2025 Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo Review: Power And Range Boost Make 4S The Sweet Spot

It's a big year for the Porsche Taycan. The four-door luxury electric vehicle is already one of the slickest models in its segment, but for 2025 it gets improvements like updated looks, more power, faster acceleration, and faster charging capability. The Taycan, with all these changes, is available in a number of different forms. It's offered as a sedan, a sport wagon, or in this case it's the Cross Turismo version. 

The Cross Turismo uses the wagon styling, same as the Sport model, but with some added capability when the pavement ends. It's no four-wheel-drive rock-crawling SUV, but it can handle a bit of mountain snow or a gravel fire road, no problem. 

Travis Langness/SlashGear

An off-road styled EV wagon might not be your first choice for entertainment, but the Taycan is undoubtedly a class leader and an excellent driver's car. Just like you expect from sporty two-door Porsches, it's premium and well-sorted when it comes to tackling corners. But it's also one of the quietest, most isolated cars you can buy. It has appealing modern tech and a stereo that'll impress even the pickiest audiophiles. Whatever configuration you get it in, the Taycan is the total package.

Like its sedan-and-sport-wagon Taycan siblings, there are several different versions of the Cross Turismo. Specifically for 2025, there's the Cross Turismo 4, 4S, Turbo, and Turbo S. Each model increases performance and power with the base 4 starting at 429 horsepower and 449 lb-ft of torque, and the 4S I tested leaping up to 590 hp and 523 lb-ft. The Turbo raises the stakes — and eyebrows — with its 871 hp and 656 lb-ft, while the Turbo S makes a scarcely-believable 938 hp and 818 lb-ft.

The 4S we tested is likely the sweet spot for most buyers. Like with most powerful EV's, the Taycan's acceleration is shocking and immediate, blasting off the line at a moment's notice. It's extremely fast without crossing the border into overwhelming. According to Porsche's estimates, it will accelerate from zero to 60 mph in 3.6 seconds, all the way up to a top track speed of 149 mph. 

Travis Langness/SlashGear

Even though I thoroughly enjoyed a few flat-footed launches in the 4S, I'm not ashamed to admit that during most of my driving in the Taycan, I barely used all 590 horses — the standard 4 might even be enough for most drivers. The Sport Chrono package included on the 4S trim level is a big part of the sporty experience too, with a new push-to-pass function from Porsche that adds as much as 70 kW of power for 10 seconds on with the tap of a button.  

During my time with the Cross Turismo, I used public charging at my local fast charger and I was pretty impressed at the rates. The 2025 Taycan can charge at up to 320 kW at 800-volt DC charging stations, an increase of 50 kW compared to previous model years. The battery used for this newest Taycan also has a larger area of the charging limit where it can accept high charging rates.

During my charge, I saw rates well over 200 kW, going from 30% to 89% charge in under 40 minutes. With a charging neighbor splitting some of my station's power for the first half of my plug-in, that was acceptably quick. Since the MyPorsche app had already been set up and connected to the car, it was simple for me to find a nearby charger, plug in, and let the app handle the billing. All the car had to do was juice up while I did a bit of reading in the driver's seat. 

The 4S here has an estimated range of 272 miles on a single charge, which is a bit below average for the segment, but other versions of the Taycan have range estimates that exceed 300 miles. If you have a light foot, you'll likely be able to achieve that total range, but you'll need a bit of restraint too — going flat-footed in the Taycan is just too much fun to avoid. 

The Cross Turismo 4S has a claimed curb weight from Porsche of 5,093 pounds, but that heft doesn't show up nearly as much as you'd expect in the corners. The Taycan moves through tight chicanes with incredible ease, changing direction quickly and staying stable at higher speeds through long sweepers. The steering is extremely direct, almost perfectly weighted when in Sport mode, and no corner caught me off guard. 

Continuing the trend of making the best steering wheels in the business, Porsche has an ideally-sized steering wheel in the Taycan with an excellent balance of visible buttons and smooth non-buttoned surfaces.

Travis Langness/SlashGear

The Taycan doesn't use the same sort of one-pedal regenerative braking that you get in most EVs, so pressure on the brake pedal feels more like what you'd expect in an ICE vehicle. It's a difference that some EV buyers may gripe about, but with the Taycan's sporting nature, I preferred the more traditional brake-pedal feedback. The Porsche's brakes stop it in a hurry too, with progressive pressure building through the pedal's travel as you come to a stop. It might not be one-pedal, but the brakes on this latest Taycan are seriously well-tuned.

