Dethroning Tesla: After Taycan Turbo Launch, Porsche Is Reloading Its Guns

It felt like they had things under control, they had this “it’s not the time for EV’s” vibe floating around them, honestly they did not seem threatened at all.

You could kind of understand their confidence considering that they’ve been building cars long before Elon Musk was born, before Tesla came to existence. That kind of confidence more often than not comes back biting, and boy did it come. They somehow managed to forget that you don’t need 50+ years of expertise in the area in order to create a viable electric vehicle, because despite the fact that EV’s look like normal vehicles and respect the general characteristics of a car, what is underneath the hood is a totally different story.

Now if you’re here reading this, you probably have a good ideea about what happened afterward: pure and undisputed Tesla domination. They’ve created a new segment, one that fits really well with the global issues that surfaced in the past years and is appealing to all sorts of people. Call it perfect timing for all the non-bad reasons.

Fast forward to today, it feels like the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo has been a long time coming. It was unveiled for the first time at the 2018 Geneva Motor show, appealing to a wide range of people due to the things it promises. Maybe not quite all out off-road experiences that you’d have in a purpose-built car, but Porsche put on display an all-wheel drive system on a “lifted Taycan chassis” for more ground clearance that could comfortably take you to your ski trip or to your cabin by the lake.

In any case, if you consider buying yourself a brand new Porsche, be it electric or fossil fueled, you probably won’t spend too much time dreaming about off-road adventures with it. Have the possibility there if needed, but otherwise enjoy your 650+ BHP in a chassis that was built by people who have won endurance races year after year every time they’ve entered the competition.

Measuring around 16 feet in length the new version of the Taycan comes with an 800-volt architecture with fast charging and induction charging, using the Porsche home energy storage system that will be good for an excess of 200 miles / charge.

If we learned some things from the Taycan sedan, one would be that we can expect a 0 to 80 percent charge in about 23 minutes, figure only achievable with a 270 kW DC charging station. For home charging from a Level 2 unit, owners will be able to deliver a 100 percent charge in 9 hours, a ritual that would essentially take place overnight in most cases.

There’s also a good chance that engineers at Porsche will introduce a less gutsy variant of the Taycan Cross, a more “base” model that will send its power only to the back wheels, tough that is not confirmed yet. For the model presented, the silhouette is defined by a sporty roofline that slopes off to the rear, a phenomenon that Porsche designers refer to as a “fly-line”. This design brings back memories of the Panamera Sport Turismo, not that that’s a bad thing.

While the Taycan and Taycan Cross Turismo may share power units, the Cross could be a bit less capable due to the slightly different design approach, added weight and different tire specifications. But given the fact that it will proudly wear a Porsche badge and we live in a world where Tesla is simply hammering 0 to 60 times, we could expect the Taycan Cross to run the distance in about 3.5 to 4.0 seconds. If you don’t think that’s fast remember that a 2018 Chevrolet Camaro SS also rocks a steady 4 seconds from 0 to 60 mph.

The Taycan Cross is all about lifestyle and boy does it promise a lot. Porsche describes it as a cross-utility vehicle or “CUV”, whatever that means. It seems like the term crossover was to mainstream for their reinvention of the wheel. We can only hope that when it reaches production, and we can estimate that to a late 2020, it will keep its aggressive arches, sloping roofline and chunky tires.