2020 Porsche Taycan 4S Plus
My first 93 hours or 4800 Miles driving the summer of 2020
The Great, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
This review is from a long-time Porsche owner (two dozen since 1995) who also has owned two Tesla’s a Model X with V1 hardware and a Model 3 with V3 hardware. I am going to be candid and critical of Porsche because I want them to get this right. The Taycan is my car, not a demo car from Porsche
Porsche Mission E Concept Car Photo Courtesy of Electrek.co
Ordering My Taycan
This story began in September 2015 when Porsche debuted the Mission E at the IAA in Frankfurt. The projected 310-mile range and 80% charge in 15 minutes via the 800-volt port were exciting predictions. After seeing Porsche’s concept study Mission E, I immediately contacted my dealership in Redwood City and said I don’t care when or how much I want one. That was five years ago. Porsche delivered the first 130 Taycan’s in December of 2019. I did some extensive research and decided I didn’t want a Taycan Turbo or Turbo S, so I waited for the Taycan 4S allocations. Porsche had scheduled my Taycan for delivery in March of 2020. By that time, I had relocated to Austin, Texas.
We all know, Covid19 started to shut down the world right around mid-march, actually March 17th in the US. Germany shut down its factories, and the original delivery schedule had slipped.
With the new schedule, Porsche was shipping my Taycan to the California dealership in June, and they were going to transport it to me in Texas at no-charge. I make it a point to leave Austin in August. I had hoped the car would arrive before I left, but the shipment got backed up, and I left Texas before Porsche could deliver my Taycan.
The good news, I just happened to be in California for most of August 2020, so when my Taycan arrived at the dealership in Redwood City, I caught a ride up from Southern California to get my car.
Taking Delivery
It was thrilling to finally get the opportunity to have a vehicle during my summer in California and get to experience my new Taycan. — They juiced it up for me, and I was on my way. I named her Joulsey, the energy geeks will get it.
The original plan was to drive it while in California, and Porsche Redwood City would truck it for me to Austin, Texas when I was ready to fly home.
I spent the first few days getting acquainted with it. Each new Porsche Taycan comes with unlimited 30 minutes of free charging for three years on the Electrify America Charging Infrastructure. There is a specific application for North America called Charging NA by Porsche.
How does it Drive?
I could not be more excited to share how well this new Porsche drives and handles. It is my opinion that this is the best handling Porsche bar none. Electric vehicles have an advantage of the speed at which computers can change a car’s behavior vs. a traditional Internal combustion engine (ICE). This Taycan has a fantastic weight balance for a slot-car-like driving experience previously only found on a Tesla. There are many reviews by the traditional press, but this review is from an owner.
The best way I can describe this car is you can drive it to the store and do shopping, you have ample space to put groceries. Extremely easy to navigate through parking lots. It drives with ease and is gentle when moving through regular city traffic. Once you have unloaded the car, you can jump right back in and take it up on a long windy road and really have an amazing and enjoyable experience. It is smooth in acceleration and deceleration.