While I wouldn't go as far as calling the Taycan's interior design minimalist, it's certainly a plain aesthetic with monochromatic sensibilities. Build quality is beyond reproach. with excellent stitching, premium materials, and excellent style choices like the Allen bolts used for the steering wheel button surrounds. There are simple, subtle colors and texture changes throughout the cabin that I didn't notice at first, but after a few days I was able to spot the details. 

The utterly delightful houndstooth (also called "Pepita" by Porsche) fabric on the seats, however, stands out the moment you open the door. I can't think of a manufacturer that currently makes a seat fabric that's more visually appealing.

Travis Langness/SlashGear

The Taycan is spacious enough for adults in all of the major seating positions too. Tall adults will need to duck a bit to get in, but there's plenty of headroom and legroom once you're inside. The seats are extremely well padded, bolstered with lots of support, and shaped ideally for a combination of comfort and performance. They're also highly adjustable: this particular car was equipped with 14-way adjustable comfort seats, a standard selection on the 4S that I see no reason to upgrade from. Both the cooling and heating functions on the front seats worked well, too.

On top of being comfortable, the Taycan's cabin is truly isolated from the outside world. It's almost completely silent inside when you're going over usually-loud concrete highways, or rough road surfaces. Very little wind noise makes its way in, even at freeway speeds (or higher). Translation: it's whisper-quiet in there, and that's a virtue for sure. But (and this is a small gripe) the double-pane glass means that I couldn't open my garage door.

The acoustics and sound protection inside the Porsche were so strong that the signal from my garage door opener couldn't make it out. Even just a few feet from my driveway, I couldn't get the remote to work. Every time I left my apartment or came back, I had to roll down the windows to exit or enter my building's parking lot; then the signal would make it out. If you've got a HomeLink-compatible garage door opener, of course, the Taycan can pair with up to three.

Aside from the steering-wheel controls, just about everything on the Taycan's dashboard is done via one screen or another. The driver display is high-resolution and has lots of pertinent information. It's also mounted low enough that it never impedes forward visibility. The center screen is excellent, too, with quick responses and lighting-fast connections to Apple CarPlay. 

Travis Langness/SlashGear

The touchscreen climate-control panel, however, isn't ideal. I had to control the vents and their direction via the touchscreen, which is distracting and irksome in any car: there's nothing wrong with using your hands to direct air-conditioning vents. It's a problem that didn't need fixing, and yet several manufacturers have implemented this change. I hope it's a trend that gets reversed as soon as possible. 

Travis Langness/SlashGear

The Taycan's Bose surround sound stereo, on the other hand, is one of the best audio setups I've tested in 2025 — maybe even in the last few years. On top of having excellent sound quality and real depth with premium audio files, the stereo gets properly loud. It's not often that I have to back off from full volume in any new car, but the Taycan had me retreating from maximum output in a hurry. It's properly potent and it sounds good even at the top of the range.

It's impossible to get around the high cost of luxury EVs, and the Taycan is no exception. The 2025 Cross Turismo I drove around for a week was the 4S with a starting price of $127,195 (including $1,995 destination fee). From there, options like the Shade Green paint ($2,850), the off-road design package ($2,170), and the panoramic roof with variable light control ($3,240) all started to stack things a bit higher. 

The Premium package gives the Taycan a head-up display, soft close doors, and an air-quality system, all for the added cost of $3,260. The isolation on the interior comes via thermal and noise isolating glass, a $1,130 option. No wonder it was so quiet. Oh, and the 20-inch Turbo S Design wheels are an extra $2,380. The total cost for this particular Porsche: $158,515. And that's for the 2025 model, with prices set to go up in 2026.

Even as expensive as the 4S can get, there's still plenty of headroom above it with models like the Turbo and Turbo S going for much more. Rivals like the Lucid Air and the Mercedes-Benz EQS Sedan are worth considering as well, but they're no strangers to big price tags either. If you want something as premium and engaging as the Cross Turismo, it won't come cheap. But that doesn't really take away from the Taycan's appeal. 

Even with a few small drawbacks like the abundance of touchscreens and the steep starting price, the Taycan is still a class leader. Maximum range could be better (the record-setting Lucid Air proves that with some models topping 500 miles between plug-ins), but the updated range and charging speeds for 2025 increase the Taycan's daily-driver appeal over previous models. The lightning-quick acceleration, show-stopping interior quality, and excellent driving dynamics of the Taycan Cross Turismo are all what justify its high sticker price.