Porsche teases the Taycan, gives more insight on the EV

ABU DHABI: It was merely last week that Porsche gave us a glimpse of the Taycan in the form of sketches, now they are giving us actual images of the production car. The car was shown in neon-images and appear in Porsche’s Annual and Sustainability Report of 2018.

Stefan Weckbach has been in charge of the Taycan project since 2014, and he explained the philosophy behind the car in the company's annual report. An entirely new plant is constructed for the Taycan in Zuffenhausen (Porsche’s headquarters), and 1,500 employees are hired for its production. Porsche is also said to invest around 6 billion euros for its electric mobility campaign. Porsche has always taken a somewhat evolutionary approach towards its models, but the Taycan is said to be a revolution. It will steer the company into the future while also returning to the essence of Porsche. Weckbach said “As the first fully electrical Porsche, the Taycan has to show that it is a fully-fledged member of the Porsche brand. Of course, this is a great challenge – and a huge expectation, both internally and externally.”

Here is a lot riding on the Taycan, it will be instrumental to a whole new series of partial/fully electric Porsche models that will be released in the coming years. By 2025, Porsche plans to have more than 50% of its new vehicles sold to be electrified. With the Taycan and its Cross Turismo brother (expected in 2020), the expectations are set high for the duo to perform well in the market.

Weckbach went on to say that with a changing world, the Porsche EV was ‘’the next logical step’’. The Taycan will not be just another premium EV, he adds “That wouldn’t be enough for us. A Porsche must offer reproducible performance, which means that it has to offer the highest performance at a constant level,” concerning some sporty EVs in the market with strong initial acceleration, only to reach a performance wall.

Power to the Porsche Taycan is delivered via two permanently synchronous motors with a combined output of over 600 PS. Acceleration figures come in with a 0-100 kmph time of 3.5 seconds while the 0-200 kmph will take under 12 seconds. On a single charge, the Taycan can travel up to 500 km and takes just 4 minutes of charging to get a 100 km range. Talking about the variants, we can expect a ‘4S’/’Turbo’ apart from the base version.

It is clear that Porsche has big expectations from the Taycan and its success will pave the wave for the company’s future. The electric sports car race is heating up, and it won’t be long before it reaches a boiling point.