the tiny horizontally-mounted gear shifter to the left of the steering wheel, but I reckon in a few years it won’t look or feel quite so incongruous, as more brands move to smaller gear selectors.

The lack of a wireless smartphone charger is odd, but the clean and minimalist no-buttons interior theme remains intact since you can hide your phone and charging cables under the central armrest. Indeed, there are four USB-C ports – two up front, two in the back.

And wireless Apple CarPlay is part of the package. But Android Auto is not, which won’t please Samsung owners.

There’s also a range of remote car functions, allowing you to monitor the vehicle’s battery charge levels, pre-condition the cabin temperature and so forth via your smartphone.

Standard features include quad-zone digital climate control with a fine dust filter (but not a Tesla HEPA-type filter), thermally insulated and tinted glass, an excellent 14-speaker Bose stereo and automatically adjusting dynamic LED matrix headlights.

It’s a supremely comfortable rig too, the leather-upholstery on the 18-way power-adjustable front sports seats (heated and cooled, naturally) being suitably supple. The Taycan measures almost five metres (4963mm) long so there’s plenty of room to stretch out in both the front and rear.

Luggage space in Porsche’s first-ever EV is impressive too, with enough room for a couple of bags of grocery shopping to fit snugly up front under the bonnet, where their contents won’t spill everywhere during high-performance driving.

And there’s way more space in the big 447-litre boot for golf bags. Or nappy bags and a pram. The power-operated boot improves accessibility too.

The Porsche Taycan EV has a below-par three-year/unlimited-kilometre warranty, but the battery is covered by an eight-year/160,000km warranty. Service intervals are set at 24 months or 30,000km, whichever occurs first.

The Porsche Taycan Turbo S has a high-tech nature that whacks you in the face like a digital blizzard, starting with a dizzying array of touch-screens and a lack of regular buttons in the cabin. But there’s plenty going on behind the scenes too.

Driver assistance technology such as lane keeping assist with lane change assist and a savvy adaptive cruise control system allows the car to steer, brake and accelerate by itself seamlessly, making freeway driving a pleasant and relaxed experience.

In terms of battery tech and driving distances, this top-spec Porsche EV is fitted with a big 93.4kWh lithium-ion battery, which is good for 405km of driving based on the WLTP test cycle. Our testing confirmed a range within 30km of that claim, which is impressive given the flogging it copped.

If you can afford a Porsche Taycan, you can probably also afford a decent charging system at home, and you’re going to need one because charging the German performance car on a regular household power point will take up to 39 hours.

Given the right charging infrastructure, the Taycan’s 800-volt electrical architecture means it can charge rapidly, taking around 20 minutes for an almost full charge using a high-output 350kW fast-charger (at 270kW), claims Porsche.

A 22kW AC wall charger installed at home or work will do the same job in about four hours. You can brush up on the battery minutiae in our Porsche Taycan technical deep dive here.

There are few cars that can match the Porsche Taycan Turbo S in terms of outright pace. At full noise – sorry, full throttle – the electric Porsche delivers the sort of whack in the chops that’s hard to describe.

We’ve tested the previous Tesla Model S P100D against the Porsche Taycan in straight-line sprints and while the Porsche was slightly slower, that was the Taycan Turbo model – this is the Turbo S.

Indeed, if off-the-line g-force decided who got into government, the Porsche Taycan Turbo S would be shaping national policy… and successfully pushing an EV agenda to clean up air quality on residential streets.

Porsche reckons the Taycan Turbo S will dispatch the 0-100km/h acceleration run in 2.8 seconds, but our own testing at the racetrack saw it easily and repeatedly post 2.5sec runs. In reality, that makes this the quickest Porsche – and one of the world’s quickest production cars – ever produced.

Propulsion is provided by a pair of permanent magnet synchronous motors – one for each axle – that can bang out a combined 560kW of power and 1050Nm of torque, turning the Turbo S into an all-wheel drive missile.

Blasting from standstill to 60km/h at full pace in normal mode leaves you feeling giddy, but even more impressive is the smooth and utterly serene manner in which it does it.

Beyond its cosmic velocity, the Taycan Turbo S is a cool cucumber during the everyday grind, with good throttle modulation allowing for smooth snail’s-pace driving.

Some high-performance cars can be challenging to drive on anything outside of billiard-table-smooth multi-lane roads, but not the Taycan. This is a genuine all-rounder.

Married to a silent drivetrain and a quiet cabin, the Taycan Turbo S’s ludicrous pace is juxtaposed by excellent cruising characteristics. Even on its massive 21-inch colour-coded ‘Mission E’ alloy wheels, the adaptive air suspension keeps ride comfort smooth and balanced.

Cruising home from work was always a peaceful experience, with relaxing tunes being piped from the high-fidelity audio system, ambient LED cabin lights illuminating everything you need to see without being distracting, and a super-quiet cabin contributing to the occasion. The EV revolution is not all bad, trust me.

Direct, responsive and well-weighted (but not 911-style communicative) steering is part of the package, but more useful in day-to-day driving is the rear axle steering system, which effectively reduces the vehicle’s turning circle and makes navigating tighter corners and car parks quick and easy.

Surround-view 360-degree parking cameras and autonomous emergency braking (AEB) make urban driving a user-friendly affair and I reckon if there was a high-riding SUV version with a slightly higher view of the road, it would surpass the Macan and Cayenne as the most approachable Porsche.

Which is where the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo with its 20mm higher ride height and wagon body comes in.

The 2021 Porsche Taycan Turbo S proved itself to be an absolute monster on the racetrack and, although it isn’t quite as involving as a 911 at full tilt, it’s head and shoulders above its iconic coupe sibling when pressed into service as the household runabout.

OK, so it’s a rather expensive daily driver at more than $350,000 once on-road costs are added, but the Taycan is just as impressive as an all-rounder as it is a performance car.

That it wears a nomex race suit underneath its tuxedo – making it capable of delivering a luxurious, high-tech and altogether relaxed driving experience to go with its scintillating performance – makes it pretty special.

To answer the question posed at the top of this page, the top-spec Taycan is most definitely as adept as a daily driver as it is blasting around the racetrack. In fact, it probably does it better.

How much does the 2021 Porsche Taycan Turbo S cost?
Price: $345,800 (plus on-road costs)
Available: Now
Powertrain: Two permanent magnet synchronous motors
Output: 560kW/1050Nm
Transmission: Two-speed auto planetary gear set (rear axle), single-speed reduction gear (front axle)
Battery: 93.4kWh lithium-ion
Range: 405km (ADR)
Energy consumption: 28.5kWh/100km (ADR)
Safety rating: Five-star (Euro NCAP 2019)