Porsche's Electric Dream

Despite what the purists might think, the German automaker’s first electric car is every iota a ‘proper’ Porsche.

- Daryl Lee

The Taycan is Porsche’s first electric car and perhaps funnily enough, is the car that slays its last sacred cow for purists. Though those purists shouldn’t be all too surprised, since the sacrifice of those figurative holy bovines is something the manufacturer has been steadily doing for the past two decades.

Never mind too, the fact that slaying those sacred cows has allowed it to become supremely profitable, granting it the ability to embark on such projects as the 918 Spyder hypercar, three successive model generations of 911s each better and better-looking than the last, and of course, its all-conquering Le Mans race programme.

And just what are those sacred cows I’m referring to? Well, there was the release of the Cayenne SUV in the early 2000s, the subtle pushing of its (admittedly exceptional) dual-clutch gearboxes even on ‘enthusiast’ GT models, and now, the launch of its first car without an internal combustion engine.

Keen-eyed Porsche spotters will also note that the Taycan does away with the centrally mounted analogue rev counter, a racing-inspired feature that has been a constant on all Porsche road cars since time immemorial.

Now, this feature is a little easier to explain away, since while you technically can count revs on an electric motor, it’s difficult to do so in any meaningful way, since it spins up to nearly 20,000rpm. And also how revs climb and fall so quickly, it would look frankly ridiculous, not to mention seizure-inducing, what with the needle dancing about all over the place.