"For the 2025 model year, Porsche is giving the all-electric Taycan a particularly extensive update," says the company. It doesn't necessarily look the part because the styling changes are extremely subtle, but they hide a near-revolution under the skin.
Just as I was preparing to discuss with you the launch of the updated 2025 Taycan, I received a notification from Lotus that their new Emeya hyper-GT five-door liftback grand tourer sedan has wrapped a three-year-long test and development program across 15 countries, two continents, and with cold-weather validation taking it to the Arctic Circle to see if it can withstand temperatures as low as -40 degrees Fahrenheit (-40 degrees Celsius).
It's interesting that Lotus chose to announce the latest novelties about the Emeya around the same time when Porsche revealed the 2025 Taycan – the two sedans will compete for the same EV piece of the pie and, funny enough, the German company has already ensured its rightful place in the Pantheon of high-performance zero emission cars of the 2020s. In fact, they just mitigated the Lotus Emeya peril with the new variant of the Taycan Turbo S because now it's more powerful than the upcoming 905-hp R-series.
When Porsche brings out a mid-cycle update, the design changes are usually kept to a minimum – for the Taycan, the best way to differentiate the facelift from the current model is to look at the face; there are no more 'dripping' headlights anymore. However, the German company usually introduces a barrage of technical updates. So is the case with the 2025 Taycan, which makes do with minute styling changes and reworks just about everything underneath the skin.
So, all Porsche Taycan models now feature lots of efficiency and performance improvements, and even the base model got bumped to 483 horsepower – along with a healthy jump in MSRP. With the destination fee included, there are no more Taycans below the $100k threshold in America, which was to be expected. Porsche models have always been expensive and always will be, and Hell will probably freeze over when they lower the prices rather than bump them up. Even with that knowledge, they still have some of the highest profit margins across the industry!
Oh, and if we want to go to the top, the 2025 Taycan Cross Turismo Turbo S, along with the regular Turbo S sedan, have both jumped over the $210k fence, whereas the outgoing versions were both below the $200k threshold. That's interesting, right? But we will get back to that in a moment. Until then, let us go through the other upgrades, including a newer, lighter, and more energy-dense battery pack that allowed the Performance Battery Plus to soar to a total capacity of 105 kWh instead of 93 kWh. According to Porsche, the best real-world range is now 365 miles (587 km), by the way.
Recharging is also faster - 800-volt DC stations can give it up to 320 kW (+50 kW), and the 400-volt one juices at up to 150 kW. However, the best piece of news is that Porsche now has a contender for the crown of EV sedans alongside the Tesla Model S Plaid and Lucid Air Sapphire because the Turbo S flagships have jumped from 750 to 938 horsepower during the update procedures. True, it's not as much as a 1,020-horsepower Tesla Model S Plaid, and it's a long arm away from the 1,234-hp Lucid Air Sapphire, which is EV overkill at its finest. But the company made sure that very few legacy automakers will have the chance to outshine them, and it could easily sneak up on Tesla's alley by tapping into customers who don't like Tesla's yoke and stalkless treatment of the interior and also don't trust the Lucid Motors startup.
As far as it is concerned, Porsche probably believes it's more than enough oomph to keep it up out there with the Plaid and Sapphire because the Taycan is probably lighter than both. We will have to wait and see if the Taycan can challenge the Plaids and Sapphires at the local quarter-mile dragstrip, but I'm feeling pretty confident that it could field some surprises in the hands of capable drivers. Additionally, the pricing situation is not as dire as everyone thinks if we look from Lucid's perspective, which sells the Sapphire for $249k. Meanwhile, the other POV is simply disastrous as the 405-mile dual-motor AWDTesla Model S kicks off at just $75k, and even the mighty Plaid has reached a very 'affordable' MSRP of $90k, which is more than $10k less than the base 483-hp Porsche Taycan!
Obviously, Porsche can't compete with Tesla's aggressive pricing strategy, and they will probably never do so – more likely, they consider Tesla a mass-market offering now rather than a premium automaker that directly competes with them. Instead, they want to do what they do best – offer outstanding sporty machines at hilariously high prices. So far, it has worked wonders for them, hence the massive cult following.
Aurel has aimed high all his life (literally, at 16 he was flying gliders all by himself) so in 2006 he switched careers and got hired as a writer at his favorite magazine. Since then, his work has been published both by print and online outlets, most recently right here, on autoevolution. Full profile
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