Seats for up to five occupants, plus a boot within sight of that of a BMW 3-Series Touring for carrying capacity, seal the deal on one of the most accomplished electric cars that any budget might buy and you can buy one, with options, for less than £90,000. Electric range isn't class-leading - but 250 miles is certainly possible from most versions of the car in mixed, real-world used. This car rides with an uncannily absorbtive and poised sort of body control, but it retains chatty, communicative steering, fine handling response, ideal handling balance and security, and as much real-world pace as you could ever expect to deploy on the road. The Taycan is a world-class operator however you configure it, but the extended cargo space and ride-height-boosted extra versatility of the Cross Turismo version certainly don't appear to have weakened the car's dynamic powers. It's the kind of breadth of choice that has transformed a breakthrough sporting EV into a luxury-segment contender with enough pull to have outsold every other Porsche model in the UK. You can now have one with one drive motor or two with four-wheel drive or two- with an indecent amount of power, or just a lot of it and also in either four-door swoopy saloon form, or as pseudo-estate-style Cross Turismo instead. Porsche has broadened out the range of its first all-electric model, the Taycan, quite a bit since the car first zapped onto the scene in 2020.
We await access to a UK demonstrator to confirm our early test impressions but all the signs are that the car industry's oldest power may have found its feet in the electric car market, and finally returned the disruptor brands' serve with interest. Both cars set exceptionally high standards for isolation, comfort and refinement both used four-wheel steering and their torque-rich powertrains to mask their 2.5-tonne kerbweight well and the longest-range examples promise real-world operating autonomy of more than 400 miles between charges - which will need to be experienced to be believed. We have so far driven late prototypes of both the EQS 450+ and the EQS 580 only, the former on UK roads but in left-hand drive form. For evidence of that, just 'Ask Jeeves' to see photographs of the car's infamous full-width 'hyperscreen' digital fascia. But it is a car engineered with true commitment, and packed with technology in a way few other passenger cars can even approach. It's expensive: on sale in the UK now, it's priced from £99,995 for the 325bhp, single-motor, rear-driven, EQS 450+ version, with deliveries set to begin before the end of 2021. But none matters more reputationally than the big one: Stuttgart's all-electric, new-age limousine, the EQS.īuilt on a brand-new model platform (and partly in response to the market share lost by the conventionally powered S-Class when Tesla's Model S struck it big in the important North American market), the EQS is a luxury EV without compromise. Mercedes' first dedicated EV, the EQC SUV, came along in 2019, and we've seen a few other smaller EQ models along since. The oldest car-maker in the world isn't taking any prisoners when it comes to the switch to electric mobility. Updated 2021 Porsche Taycan brings back 1990s colours.Porsche Taycan gets new estate option and GTS trim for 2022.New Porsche Gran Turismo concept hints at brand's EV future.