Porsche’s Autopilot (Lane Keep, Lane Change Assist & ACC — Adaptive Cruise Control)
These optional features each with their own cost and associated value constitute what Porsche owners would describe as autopilot. This should not be confused with self driving, these are features that allow the driver some assistance during normal operation. I will take each feature separately. The easiest is ACC or Adaptive Cruise control, this feature has been around for over a decade. Early versions were found on high end Mercedes Benz vehicles. The primary function is to maintain distance between your vehicle and the one in front of you. You set your cruise control, set the number of car lengths and the car does the rest. Current versions can bring the vehicle to a complete stop. The other two features Lane Keep and Lane Change Assist are a little less functional in my opinion. Lane Keep, as it’s name calls out is designed to attempt to keep your Taycan in it’s lane, I have found this function to be more annoying than useful. Most of the time I get warnings on the dashboard that I am not in the lane, mostly when construction narrows the lane or there are cones. It does a poor job keeping the Taycan in a lane, I find even on very straight roads, that it will start to drift to one side, attempting to correct ending up on the other side of the lane before telling you that it requires drivers intervention. I describe this behavior as “drunk driver weaving”. The other feature is if you happen to not use your blinker to change lanes, it will resist your lane change and shake the steering wheel in objection. The final feature is Lane Change Assist, this feature uses sensors to warn you about vehicles in a lane you might have signaled to enter. It;s both visual on the mirrors and audible. If you compare this to the no-cost, factory features found in all new Tesla’s it has much to be desired. The no-cost autopilot on a new Tesla does a near perfect job keeping the car in the center of the lane, even when taking turns. It does an amazing job maintaining distance and it even allows you to change lanes by using the blinkers. This is not the optional $8K Self-Driving Option, but their autopilot is without question superior to the optional and expensive add-ons from Porsche.
Porsche Electric Sport Sound
I opted for the $500 optional Porsche Electric Sport Sound which enhances the vehicle’s sound outside and inside. It really changes the experience of driving the Taycan. The Sound is hard to explain but extremely enjoyable and changes with the acceleration of the vehicle. You have to activate it each time you start your car. It would be great if this was a toggle. Ie set it on or off. — This setting can be found in the setting menu, and can be configured to one of the two soft buttons on either the steering wheel or the dash.
Regenerative Braking
If you happen to be moving from a ICE Porsche to a Taycan, this experience will be a very easy transition. If you happen to be moving from a Tesla like me, it takes a bit to get used to. Tesla drivers expect that when you pull your foot off the accelerator pedal, you will start to feel the car slow down. Then to complete the stop, you would apply the brakes. Porsche took a different approach. I am not going to say its better or worse, it is different. Porsche uses a blended approach. When you lift your foot off the accelerator pedal, you can barely feel the vehicle slowing down from regen, it basically feels like the car is coasting. However, when the driver presses the brake pedal, the Taycan doesn’t actually actuate the physical brakes. What is happening, is the vehicle is stopping by using electric motor braking and recuperating as much energy as possible. Porsche engineers have said that as much as 90% of the Taycan’s braking will be achieved through regenerative braking. The Taycan is capable of generating up to 265 kW into the battery pack. So if you are used to driving traditional cars, this will feel very natural to you. It took a little to get used to as I just came from driving a tesla. You can set the center display to visually show you how much regenerative braking is actually happening. It’s pretty cool.
Overrun Recuperation — a favorite feature
In addition to the default blended braking you can configure two levels of overrun recuperation which provide two additional levels of energy recovery. Default is no overrun recuperation. If you press the button it turns the system on and you get moderate overrun recuperation, which starts to feel a little like driving a Tesla. My favorite mode is when you press and hold. This puts the system into overrun recuperation Auto, which uses the vehicle’s external sensors to deliver variable adaptation. What I experienced is if you happen to be approaching a vehicle in front of you, and you pull your foot off the accelerator pedal, the car starts to automatically slow the Taycan relative to the car’s speed in front of you, it’s like a mini adaptive cruise control. It is really useful. — What you cannot do yet is make either of these settings default for your driving profile — The button can be found on the left side of the steering wheel.
Acceleration using Launch Control — So much fun!!!!
Who doesn’t love a fast 0–60 time. I grew up reading specs on 0–60 times. These new electric Porsches do not disappoint. The Taycan 4S reaches 60 mph in 3.8 secs, the Taycan Turbo does it in 3 seconds, and the Turbo S in a blazing fast 2.6 seconds. My 2016 Porsche twin turbo achieved 0–60 in 3.2 seconds. Now each of these 0–60 times is achieved using Porsche’s Launch Control. — The process is straightforward. You must be at a standstill, vehicle in D, mode needs to be in Sports or Sports Plus. Press and hold the brake pedal with your left foot, now pressdown the accelerator pedal with your right foot.
