BeagleRott
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This is a description of what it was like for me to rent a Taycan for a day via Porsche Drive.
Will this be the longest post ever in TaycanForum? We'll see.
Signing up
Porsche Drive is a program which allows you to rent a car from Porsche by the day or month. To rent a car, you must download and use the Porsche Drive mobile app (iOS or Android) - there’s no website for this.
The Porsche Drive iOS app is a little clunky, but it gets the job done. You must create an account with a mobile phone number and email address, and provide photos of your driver’s license and auto insurance card. You must also provide a selfie. You enter where you’ll pick up the car, date, time of day, and when you’ll return it (date and time of day) and where. It appears that you can book no more than one month in advance. Once you’ve done that, you’re shown what vehicles are available. You can select only the model name, not the trim level or anything else. You cannot specify "I want to rent a Taycan; what dates are available?"
After I submitted my request, I saw the option to configure a secondary driver, which basically sends a text message to the secondary driver, asking them to download the Porsche Drive app and go through the signup / authentication process. I used this option, specifying my wife's phone number, and she slogged through downloading the app and filling out the application. However, I later got a text message from someone at Porsche Drive saying that you don't need to configure a secondary driver in order to have a second person drive the car. This begs the question of why the app has an option for a second driver.
I periodically checked the Porsche Drive app for my status. At first, the app showed a pending reservation with a cost of $335. Later, the app showed that reservation, plus a pending $2500 fee for "wear and tear". Later, the $2500 fee disappeared from the app without explanation. Four days after returning the car, the app was back to showing a $2500 pending fee for wear and tear.
I received several text messages from Porsche in the weeks between my signup and the pickup date, apprising me of the progress of my rental. For example, 5 days before the date, I got a text message from Porsche Drive saying that I'd been assigned a white 2023 Taycan. When I sent replies, I got answers back reasonably quickly but not immediately. My impression was that there was a human on the other end, using copy/paste for some of the content.
Pickup
We showed up on June 20, 2023 at the dealership we'd selected - Porsche North Scottsdale, AZ - and announced that we were there to pick up our Porsche Drive rental. Even though there were several salesmen standing there not doing anything, the receptionist made a phone call to someone in a back office. This led me to believe that Porsche Drive processing is done by a separate team.
While we were waiting for the Porsche Drive guy to arrive, we asked a salesman about the availability of the Cayenne E-Hybrid. "They're very hard to get. We don't have any right now," he said. "And we don't expect more than about a dozen all year." But when I asked about Taycans - expecting a similar response - he said something like "Oh, we've got scads of those. We can get all we want." I was quite surprised, since I thought I had seen only 5 on their website. (Checking their website a week later, I saw 9 new Taycans in stock.) From what I could tell (not certain), the Taycan we rented was not one of those listed for sale, meaning that they had even more new-ish Taycans than were listed on their website.
We gave Drive Guy the key to the car we had driven there, so they could park it in a secure lot out back. He said he'd put the key in a safe while we were driving the rental.
Our white 2023 Taycan had only 93 miles on the odometer, and the Drive guy told me that no customer had ever driven it. It definitely had that new car smell.
Prior to the rental, I had tried to find a Taycan owner's manual on-line, but failed. I downloaded Porsche's Good to know app, but found it had been disabled, and replaced by the My Porsche app. But the My Porsche app did not give me access to any manuals. When I asked the Drive guy how to get a copy of the manual, he said that the My Porsche app won't give its user access to a Porsche manual unless the user is actually a Porsche owner. And I was not allowed to link my copy of My Porsche to the car, because the car was linked to a special Porsche Drive user. The only way I could access the manual, said the Drive guy, was to use the Instructions app in the Porsche's PCM (touchscreen display). There was also a thin paper get-started guide in the glovebox.
The inability to use the My Porsche app with the rental Taycan was mildly disappointing, since I was then not getting the full experience. But I mostly wanted to drive the Taycan, not manipulate it from an app.
The Taycan was charged to 100% when I picked it up. I asked how much charge I should have in the vehicle when I returned it. Drive Guy didn't know, and had to call someone - at the Porsche Drive center in Atlanta, I think. The answer turned out to be 50%.
Drive Guy informed me that, notwithstanding the fact that new Taycans come with 3 years of free charging nowadays, this rental did not come with any free charging. My plan was to drive home (about 111 miles) and return the next day; the total trip distance would be dangerously close to the maximum range of the car. Fortunately for me, my home city had had its first DC fast charger installed quite recently. But neither Drive Guy nor I could find it in the Taycan's nav system. He ended up finding the address of the charger via an app on his phone, and typing the address into the Taycan. One disadvantage of this approach vs. using the built-in database of chargers is that the Taycan didn't know that it was traveling to a charger, and therefore was not going to precondition the battery as we approached.
