When the 2020 Porsche Taycan first debuted as the Mission E concept, the company claimed the car would achieve up to 300 miles (480 km) of range. But today, the EPA announced its estimated range for the 2020 Porsche Taycan Turbo is just 201 miles (320 km), leading Porsche to go and do its own independent tests as damage control.
The U.S. government’s fuel economy site lists the Porsche Taycan Turbo’s range capacity at just 320 km—far shorter than the estimated 450 km range of the European WLTP testing standard for the same car.
This ranks the Taycan Turbo worse on range in the U.S. than every current Tesla model, the Chevy Bolt, Nissan Leaf, Audi E-Tron, and the Jaguar I-Pace. Nearly all of these vehicles feature a smaller battery than the Porsche’s 93.4 kWh pack.
While one could argue the Taycan pushes for sustainable, repeatable performance—something Tesla has had issues with despite its impressive numbers—and that priority may have hurt its long-range distance on a charge, that doesn’t excuse how bad this all looks.
Seemingly in anticipation of poor EPA figures, Porsche has already done independent testing to try and improve the Taycan Turbo’s reputation. Porsche got AMCI testing to determine its own range estimates in various simulated real-world environments. The result was an estimated range of 275 miles (442 km):
The city-based estimate was even better, posting an estimated range of 288 miles (460 km). The average indicated range, or what the car was reporting its range to be, for the city/highway mix was 269 miles (430 km), and 283 (455 km) for city only. You can read more about the parameters of the testing on AMCI’s website.
But still, 320km is the number Porsche has to put on the window sticker, and that is an abysmal knock on someone’s initial impression of the car. It leaves the Taycan Turbo, on paper, as one of the most expensive, lowest-range electric vehicles on the market with performance that’s still slightly behind Tesla’s top performer.
While most of us likely know by now that the EPA has extremely conservative range estimates for EVs, other automakers have figured out how to push past the 320 km barrier by now, though I’m sure, in time, the Taycan’s EPA figure will slowly improve as the company finds new ways of gaining efficiency, just like with the Bolt I-Pace range upgrades earlier this year.