Battery Capacity — Go with the optional big battery, you never have enough capacity
The 4S comes in two variants: 79.2kWh battery and the 4S Plus with a 93.4kWh battery. I have the later The 4S Plus delivers the same maximum charging rate of 270kW, as seen on the Turbo and Turbo S, where the 4S has a max charging rate of 225kW. The 4S has 472 ft-lbs of torque, and the 4S Plus has 480 ft-lbs. The Turbo delivers 627 ft-lbs of torque and the Turbo S a whopping 775 ft-lbs of torque. Now, these blistering torque numbers are all produced in over-boost mode when using launch control. So when deciding which model to buy, it might make sense to evaluate the cost per second of 0–60 time. Without options for 1.2 seconds of 0–60 time, you are paying $75K; for .8 second, you spend $40K. I suggest the best price-performance is in the Taycan 4S Plus, which comes with a larger battery.
Charging my Taycan
If you happen to be a former Tesla owner like me, you will find Porsche’s-Electrify America’s current charging implementation in North America to be a bit clunky. The Taycan has mapping integrated into its system to direct you to the charging station, though there have been a few instances where the map sent me to a location with no charger. At this point, seamless integration ends.
You pull up to the charging stations; they range in rate from 50kWh up to 350kWh. You find one with the highest charge-rate, plug your car in, then use the app to match the station ID on the charging station with the station ID in your app, slide to start charging. Most of the time, but not always, the charger will initiate and begin charging. In a perfect world, the charger will start, you will see rates near 270kWh, and it should take about 15–20 minutes to get back on the road.
I am sorry to say that only happened once in the 24 times I had to charge the car. When charging does not initiate, there is a customer service number on the station, which you call; it’s staffed 24/7. A friendly customer service agent will restart the charger. If that doesn’t work, they will have you move your car to a different charger. If all of this fails, they tell you that the chargers are rate-limited due to software issues. Most of my charging occurred between 60–125kWh. So most of my stops were more than 30 minutes of free charging.
Porsche and Electrify America (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Volkswagen AG) need to step up their game here. They claim 70 miles between charging infrastructure, but there was a spot in Blythe, California, where I had to go with a 3rd party EVGO charger. Electrify America had not deployed a charger within range. The EVGO stop took over an hour as it charged at a maximum rate of 50kWh. So if you are doing any time planning, assume 60 minutes for each charge, they will not all take that long, but you will be on schedule or earlier.
This what I was expecting the experience to be. Tesla owners pull up, plugin, and start charging; at this point, you can use the bathroom, grab a snack, and return to their car to play a game or watch a show. It’s seamless and, in my case, always worked.
The solution currently deployed for North America is hit or miss. Having stopped to charge 24 times over the past seven weeks, I have an excellent understanding of the shortcomings. I hope Porsche and Electrify America will address these issues with software updates, but for now, be prepared to spend more time at chargers than they estimate.
Porsche Intelligent Range Manager
I am not sure why this is optional? The Taycan is an electric car, and I would assume that it would have been a central feature. I did purchase this feature and used it extensively during my travels. I will say when it goes wrong. It goes very wrong. I had about 80% charge on my batteries and drove from Southern California up to Northern California. I was using the Porsche range manager. I plugged in my destination; the system calculated the stops and set the max speed to 90mph. I put the cruise control to 80mph and settled into the fast lane on Highway 101 North.
I was about 10–15 minutes into my drive when the car rapidly slowed to 55mph, and the vehicle’s navigation system bleeped warnings no chargers could be found on your route. Now, it’s important to note, just moments ago, it had plotted those stops on the map. It glitched. The main issue was going from 80 to 55 in a rapid slow down in the fast lane. I hope that the rear brake lights are activated. I tried to get the car to speed up by slowly pressing the accelerator pedal, but it didn’t respond. I quickly realized I needed to move over to the slow lane to figure out what had happened. I had to push the pedal down hard for it to override the system and allow me to speed up so I could safely change lanes.
