New Porsche Taycan Turbo S 2024 review: incredibly fast and seriously expensive

Be too aggressive with the throttle or the steering through a series of turns, and the mix of power and mass means that it’s easier than many might expect to get the car out of shape. And while the steering is wonderfully precise and the body control outstanding, there’s not much feedback from the former and not much roll from the latter – in other words, you don’t get a massive amount of warning about when the limits of grip are about to arrive. You’ll certainly need your wits about you. Dial into its limits, however, and you can keep things smooth through the turns and then fire along any straights at a staggering rate. 

Much like the steering, we’d like a little more feedback from the brakes. While there’s enormous stopping power from speed, the calibration during gentler stops needs a little work, as it isn’t always that easy to modulate smoothly. In isolation, it’s still a deeply impressive car to drive, but the arrival of the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N has shown just where the standard now is for electric drivers’ cars.

When we drove the revised base model Taycan, we were staggered at just how efficient it proved to be – it’s genuinely one of the most frugal EVs on sale at any price. With its twin motor set-up – and the temptation that always lingers with so much power on tap – we couldn’t match that car’s easy 4.0mi/kWh-plus return, but the Turbo S still proved to use less electricity than many everyday electric crossovers with one quarter of the power.

For the performance on offer, little else will be so cheap to run. We accept that running costs aren’t likely to be at the forefront of the minds of car buyers with £161,400 to splash out, but it goes to prove just how successful Porsche’s engineers have been with these revisions, anyway.

Elsewhere, the Taycan is much the same as before. The driving position feels lower and more sporty than almost any other electric car, the interior quality is great, if not quite as luxurious as a Porsche Panamera, and it’s also not as specious in the back as Porsche’s other GT car. But it’s comfortable, refined and very easy to live with every day. Even more so now, thanks to the revised car’s increased charging speeds; we came very close to achieving that maximum rate of 320kW in the real world – once we found a charger that could keep up.

But we haven’t even come to the most amazing thing about the Taycan Turbo S yet: that this isn’t even the fastest Taycan you can buy now. The Turbo GT with Weissach Pack covers the 0-62mph dash even quicker, in a time of just 2.2 seconds.