Porsche's tease of 2021 Taycan good news is coming true
Porsche teased us with the promise of more range from its 2021 Taycan all-electric sedan, and sure enough with the official figures starting to filter through from the EPA it's good news for EV buyers. Signs that the Taycan – which launched last year to unexpectedly rough results from the US Environmental Protection Agency – was about to improve began circulating earlier this week.
That was alongside the launch of the most affordable version of the electric sedan, the 2021 Porsche Taycan single-motor RWD. Priced from around $81,250 with destination, it came with a list of the automaker's expected range numbers for the 2021 refresh of the whole Taycan line.
At the time, the EPA hadn't caught up with its own official ratings, but those have started to appear. Currently, the 2021 Taycan 4S with the Performance Battery and the Performance Battery Plus are listed. The former is new for the 2021 model year, with a 79 kW battery; the latter has a larger, 94 kWh battery, and was rated at 203 miles for the 2020 model year.
This time around, the 2021 Taycan 4S Performance is rated for 199 miles and 79 MPGe combined, and the 2021 Taycan 4S Performance Plus is rated for 227 miles and 77 MPGe. That means the EPA's numbers are in-line with what Porsche was predicting.
Still to come are the official figures for the rest of the Taycan range. That includes the 2021 Taycan Turbo, which Porsche is expecting to come in at 212 miles, an 11 mile improvement on the previous model year. The 2021 Taycan Turbo S should do 201 miles, a nine mile improvement, if Porsche's figures hold up.
It's not been an easy ride for Porsche when it comes to its EV and the EPA. Expectations were high for the Taycan when it first launched, only for the US agency to deliver a much more pessimistic estimate on range than the size of the car's battery might suggest. Porsche countered with its own, independent testing which delivered much healthier numbers, but it was a cloud over the car's debut.
Not that it seems to have dampened too much enthusiasm for the EV. Porsche delivered more than 4,000 of the cars in the US in 2020, limited more by production delays during the pandemic than demand, the automaker says. That's despite launching the most expensive configuration first, and only later following up with more attainable Taycan trims.
Yet to be rated by the EPA is the new 2021 Panamera 4S E-Hybrid or the 2021 Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid. The plug-in hybrid versions of the luxury sedan were priced up today, both packing a larger 17.9 kWh battery compared to the 14.1 kWh of the 2020 model year PHEV. Porsche says they should get between 31 and 35 miles of electric-only driving from a full battery, though that's on the European WLTP test cycle rather than the typically more demanding EPA version.