Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo review

For some, the ultimate electric car won’t be a two-seater supercar that costs millions – it will be the one that suits their lifestyle with very little compromise. The Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo could well be the ideal candidate.

The standard Porsche Taycan all-electric four-door coupé has space for four occupants, but if you want to bring their luggage as well, or maybe even a dog, the Sport Turismo could be the solution. In fact, it could be the answer for most situations.

The Taycan Sport Turismo builds on the regular Taycan by raising the rear roofline and extending it back to form a hatchback shape similar to an estate car. That gives you a larger boot and additional headspace for rear passengers.

If you wanted something with a touch of ruggedness, you could also look at the near-identical Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo, which has a 20mm higher ride height and some grey exterior body cladding. For maximum practicality without sacrificing much performance, the Taycan Sport Turismo looks like the best of both worlds.

When it comes to trim levels, the Sport Turismo is expected to mirror the original Taycan. That said, Porsche is offering the Sport Turismo in mid-spec GTS form only from launch, with additional models to follow over the course of 2022. GTS versions add a little more styling, performance and driver focus over the 4S below them, but without being as hardcore as Turbo cars.

So does a combination of impressive performance, zero-emissions driving and space for cargo make the Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo one of the best electric cars on sale? Over the next few pages of this review, we’ll let you know as we compare it with key rivals, including the Audi E-tron GT, Mercedes EQS and Tesla Model S.

It’ll be a while before a Taycan Sport Turismo is offered with a discount, but you could potentially save a small fortune on most makes and models by using our free What Car? New Car Buying pages. It has some tempting electric car deals.

We’ve tested the GTS version of the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo, which produces a brawny 510bhp and has an official 0-62mph time of 3.7sec.

Those figures are identical to the standard Porsche Taycan (despite the Cross Turismo's additional rear bodywork) and you can briefly boost power up to 590bhp by activating Launch Control. In short, the performance is relentless.

Acceleration is instant at any speed and there’s enough punch to pin all occupants back into their seats, with instant response from the accelerator and very little hesitation from the electric motors. 

The Taycan Cross Turismo's two-speed gearbox shifts up at higher speeds to sustain acceleration, while the four-wheel drive system helps to deliver power effectively on to the road. In the cold, damp morning conditions of our test driver, the systems needed to work a little harder to shuffle power between the front and rear axles to minimise wheelspin, though.

Many electric cars give you blistering straight-line pace, of course, but the Taycan Sport Turismo stands out from its rivals by the way it handles a series of corners. There’s very little indication of the added bulk at the rear, and it feels quite compact to drive as you build up a rhythm down a twisty road.

There are four drive modes – Normal, Sport, Sport Plus and Individual. They adjust several settings as you cycle through them, including the accelerator response, steering weight, the ride height and the firmness of the adaptive air suspension. 

Normal is best for maximising comfort and delivers a slightly firm ride that isolates you well enough from rough road surfaces, so you feel only minor bumps at lower speeds.

The most aggressive Sport Plus mode gives you the stiffest suspension setup, the heaviest steering weight and the sharpest throttle response. We’ll have to confirm this on UK roads, but we suspect the ride in Sport Plus will be too firm for everyday use. Sport is a balance between the two.

On battered country roads, the slightly higher-riding (by 20mm) Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo has a slight advantage because it can tackle them without fear of bottoming out or catching the front splitter. In those situations, you'll want to be in Normal mode for maximum ride height.

The Taycan Sport Turismo's pace and abundance of grip allow you to cover ground quickly and effortlessly.

There isn’t much communicated through the steering wheel when it comes to sensing the levels of front grip, but the heavy weighting helps your inputs feel precise and you build up confidence in very little time. Porsche allows you to add rear wheel steering as an option, and that tightens up the turning circle from 11.7m to 11.2m, which helps with low-speed cornering.

In the sportier drive modes, an augmented electric motor sound is piped into the cabin (called Porsche Electric Sport Sound) for a more theatrical experience, – it changes tone when the higher speed gear is engaged. When it's off, there's very little wind or road noise to disturb you.  

The GTS gets a higher performance 93.4kWh battery as standard, and it’s also the first Taycan to get a software update to boost efficiency, giving it longest range of all versions, with an official 313 miles. The 4S and Turbo models are expected to have the updated software when they arrive.

In the real world, we expect the range to be closer to 250 miles, unless you are driving very gently in warmer weather conditions. If long journeys are a big consideration, consider the Mercedes EQS and Tesla Model S.

There's not much difference between the interior of the Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo and the standard Porsche Taycan. Even the badging and on-screen logos simply say 'Taycan', although the vehicle graphic on the drive mode menu shows the correct version.

