There were a lot of words spilled when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claimed the 2020 Porsche Taycan Turbo could only achieve an estimated range of just 201 miles (324 km), making it the least-efficient electric car on sale today. But it’s more powerful sibling, the Porsche Taycan Turbo S, is even worse.
The Porsche Taycan Turbo gets an estimated 324km with an average of 69 MPGe. According to fueleconomy.gov, the U.S. government’s website for, well, fuel economy, the EPA-estimated range for the Porsche Taycan Turbo S is just 192 miles. That means it only gets an average of 68 MPGe.
As electric vehicle efficiency goes, that’s not great. In fact, it’s now the least efficient electric car on sale, beating only the Turbo model.
Both cars share the same hardware—a 93.4 kWh battery pack, two motors and a two-speed transmission on the rear axle—but the Turbo S is capable of pushing it a little harder, achieving a max power output of 750 horsepower and 774 lb-ft compared to the Turbo’s max power output of 670 HP and 626 lb-ft of torque. It makes sense that you’d lose some efficiency, too.
For further comparison, the current Tesla Model S Performance model gets an EPA-estimated 348 miles (560km) of range with a similar-sized battery pack as the Taycan. That’s about 250km more than the Porsche.
The EPA’s estimates are typically fairly conservative. A third-party efficiency test from AMCI for the regular Taycan Turbo requested by Porsche (take it with a grain, etc.) claimed it was actually capable of closer to 275 miles (443km) on average, and AMCI’s test for the Taycan Turbo S actually came out to 278 (447 km):
While these numbers are closer to how the Taycan performed in the European WLTP efficiency testing, there are a lot of factors that can impact a vehicle’s efficiency and all of these numbers—EPA, WLTP, AMCI—are estimates and averages and your mileage will almost certainly vary.
We already covered why the regular Porsche Taycan Turbo is so energy inefficient (you can check that out here), so check that out if you’re curious why these numbers are so sorry.
But still. This car’s window sticker will have to read 309km, and compared to the competition, that’s unbelievably hard to swallow.