Having watched quite a few YouTube videos about the Taycan, I didn't need a great deal of instruction on the basics. Nevertheless, we did cover some details of how to operate the PCM. As far as I could tell, the only thing that Drive Guy got wrong was that he said the Recuperation setting also controlled whether regen occurred when you used the brakes.
When I asked them what options this car had, they printed out a list of the build:
The tires, by the way, were Pirelli Cinturato P7 size 245/45R20.
While we fiddled with the PCM with the car in Park, the message "High-voltage system enabled" appeared frequently, accompanied by urgent beeping, and interrupting whatever we were trying to do. Drive Guy said that the car normally runs the PCM from the 12-volt battery when in Park, but switches to the high-voltage battery when it fears that the 12-volt battery is being overly drained. This was quite annoying, and continued to happen throughout our rental - though the interval between warnings may have increased. It's possible that the 12-volt battery on this car was unusually discharged; it's hard to believe that all Taycans behave this way. At any rate, this message occurred only when we were in Park.
Drive Guy took a video of the exterior of the car, to record its pre-rental condition. Though it was a 24-hour rental, he said that they weren't going to be sticklers about my returning the car in exactly 24 hours.
Before we drove off in the Taycan, Drive Guy appeared with a Porsche Drive-branded box that looked like a bakery donut box. Inside were several high-end promotional Porsche Drive-branded gifts. I won't spoil the surprise for anyone else who may rent via the Porsche Drive program, but they were very nice gifts. Later I found the gifts on-line at various corporate gift websites, and it looks as if the branded versions of the gifts may have cost Porsche about $80 (in large quantities), and the unbranded versions would probably cost at least as much for a consumer in quantity 1. Surprisingly generous for a one-day car rental.
Driving
Having never driven a high-performance car before (my 1974 Mustang II Mach I doesn't count), I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I feared - based partially on a review comparing the Taycan to the Audi e-tron GT - that the ride would be stiff and harsh. But this was not the case. In fact, the first half day, the ride seemed smoother than that of my 2007 Prius, which is pretty nice on a long drive. By the second half day, I was giving the Prius the edge for road comfort, but not by much.
Based on numerous video reviews of the Taycan with launch control - in which they urge you to press your head against the headrest before mashing the accelerator - I expected the Taycan's acceleration to be neck-snapping. It wasn't. Admittedly, this was the base (RWD) model, without Sports Chrono, and usually in Normal rather than Sport mode. But the acceleration, while better than that of any other car I've driven (which ain't say'n much), was not life-changing. It was plenty fast enough for my purposes, so I wasn't really disappointed.
Nevertheless, the forte of this particular Taycan seemed to be lower speeds. We didn't get much of a chance to see how fast the car would go, due to traffic and twisty roads. But on one occasion, my wife - more of a speed demon than I - decided to crank it up. Once she got up to 100 mph, the speed crept up only slowly, and she maxed out at only 105 mph before having to back off due to an upcoming curve. This low maximum speed was surprising. However, we can't conclude much from this, because we were able to try it only once.
Another surprise was the lack of sensation of speed. I expected that driving in the relatively low-slung car would feel like a bat out of hell, due to the seating position close to the road. But the car got up to faster-than-speed-limit velocity so smoothly and quietly that I often looked at the speedometer and exclaimed "Are we really going that fast?". I even briefly considered the possibility that the speedometer might be in km/h rather than mph mode (which was not the case).
Rare for an electric car, the Taycan has a two-speed transmission, supposedly shifting from first gear to second around 60 mph. But I never noticed the shift, even though we definitely made that speed transition many times. I guess the shift must be quite smooth.
Steering was great: tight, but I did not feel that I needed to constantly provide driver input in order to cruise down the road. I personally could have done without the large bulges at the 10 and 2 o'clock positions on the steering wheel, but that's just a personal preference.
Rear visibility was poor, but forward visibility was surprisingly good, even for my 5'3" wife.
This Taycan was equipped with the heads-up display. This was a frill that I had never considered speccing out on my fantasy Taycan build - but it was unexpectedly useful. When the traffic is busy, it really is nice not having to take your eyes off the road to check speed or glance at the upcoming turn from the navigation system. Even though we were driving at midday on the longest day of the year in sunny Arizona, the heads-up display was bright enough to be easily visible at all times. However, I found that I had to slouch down in my seat in order to see the top part of the display (and I'm only 5'8"). I don't understand the physics of how the HUD could be partly hidden while being unobscured right in front of me. I could probably have lowered the seat enough to see the HUD in its entirety, but I preferred the seat position where it was.
