Taking a $270,000+ electric car for a spin isn’t something that happens every day in my world, so when Porsche offers to loan one for a week, a “no thanks” is not what comes immediately to mind.

I test drove the Porsche Taycan 4S in 2021, but this time around it is an entirely different experience. For a start, after picking it up from Porsche’s hub in Brisbane North I found myself driving for hours in the pouring rain to reach home.

It was then that – having spent just ten minutes at the Porsche centre re-familiarising myself with, and getting slightly annoyed at, the idiosyncrasies of Porsche’s touchscreen interface – I felt very relieved to have the bulk, stance and dynamics of the Cross Turismo as my chariot.

First, the basic specs: starting at $271,200 before on-road costs, the Porsche Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo packs a massive 93kWh battery and weighs 2.32 tonnes.

It can swoop from a standing start to 100km/hr in just 3.3 seconds (even flooring it from about 20-80km/hr is enough to leave the heart pounding, believe me), and its WLTP driving range is rated for 388-419km.

Realistically you’ll get more like 300km in this beast, and that’s something that matters when you realise feeding the Taycan Cross Turismo’s huge battery is going to cost more than the average EV to charge.

First impressions, I admit compared to my lithe Tesla Model 3, are that the thing is built like a tank. It feels almost as though I should, or could, be driving it down the streets of a certain east European country throwing molotovs at Russian invaders.

But the drive home proves it is much more than this: It’s comfortable in even the hairiest of traffic conditions, and the power and tech behind the dash and beneath the floor of this “Crayon” grey Porsche Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo are very impressive.

The Porsche Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo packs an incredible 500kW power and 850Nm torque during overboost, compared to the already impressive maximum 390kW of the 4S sports car.

Reaching the home stretch after the three-hour marathon in Brisbane and Gold Coast traffic it is approaching dark, so I took the opportunity to test out the acceleration of this formidable vehicle and nearly had a heart attack as it seemed to launched itself into the future and left my organs behind.

If you’re looking for an adrenaline rush on wheels, this is it. But please make sure you’re on the track when you do so.

Billed as an “off-road” vehicle, the Turbo Cross Turismo is, as the name suggests, built for touring. It is larger at the back than the plain Taycan, with more headroom for passengers and more space in the rear boot.

The Cross Turismo has the same four drive modes as the normal Taycan as well as “Gravel Mode” that sort of keeps the wheels in a straight line on a road with questionable surfacing. It’s good, and that alone would be one reason to go for the Cross Turismo over the normal Taycan if that was the sort of decision one had to make.

Aspects of the Taycan – and this goes for all the variants, admittedly – that I am not initially a fan of include the car’s digital controls, accessible through not one touchscreen, but three, as well as another display behind the steering wheel.

(To be fair I’m coming from the relative simplicity of the Tesla Model 3, although that experience has changed recently thanks to an upgrade that means I’m still searching for some functions that used to be easy to find.)

But back to the Taycan: there is one touchscreen in front of the passenger to control music, and navigation, and there’s another one at the centre, which is the home for everything for iPhone connectivity, music, radio navigation driver settings, which includes assistance and comfort.

These can be accessed via another screen on the centre console. Its immediate controls allow you to adjust the climate of the car, as well as heated and ventilated seats, the latter of which quite frankly is a godsend in an Australian summer (the back seats are heated but they don’t have ventilation.)

It also has quick access icons along the top that will bring up navigation, music, phone driver settings, and so on on the upper screen above it.

This seems a bit inconvenient at first as you have to stretch over to then control these features but as my attentive son pointed out to me, you can actually do this via a mouse-like touchpad on centre console at the bottom.

It is easy to get the hang of but could do with the addition of a cursor instead of just highlighting options like a 1980s Windows DOS operating system.

On the steering wheel, you’ve got access to little scroll wheels, with the one on the right allowing you to scroll through three circles on the screen behind the wheel, accessing information like power and battery status, the odometer, location and so on. You can expand the map visualisation to cover the entire screen, or just have it sitting in the middle circular area.

There are some small improvements that I think Porsche could make, like a bigger rear vision mirror, and larger mirrors behind the visors. Personally, I’m not a fan of the “top down” surround camera as it doesn’t really give a great view of what’s behind the car.

I also found the in-built voice navigation a little hard to follow in tight traffic. It’s fine on the highway, but seems a little slow to navigate unfamiliar city lanes and bypasses. I solved this however by hooking my phone up to Apple CarPlay, and presto – Apple Maps, Music and messages made driving all the more comfortably familiar.

Another thing that doesn’t seem to have changed much since driving the 4S in 2021 is the driving assistance. As with many EVs these days, this car has lane-keeping assistance, and adaptive cruise control.

Unlike the strict “you’re in a tunnel” feel that comes with the Tesla, where you put Autopilot and any deviation turns it off with a loud “bing bong” noise, Porsche’s driving assist decisions seem to err on the side of not messing with the driver.

This is great if you are really after a “guide” and gentle vibration if you leave the lane but I found it a bit confusing as to when it would work and when it didn’t. Even on roads with clear white lines on either side of the lane, the lane-keeping seemed to turn off and on at a whim.

Visiting an Evie Networks 450kW charger on the way to drop the car back, I took the opportunity to plug in and experience some of the “lightning-fast” charging the Taycan is known for, making sure to use the charge port on the left of the front of the car (the right one only charges on AC).

From 15% to 95%, the charge session achieved a top charge rate of 260kW and took 45 minutes (the last 15% takes a lot longer but was still charging at 38kW within 10 minutes of finishing the session).

I’m still a little confused as to why there is a “Precool/Heating” button on the charge screen that one would think is to precondition the battery before charging, but actually pre-cools the cabin. Why is it inside the vehicle then?

All that said, the Cross Turismo is quite frankly an impressive machine that has the added bonus of ultra-fast charging (although it has been knocked off its perch as the fastest charging EV in the country with the introduction of the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Kia EV6).

As Australia’s most expensive electric vehicle it is not hard to understand why those with the budget would be enticed to go electric given half the chance. And as the sales data for Porsche shows, many already have.

Bridie Schmidt is associate editor for The Driven, sister site of Renew Economy. She has been writing about electric vehicles since 2018, and has a keen interest in the role that zero-emissions transport has to play in sustainability. She has participated in podcasts such as Download This Show with Marc Fennell and Shirtloads of Science with Karl Kruszelnicki and is co-organiser of the Northern Rivers Electric Vehicle Forum. Bridie also owns a Tesla Model 3 and has it available for hire on evee.com.au.

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