I decided to pull off of the freeway and figure out what happened. When selecting the same destination I had done previously, the system routed the same charging stops, and the software returned to the max speed of 90mph. I called a local dealership in LA, and they said to bring the Taycan in. The car was at the dealership for six hours for a “software update.”
It is 2020, and we have plenty of bandwidth to do software OTA (over the air), which is how Tesla updates their cars and has done for years, so I was understandably frustrated that I lost the day. The vehicle never fell to 55mph again but did fall back to 70mph for no apparent reason at least a dozen times during the remainder of my travels.
Porsche PCM BOOT Time
I am shocked at the amount of time it takes for the car to become fully operational after pushing the start button. It is my opinion; when you start the car, it should be ready. The Taycan’s PCM is NOT fully operational when you press start. Core services are available initially but don’t rush to use your infotainment system or try to enter a destination or use voice-control. These services take an unacceptable amount of time to activate. I found myself waiting for an eternity just to set my next stop into navigation. Voice-Control… Well, it’s supposed to control a bunch of services like AC/Music, etc., but don’t hold your breath. I drive away once I can finally input a destination and then wait for about 5–10 minutes before activating the voice-control. If you try too soon, you get a lovely visual signal on the center display, “Voice Control Not available.”
“Hey Porsche”
Porsche decided to get into the smart assistant game similar to what you find on Apple with “Hey Siri” or Google with “Ok Google.” The problem is it doesn’t work. If the Taycan hears anything that might sound like “Porsche,” it will activate Voice Pilot and pop up the Voice Control Screen. That is extremely annoying, and I suggest you do not activate it until this issue has been corrected.
Apple Music
It is super cool to have Apple Music integrated into the car, but there is no way (that I found) that you can default to Apple Music when you start the vehicle. It likes to fall-back to SiriusXM or Digital Radio. Making a list of favorites is excellent if you are a SiriusXM user or Digital Radio user. Still, if you like Apple Music, as I do, you will find yourself selecting it and then selecting your music each time you start the car.
User Interface Bug
There is a software bug in the central control panel above the cup holders. It shows up like you are pressing the upper left corner of the display, which is where the navigation icon is. Since the display acts as if you are pushing it repeatedly, you are unable to use any of the other services. Found the only way to clear this is to stop the car, exit it, lock it and wait about 5 minutes. — I was able to capture a video of the gremlin in the display below
Summary
Porsche has done a magical job on their first all electric vehicle. How it drives and handles are pure porsche. If it is your first electric car and you are a porsche owner, it will feel familiar. Those moving from Tesla to Porsche will need to get used to some of the differences. The Taycan’s ability to go from around town shopper to all out track car is remarkable. I love driving it and i feel bad for my 928 which used to benefit from around-town driving. When it comes to software there is some work to do here. I have friends who have complained about the Panamera’s boot times, but I was hopeful that this would not be the case with the new Taycan. I feel that most of the issues can be solved with updates. My hope is that one of those key updates will be OTA software delivery of all future fixes. With MY2021 vehicles being delivered with wireless carplay and the ability to control basic features of the Taycan with the connect app, I am hopeful us early adopters will get these features in an update. All in all I love the car, having drivin it almost 5000 miles across California, Arizona, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma and finally to my home state of Texas
A Little Background on Me
I purchased my first Porsche in 1995. It was a 911 Carrera 2 Cabriolet shown below
This Porsche was a stopgap for the vehicle I ordered, which ended up a 1997 Porsche Twin Turbo.
It was the first of many Twin Turbos I owned over the decades. Full disclosure: I have enjoyed close to two dozen Porsches since 1995, the Taycan being my most recent. In addition to my Taycan, I have a 1993 928 GTS and 1994 911 Carrera 2.