Comfort and physical design
My short wife found the headrests to be too high. Her head fell awkwardly between the top of the seat and the bottom of the headrest. I didn't have an opinion on the headrests, because I never let my head touch a headrest on any car.
The panoramic roof was tinted, but not enough to keep the sun from beating down on my head. Eventually I noticed the top of my head getting hot. Since there was no way to cover up the roof, I had to put on a hat. This was annoying, especially since the front seat occupants don't get any benefit from the panoramic roof - you can't see out of it from the front seat. If I were to buy a Taycan, I would either get one without the panoramic roof, or if not possible (some models have it standard), I'd get the Variable Light Control option.
With Electric Sport Sound turned off, the electric motors emitted a subtle but noticeable sound at highway speeds. Turning on Electric Sport Sound made no difference at those speeds. However, at slow speeds Electric Sport Sound was annoyingly loud. My conclusion: there is no reason to order Electric Sport Sound.
It was very tempting to try to close the car doors by pressing on the windows. This would have been a bad idea, due to the fragility resulting from the lack of window frames. Fortunately, we were able to resist the temptation to slam the doors using the windows.
PCM and non-driving features
Connecting my iPhone to the car via CarPlay was pretty easy. The results were a little odd, though. When I started the car, it usually started playing the most recent song on the phone, even though I had not been playing a song when the car had been shut off. This was an annoying glitch.
The Instructions app containing the manual was at the bottom of the scrolling PCM. This meant that in order to run it, I had to scroll the PCM, and scrolling that touchscreen wasn't very easy. However, if I only wanted help on the function currently being displayed on the PCM, I could touch a virtual button at the mid center of the lower display. Touching the three dots at the lower right of the main PCM did something similar or identical. This was useful.
Surprisingly, there was a News app. Presumably the app gets its news feed from the car's built-in LTE cellular connection.
The Taycan had its own navigation system, so I didn't have to rely on CarPlay. The default view was a pseudo 3D view from a 45 degree angle. I found that I could tilt the map view by dragging on the PCM with two fingers, to make it a birds-eye view. This is more similar to other nav systems, and more to my liking.
The car did not seem to have a traditional trip odometer. As I recall, there was an absolute odometer, a trip odometer since the last charge, and a trip odometer since starting the car. This meant that in order to calculate how far I drove the rental car, I had to record the starting and ending odometer readings, and subtract.
There were three different display areas on the driver's dashboard. Each area had certain widgets (speedometer, map, current power consumption, etc.) that could be shown. However, each given widget could be displayed only on a single given display area. This meant that you couldn't display arbitrary combinations of widgets. For example, if the map could be displayed only on area 2 and current power consumption could be displayed only on area 2 (not sure whether that example is accurate), then you could never have the map and the current power consumption widget showing at the same time. That was an unnecessary limitation.
Also, the PCM was somewhat sluggish, though not unusably so. Overall, I got the impression that the various displays could have been done better.
Charging
My first charging experience took place at a brand-new 350 kW Electrify America station near my house, 111 miles into the trip. Since the Taycan didn't know that our destination was a charger, I used the PCM to manually start preconditioning the battery about 25 minutes before we arrived. In hindsight, I believe this was unnecessary, as I think preconditioning only heats the battery, and the battery was likely already warm enough.
I arrived with a 56% state-of-charge. 111 miles / (1.00-0.56) = a range of 252 files (with the equipped Performance Battery Plus), not factoring in the 2200 foot gain in elevation during that part of the trip.
By good fortune, Electrify America was giving complimentary charging sessions on that charger that day. So I hooked the extremely thick cable to the DC charging dock on the passenger side and charging started right away, with no payment hassles. Disappointingly, the rate was only about 109 kW. I charged a total of 24.2 kWh, from 56% to 80% in 13 minutes, which would have cost $10.55 if it hadn't been free.
At home, I decided to try charging in my garage as an exercise. In a cubby under the trunk was a Porsche mobile charger with two removable 18" connectors, one each for 120V and 240V. There were also other objects, possibly related to the charger, which I did not recognize and did not use. I had only a standard 120V outlet handy, so I used that one. I couldn't find any instructions, so I just plugged one end of the charging apparatus into the wall plug and the other into the Taycan. The mobile charger with cord weighed about 7 lbs. Since my garage outlet was about 3.5 feet above the floor, and the adapter connector was a short 18", I could not rest the mobile charger on the floor. And I was reluctant to let the 7 lb box dangle from the outlet. So I moved a tall cardboard box next to the outlet and rested the 12x4x3" charger on the box.