Mind you, when you look in the rear-view mirror, you will notice the difference – visibility is much better in the Sport Turismo because of the bigger back window. Front and rear parking sensors as standard too.

All the materials and switchgear feel suitably upmarket and solidly put together, with plenty of tech and screens available. The driver’s instrument cluster is a 16.8-inch curved digital screen neatly integrated into the dash, with a crisp, high contrast display that features touch functions on the outer edges for the exterior lights and vehicle settings.

Most of the car's features are on a 10.9in landscape-oriented infotainment screen. Ventilation controls are on a lower portrait-oriented screen, but despite the haptic feedback, they don’t easily fall to hand and the icons are too small to identify easily at a glance. Traditional buttons would be less distracting on the move. 

The driving position is good, with plenty of adjustment from the 18-way electrically adjustable seat you get in GTS cars and a good view over the dashboard, which is not to high. 

The GTS version also gets Porsche’s suede-like material Race-Tex on the seats, steering wheel and roof lining. It's fairly grippy so it's great for holding you in place, and if the dark colour scheme is not to your taste, you can specify individual colour highlights to brighten it up a bit. 

There is also the option of the panoramic roof with Sunshine Control to maximise the amount of light in the cabin. It uses an electronically controlled film applied to the glass that can switch from clear to a matt finish at the press of a button, removing the need for a separate roller blind.

The film is divided into nine segments and you can select which ones to use on the centre touchscreen. It’s a neat function, but will add to the £1000 cost of having a panoramic roof without it.

Passengers in the rear seats of the Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo will benefit the most from its extended roofline, with more than 45mm of extra headroom over the standard Porsche Taycan.

The driver and front-seat passenger are just as well catered for as they would be in the regular Taycan. If you regularly have four six-foot occupants on board, the Sport Turismo gives them more space than the Audi E-tron GT and Tesla Model S, although the higher-riding Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo will make access just that little bit easier.

Our test car had the optional four-plus-one seating layout, adding a small rear centre seat suitable for a child and a 40/20/40 split-folding backrest. Without it, the rear seats fold in a less convenient 60/40 split.

When the rear seats are upright, the Sport Turismo’s boot is not much bigger than the standard Taycan's, with just a little more height and a wider loading aperture for bulkier items. With the seats dropped, the difference between the two cars is more marked.

The similarly priced Audi RS6 and Mercedes-AMG E63 S are large, full-bodied performance estates that offer more boot space – although they're not electric, of course.

The Porsche Taycan GTS Sport Turismo is only fractionally more expensive than the Porsche Taycan GTS. The rest of the range, arriving in 2022, is expected to start with a rear-wheel drive entry-level model.

On paper, the GTS model looks to have the best balance of kit as standard without needing to add options on top, but we suspect the 4S will be better value due to the large price difference. The GTS comes with tinted LED headlights, black 20-inch alloy wheels, a tweaked front bumper and gloss-black inserts on the side sills and rear diffuser. 

You also get dual-zone climate control, matrix LED headlights, cruise control, a powered tailgate, a heat pump, air suspension with the Porsche Active Suspension Management (PASM) electronic damper control system and the higher performance 93.4kWh battery with a usable capacity of 83.7kWh.

When it comes to charging, the Sport Turismo can charge at rates of up to 270kW with the Taycan’s 800-volt electrical system (most EVs have a 400-volt system). If you can find a fast enough charger, that makes a 10-80% charge possible in just over 20mins, but there are very few available at the moment. A 0-100% charge from a 7kW home wallbox takes more than 13hrs. 

There's a three-year warranty on the Cross Turismo itself, but the battery is covered separately for eight years and 100,000 miles, with a guarantee that it won't drop below 70% of its original capacity during that time. 

The list of standard safety kit includes automatic emergency braking (AEB), traffic-sign recognition and lane-keeping assistance. Two Isofix mounts for child seats are fitted in the back of the car, but a head-up display and adaptive cruise control are options. It’s a shame that blind-spot monitoring – a standard feature on the Tesla Model S and Tesla Model 3 – is reserved for the options list (it's part of a Lane Change Assist pack).

In terms of crash protection, the standard Taycan achieved a five-star rating from Euro NCAP – as did the Model S. However, whiplash protection for adults sitting in the front or back was found to be marginal, which is a little disappointing.

Reliability is much harder to predict. After all, the Taycan is the first Porsche electric car in more than 100 years. The German brand finished a relatively disappointing 25th out of 31 manufacturers in our latest 2021 What Car? Reliability Survey.