Porsche Taycan design & styling

Of chief significance among the technical content of the Porsche Taycan’s facelift are a pair of new nickel-manganese-cobalt drive battery packs, now with either 82kWh or 97kWh of usable capacity, depending on which derivative you buy (and whether you option Porsche’s Performance Battery Plus). The packs have new cell chemistry and can discharge and recharge more quickly (the 97kWh one at up to 320kW at a DC rapid charger of sufficient power). 

Allied to this is a new, higher-power and more efficient power inverter, along with a new primary electric drive motor for the rear axle, with differently arranged permanent magnets and more effectively wound stator wiring than the one it replaces, and it can output up to 107bhp more. Single-motor cars are driven by this motor alone, and via a two-speed automatic transmission; twin-motor cars add a second unit on the front axle, driving through a single-speed transmission.

The visual tweaks to the Taycan are quite subtle. If you're wondering which model you're looking at, check the the headlights. The facelift has lost the air vent that ran down like a tear from the headlight. The headlight units now also fill the fold with the bonnet instead of a piece of black plastic doing the same.

Illya Verpraet

Road Tester

Both the batteries and new rear motor are lighter than their predecessors. So, thanks to a lot of wider design detail improvements besides, the electric range of the longest-striding Taycan model (the entry-level Taycan, with optional Performance Battery Plus) rises from 277 miles to 422 miles on the WLTP combined lab test. A pretty darned impressive result for a mid-life facelift, that.