A display on the charger lit up with the text "50%", and according to the display in the car, the Taycan began charging at 0.6 kW. 600 watts seemed really slow even for a 120V outlet, but I couldn't figure out how to increase the rate. The charger had only a single control: a button that didn't seem to do anything. And the PCM didn't seem to have any relevant features. The somewhat limited manual available via the PCM's Instructions app had nothing to say on the matter.
So I just let the car slowly charge overnight. I checked the mobile charger a few times and it was warm, but not alarmingly so. During charging, the Taycan made a fairly loud growling sound, making it sound as if it was working hard. It was rather amusing given the slow rate of charge. In 12 hours the charge went from 79% to 85%, with the estimated range going from 193 miles to 207 miles.
A few days later, I was coincidentally playing with a Kia plug-in hybrid and its charger. Although the Kia charger was clearly not the same unit as the Taycan mobile charger, it shared two characteristics with the Taycan charger: it would charge the car only at 0.6 kW, and it had only one control, a button which didn't seem to do anything useful. After furious Googling, I finally found a posting on a Kia forum which said that you could control the Kia's rate of charge by pressing and holding the charger's button for several seconds. That way, I was able to get the Kia to charge at 1.2 kW. I suspect that the Taycan charger's button does something similar if you hold it down, and that the Taycan could also have been gotten to charge at 1.2 kW.
My final charging experience was in a Walmart parking lot on the way back to the dealership. Again I was not able to navigate to this charger by searching for chargers on the PCM, because the charger search function seemed to show only chargers within about 60 miles. But there's a good chance that I missed something about the search-for-chargers feature of the nav system.
The Walmart's Electrify America station was also rated at 350 kW, but it would charge the Taycan only at about 100 kW. I had already downloaded and set up the Electrify America app on my phone, so theoretically all I had to do was hold my iPhone up to the pad on the charger. In practice, it took several tries, because the charging station was slow to recognize the phone. Also, the phone's screen was tough to see in the bright light.
I charged for 5 minutes, from 58% to 67%, being charged $4.19 for 8.6 kWh. I stopped the charging process by pressing a button on the Electrify America charger. When I pressed on the car’s charge port button, it took awhile before the car would allow me to remove the charger.
Overall, this final charging experience went smoothly. The Taycan's car alarm did go off twice right after charging; I had to stop it with the key fob. Whether this had anything to do with the charging process, I don't know. The alarm never went off any other time during the 24 hours that I had the car.
After returning the car, I did some calculations to guesstimate the maximum range based on my driving style and conditions. State-of-charge numbers reported by the car are, I believe, very approximate, so I don't want to put too much stock in these calculations. But here they are:
I drove 229 miles. I charged the car a total of 40%, plus I returned it at 59%, meaning the dealership had to charge it another 41% to get it back to the 100% at which it was when I got it. This meant that the car was charged a total of 81% to go 229 miles. 229/0.81 = 282 miles predicted range from 0 to 100%. Remember, this is the RWD with the larger battery.
Return
We parked the Taycan at the dealership, went inside, and announced to the receptionist that we were returning a Porsche Drive rental. She asked for the key, and said we were free to go. This seemed too easy, and at any rate, we needed the key to our own car. When we pointed that out, she called someone, and we were directed to wait in the waiting area while the car was inspected. The waiting area was OK, but not as nice as that of the Toyota dealership where I bought the Prius.
Once the inspection was complete, we received the unexpected news that they would not charge us for the extra miles (only the first 200 miles/day are included in the cost of the rental). My wife asked for an itemized receipt, but they just said that one would appear in the Porsche Drive app.
Later, it turned out that we were billed $398.15, a puzzling amount. Even assuming that they did charge us for the extra 29 miles, factoring in the base $335 rental fee, $1/mile over 200 miles, and state, county, and city sales tax, the amount should have been $393.30. In fact, according to my calculations, there was no number of extra miles that we could have driven that would result in the bill being $398.15. I asked for an explanation via the contact page on the Porsche Drive website, and they did get back to me - but without much useful information. They did confirm that the mysterious "Upcoming charge" of $2500 is an authorization hold that is meant to be released when the car is returned in good condition. As of a week after the rental, the $2500 still appears in the Porsche Drive app, and on our credit card. If it doesn't go away in a few weeks, we'll bug them again.
No one at any point gave us a sales pitch or even said anything even obliquely related to selling us a car.
Conclusion
Although I felt that the Taycan's cockpit was less than state-of-the-art, and the Porsche Drive program disorganized, let's face it: people don't flock to Porsche to play with electronics and to enjoy efficient bureaucracy. They come to Porsche for a good driving experience, and the Taycan certainly delivered on that.
