Porsche Taycan Turbo S is an electric four-door with ballistic performance

What is it?
What is it? It’s a pretty big deal, that’s what. The Taycan is Porsche’s first electric vehicle and the car that’s finally giving Tesla something to worry about. The German car maker reckons its American rival isn’t really a rival at all because they have a different ethos – but for now, they’re the only electric executive cars about. (The Taycan is considerably more expensive, though.)

It’s also a big deal because when Porsche tries something new it tends to succeed. When it launched the Cayenne, the idea of a premium sports car maker doing an SUV was madness. Now it’s the firm’s best-selling model.
So with the Taycan in the UK for the first time, we took the Turbo S – the top-spec, top performance version – on a mix of motorway miles and winding country roads to see if it has that special Porsche something, or that – hang on, what’s the German for ‘je ne sais quoi’?
What’s new?
This is not just Porsche’s first electric vehicle, it has been designed to be an electric vehicle from the ground up. So there’s no cramming of batteries and electric motors into engine bays; instead the powertrain has been integrated into the body to give a low and sleek silhouette, while...