Will this be the longest post ever in TaycanForum? We'll see.
Signing up
Porsche Drive is a program which allows you to rent a car from Porsche by the day or month. To rent a car, you must download and use the Porsche Drive mobile app (iOS or Android) - there’s no website for this.
The Porsche Drive iOS app is a little clunky, but it gets the job done. You must create an account with a mobile phone number and email address, and provide photos of your driver’s license and auto insurance card. You must also provide a selfie. You enter where you’ll pick up the car, date, time of day, and when you’ll return it (date and time of day) and where. It appears that you can book no more than one month in advance. Once you’ve done that, you’re shown what vehicles are available. You can select only the model name, not the trim level or anything else. You cannot specify "I want to rent a Taycan; what dates are available?"
After I submitted my request, I saw the option to configure a secondary driver, which basically sends a text message to the secondary driver, asking them to download the Porsche Drive app and go through the signup / authentication process. I used this option, specifying my wife's phone number, and she slogged through downloading the app and filling out the application. However, I later got a text message from someone at Porsche Drive saying that you don't need to configure a secondary driver in order to have a second person drive the car. This begs the question of why the app has an option for a second driver.
I periodically checked the Porsche Drive app for my status. At first, the app showed a pending reservation with a cost of $335. Later, the app showed that reservation, plus a pending $2500 fee for "wear and tear". Later, the $2500 fee disappeared from the app without explanation. Four days after returning the car, the app was back to showing a $2500 pending fee for wear and tear.
I received several text messages from Porsche in the weeks between my signup and the pickup date, apprising me of the progress of my rental. For example, 5 days before the date, I got a text message from Porsche Drive saying that I'd been assigned a white 2023 Taycan. When I sent replies, I got answers back reasonably quickly but not immediately. My impression was that there was a human on the other end, using copy/paste for some of the content.
Pickup
We showed up on June 20, 2023 at the dealership we'd selected - Porsche North Scottsdale, AZ - and announced that we were there to pick up our Porsche Drive rental. Even though there were several salesmen standing there not doing anything, the receptionist made a phone call to someone in a back office. This led me to believe that Porsche Drive processing is done by a separate team.
While we were waiting for the Porsche Drive guy to arrive, we asked a salesman about the availability of the Cayenne E-Hybrid. "They're very hard to get. We don't have any right now," he said. "And we don't expect more than about a dozen all year." But when I asked about Taycans - expecting a similar response - he said something like "Oh, we've got scads of those. We can get all we want." I was quite surprised, since I thought I had seen only 5 on their website. (Checking their website a week later, I saw 9 new Taycans in stock.) From what I could tell (not certain), the Taycan we rented was not one of those listed for sale, meaning that they had even more new-ish Taycans than were listed on their website.
We gave Drive Guy the key to the car we had driven there, so they could park it in a secure lot out back. He said he'd put the key in a safe while we were driving the rental.
Our white 2023 Taycan had only 93 miles on the odometer, and the Drive guy told me that no customer had ever driven it. It definitely had that new car smell.
Prior to the rental, I had tried to find a Taycan owner's manual on-line, but failed. I downloaded Porsche's Good to know app, but found it had been disabled, and replaced by the My Porsche app. But the My Porsche app did not give me access to any manuals. When I asked the Drive guy how to get a copy of the manual, he said that the My Porsche app won't give its user access to a Porsche manual unless the user is actually a Porsche owner. And I was not allowed to link my copy of My Porsche to the car, because the car was linked to a special Porsche Drive user. The only way I could access the manual, said the Drive guy, was to use the Instructions app in the Porsche's PCM (touchscreen display). There was also a thin paper get-started guide in the glovebox.
The inability to use the My Porsche app with the rental Taycan was mildly disappointing, since I was then not getting the full experience. But I mostly wanted to drive the Taycan, not manipulate it from an app.
The Taycan was charged to 100% when I picked it up. I asked how much charge I should have in the vehicle when I returned it. Drive Guy didn't know, and had to call someone - at the Porsche Drive center in Atlanta, I think. The answer turned out to be 50%.
Drive Guy informed me that, notwithstanding the fact that new Taycans come with 3 years of free charging nowadays, this rental did not come with any free charging. My plan was to drive home (about 111 miles) and return the next day; the total trip distance would be dangerously close to the maximum range of the car. Fortunately for me, my home city had had its first DC fast charger installed quite recently. But neither Drive Guy nor I could find it in the Taycan's nav system. He ended up finding the address of the charger via an app on his phone, and typing the address into the Taycan. One disadvantage of this approach vs. using the built-in database of chargers is that the Taycan didn't know that it was traveling to a charger, and therefore was not going to precondition the battery as we approached.
Having watched quite a few YouTube videos about the Taycan, I didn't need a great deal of instruction on the basics. Nevertheless, we did cover some details of how to operate the PCM. As far as I could tell, the only thing that Drive Guy got wrong was that he said the Recuperation setting also controlled whether regen occurred when you used the brakes.
When I asked them what options this car had, they printed out a list of the build:
The tires, by the way, were Pirelli Cinturato P7 size 245/45R20.
While we fiddled with the PCM with the car in Park, the message "High-voltage system enabled" appeared frequently, accompanied by urgent beeping, and interrupting whatever we were trying to do. Drive Guy said that the car normally runs the PCM from the 12-volt battery when in Park, but switches to the high-voltage battery when it fears that the 12-volt battery is being overly drained. This was quite annoying, and continued to happen throughout our rental - though the interval between warnings may have increased. It's possible that the 12-volt battery on this car was unusually discharged; it's hard to believe that all Taycans behave this way. At any rate, this message occurred only when we were in Park.
Drive Guy took a video of the exterior of the car, to record its pre-rental condition. Though it was a 24-hour rental, he said that they weren't going to be sticklers about my returning the car in exactly 24 hours.
Before we drove off in the Taycan, Drive Guy appeared with a Porsche Drive-branded box that looked like a bakery donut box. Inside were several high-end promotional Porsche Drive-branded gifts. I won't spoil the surprise for anyone else who may rent via the Porsche Drive program, but they were very nice gifts. Later I found the gifts on-line at various corporate gift websites, and it looks as if the branded versions of the gifts may have cost Porsche about $80 (in large quantities), and the unbranded versions would probably cost at least as much for a consumer in quantity 1. Surprisingly generous for a one-day car rental.
Driving
Having never driven a high-performance car before (my 1974 Mustang II Mach I doesn't count), I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I feared - based partially on a review comparing the Taycan to the Audi e-tron GT - that the ride would be stiff and harsh. But this was not the case. In fact, the first half day, the ride seemed smoother than that of my 2007 Prius, which is pretty nice on a long drive. By the second half day, I was giving the Prius the edge for road comfort, but not by much.
Based on numerous video reviews of the Taycan with launch control - in which they urge you to press your head against the headrest before mashing the accelerator - I expected the Taycan's acceleration to be neck-snapping. It wasn't. Admittedly, this was the base (RWD) model, without Sports Chrono, and usually in Normal rather than Sport mode. But the acceleration, while better than that of any other car I've driven (which ain't say'n much), was not life-changing. It was plenty fast enough for my purposes, so I wasn't really disappointed.
Nevertheless, the forte of this particular Taycan seemed to be lower speeds. We didn't get much of a chance to see how fast the car would go, due to traffic and twisty roads. But on one occasion, my wife - more of a speed demon than I - decided to crank it up. Once she got up to 100 mph, the speed crept up only slowly, and she maxed out at only 105 mph before having to back off due to an upcoming curve. This low maximum speed was surprising. However, we can't conclude much from this, because we were able to try it only once.
Another surprise was the lack of sensation of speed. I expected that driving in the relatively low-slung car would feel like a bat out of hell, due to the seating position close to the road. But the car got up to faster-than-speed-limit velocity so smoothly and quietly that I often looked at the speedometer and exclaimed "Are we really going that fast?". I even briefly considered the possibility that the speedometer might be in km/h rather than mph mode (which was not the case).
Rare for an electric car, the Taycan has a two-speed transmission, supposedly shifting from first gear to second around 60 mph. But I never noticed the shift, even though we definitely made that speed transition many times. I guess the shift must be quite smooth.
Steering was great: tight, but I did not feel that I needed to constantly provide driver input in order to cruise down the road. I personally could have done without the large bulges at the 10 and 2 o'clock positions on the steering wheel, but that's just a personal preference.
Rear visibility was poor, but forward visibility was surprisingly good, even for my 5'3" wife.
This Taycan was equipped with the heads-up display. This was a frill that I had never considered speccing out on my fantasy Taycan build - but it was unexpectedly useful. When the traffic is busy, it really is nice not having to take your eyes off the road to check speed or glance at the upcoming turn from the navigation system. Even though we were driving at midday on the longest day of the year in sunny Arizona, the heads-up display was bright enough to be easily visible at all times. However, I found that I had to slouch down in my seat in order to see the top part of the display (and I'm only 5'8"). I don't understand the physics of how the HUD could be partly hidden while being unobscured right in front of me. I could probably have lowered the seat enough to see the HUD in its entirety, but I preferred the seat position where it was.
Comfort and physical design
My short wife found the headrests to be too high. Her head fell awkwardly between the top of the seat and the bottom of the headrest. I didn't have an opinion on the headrests, because I never let my head touch a headrest on any car.
The panoramic roof was tinted, but not enough to keep the sun from beating down on my head. Eventually I noticed the top of my head getting hot. Since there was no way to cover up the roof, I had to put on a hat. This was annoying, especially since the front seat occupants don't get any benefit from the panoramic roof - you can't see out of it from the front seat. If I were to buy a Taycan, I would either get one without the panoramic roof, or if not possible (some models have it standard), I'd get the Variable Light Control option.
With Electric Sport Sound turned off, the electric motors emitted a subtle but noticeable sound at highway speeds. Turning on Electric Sport Sound made no difference at those speeds. However, at slow speeds Electric Sport Sound was annoyingly loud. My conclusion: there is no reason to order Electric Sport Sound.
It was very tempting to try to close the car doors by pressing on the windows. This would have been a bad idea, due to the fragility resulting from the lack of window frames. Fortunately, we were able to resist the temptation to slam the doors using the windows.
PCM and non-driving features
Connecting my iPhone to the car via CarPlay was pretty easy. The results were a little odd, though. When I started the car, it usually started playing the most recent song on the phone, even though I had not been playing a song when the car had been shut off. This was an annoying glitch.
The Instructions app containing the manual was at the bottom of the scrolling PCM. This meant that in order to run it, I had to scroll the PCM, and scrolling that touchscreen wasn't very easy. However, if I only wanted help on the function currently being displayed on the PCM, I could touch a virtual button at the mid center of the lower display. Touching the three dots at the lower right of the main PCM did something similar or identical. This was useful.
Surprisingly, there was a News app. Presumably the app gets its news feed from the car's built-in LTE cellular connection.
The Taycan had its own navigation system, so I didn't have to rely on CarPlay. The default view was a pseudo 3D view from a 45 degree angle. I found that I could tilt the map view by dragging on the PCM with two fingers, to make it a birds-eye view. This is more similar to other nav systems, and more to my liking.
The car did not seem to have a traditional trip odometer. As I recall, there was an absolute odometer, a trip odometer since the last charge, and a trip odometer since starting the car. This meant that in order to calculate how far I drove the rental car, I had to record the starting and ending odometer readings, and subtract.
There were three different display areas on the driver's dashboard. Each area had certain widgets (speedometer, map, current power consumption, etc.) that could be shown. However, each given widget could be displayed only on a single given display area. This meant that you couldn't display arbitrary combinations of widgets. For example, if the map could be displayed only on area 2 and current power consumption could be displayed only on area 2 (not sure whether that example is accurate), then you could never have the map and the current power consumption widget showing at the same time. That was an unnecessary limitation.
Also, the PCM was somewhat sluggish, though not unusably so. Overall, I got the impression that the various displays could have been done better.
Charging
My first charging experience took place at a brand-new 350 kW Electrify America station near my house, 111 miles into the trip. Since the Taycan didn't know that our destination was a charger, I used the PCM to manually start preconditioning the battery about 25 minutes before we arrived. In hindsight, I believe this was unnecessary, as I think preconditioning only heats the battery, and the battery was likely already warm enough.
I arrived with a 56% state-of-charge. 111 miles / (1.00-0.56) = a range of 252 files (with the equipped Performance Battery Plus), not factoring in the 2200 foot gain in elevation during that part of the trip.
By good fortune, Electrify America was giving complimentary charging sessions on that charger that day. So I hooked the extremely thick cable to the DC charging dock on the passenger side and charging started right away, with no payment hassles. Disappointingly, the rate was only about 109 kW. I charged a total of 24.2 kWh, from 56% to 80% in 13 minutes, which would have cost $10.55 if it hadn't been free.
At home, I decided to try charging in my garage as an exercise. In a cubby under the trunk was a Porsche mobile charger with two removable 18" connectors, one each for 120V and 240V. There were also other objects, possibly related to the charger, which I did not recognize and did not use. I had only a standard 120V outlet handy, so I used that one. I couldn't find any instructions, so I just plugged one end of the charging apparatus into the wall plug and the other into the Taycan. The mobile charger with cord weighed about 7 lbs. Since my garage outlet was about 3.5 feet above the floor, and the adapter connector was a short 18", I could not rest the mobile charger on the floor. And I was reluctant to let the 7 lb box dangle from the outlet. So I moved a tall cardboard box next to the outlet and rested the 12x4x3" charger on the box.
A display on the charger lit up with the text "50%", and according to the display in the car, the Taycan began charging at 0.6 kW. 600 watts seemed really slow even for a 120V outlet, but I couldn't figure out how to increase the rate. The charger had only a single control: a button that didn't seem to do anything. And the PCM didn't seem to have any relevant features. The somewhat limited manual available via the PCM's Instructions app had nothing to say on the matter.
So I just let the car slowly charge overnight. I checked the mobile charger a few times and it was warm, but not alarmingly so. During charging, the Taycan made a fairly loud growling sound, making it sound as if it was working hard. It was rather amusing given the slow rate of charge. In 12 hours the charge went from 79% to 85%, with the estimated range going from 193 miles to 207 miles.
A few days later, I was coincidentally playing with a Kia plug-in hybrid and its charger. Although the Kia charger was clearly not the same unit as the Taycan mobile charger, it shared two characteristics with the Taycan charger: it would charge the car only at 0.6 kW, and it had only one control, a button which didn't seem to do anything useful. After furious Googling, I finally found a posting on a Kia forum which said that you could control the Kia's rate of charge by pressing and holding the charger's button for several seconds. That way, I was able to get the Kia to charge at 1.2 kW. I suspect that the Taycan charger's button does something similar if you hold it down, and that the Taycan could also have been gotten to charge at 1.2 kW.
My final charging experience was in a Walmart parking lot on the way back to the dealership. Again I was not able to navigate to this charger by searching for chargers on the PCM, because the charger search function seemed to show only chargers within about 60 miles. But there's a good chance that I missed something about the search-for-chargers feature of the nav system.
The Walmart's Electrify America station was also rated at 350 kW, but it would charge the Taycan only at about 100 kW. I had already downloaded and set up the Electrify America app on my phone, so theoretically all I had to do was hold my iPhone up to the pad on the charger. In practice, it took several tries, because the charging station was slow to recognize the phone. Also, the phone's screen was tough to see in the bright light.
I charged for 5 minutes, from 58% to 67%, being charged $4.19 for 8.6 kWh. I stopped the charging process by pressing a button on the Electrify America charger. When I pressed on the car’s charge port button, it took awhile before the car would allow me to remove the charger.
Overall, this final charging experience went smoothly. The Taycan's car alarm did go off twice right after charging; I had to stop it with the key fob. Whether this had anything to do with the charging process, I don't know. The alarm never went off any other time during the 24 hours that I had the car.
After returning the car, I did some calculations to guesstimate the maximum range based on my driving style and conditions. State-of-charge numbers reported by the car are, I believe, very approximate, so I don't want to put too much stock in these calculations. But here they are:
I drove 229 miles. I charged the car a total of 40%, plus I returned it at 59%, meaning the dealership had to charge it another 41% to get it back to the 100% at which it was when I got it. This meant that the car was charged a total of 81% to go 229 miles. 229/0.81 = 282 miles predicted range from 0 to 100%. Remember, this is the RWD with the larger battery.
Return
We parked the Taycan at the dealership, went inside, and announced to the receptionist that we were returning a Porsche Drive rental. She asked for the key, and said we were free to go. This seemed too easy, and at any rate, we needed the key to our own car. When we pointed that out, she called someone, and we were directed to wait in the waiting area while the car was inspected. The waiting area was OK, but not as nice as that of the Toyota dealership where I bought the Prius.
Once the inspection was complete, we received the unexpected news that they would not charge us for the extra miles (only the first 200 miles/day are included in the cost of the rental). My wife asked for an itemized receipt, but they just said that one would appear in the Porsche Drive app.
Later, it turned out that we were billed $398.15, a puzzling amount. Even assuming that they did charge us for the extra 29 miles, factoring in the base $335 rental fee, $1/mile over 200 miles, and state, county, and city sales tax, the amount should have been $393.30. In fact, according to my calculations, there was no number of extra miles that we could have driven that would result in the bill being $398.15. I asked for an explanation via the contact page on the Porsche Drive website, and they did get back to me - but without much useful information. They did confirm that the mysterious "Upcoming charge" of $2500 is an authorization hold that is meant to be released when the car is returned in good condition. As of a week after the rental, the $2500 still appears in the Porsche Drive app, and on our credit card. If it doesn't go away in a few weeks, we'll bug them again.
No one at any point gave us a sales pitch or even said anything even obliquely related to selling us a car.
Conclusion
Although I felt that the Taycan's cockpit was less than state-of-the-art, and the Porsche Drive program disorganized, let's face it: people don't flock to Porsche to play with electronics and to enjoy efficient bureaucracy. They come to Porsche for a good driving experience, and the Taycan certainly delivered on that.
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) say the pano roof works fine for keeping the car cool, even in blistering sun. So really surprised you needed to wear a hat!?
