Porsche Taycan vs. Tesla Model S: Luxury EVs compared

If you want a fast, big, beautiful, luxurious EV right now, you have two choices. There's the ubiquitous, ever evolving Tesla Model S and a fresh new Porsche Taycan. I spent a lot of time in both of these cars. And so, you know what question comes next, which is best? Let's talk about range and charging, acceleration, handling interior and extra design. Plus price and value and then we'll see if we can't find ourselves a winner. We're going to start with a topic that, for many EV followers, will be the beginning and the end of this discussion. And that's a damn shame because if you're only buying an EV based on range, you're kinda missing out. Out. And as someone who's driven dozens of Evie ease and who actually owns one, as far as I'm concerned, 200 miles of range is plenty. And that's good news for Porsche because that's almost exactly what the Taycan 4S can deliver 203 miles per the EPA official rating, the quicker Taycan Turbo does 201 and the quickest the Turbo S does 192, but by all accounts, those ratings are very very conservative. Our own range test show 253 miles from the tie con turbo. And over at auto blog, they easily got over 300 miles from an icon for us. Why the massive discrepancy between the EPA rating and the real world? That's been a topic of much speculation and I look forward to reading your best Conspiracy theories down in the comments. Seriously get out those tinfoil hats and have at it. But it's all a bit academic because regardless of how optimistic you are with the icon and how much hypermiling you do, the Tesla Model S long range pluses EPA rating of 391 miles blows it away. That is a truly remarkable figure that Tesla also wins out when it comes to charging. Porsche installed high speed chargers at all of his dealerships and has partnered with electrify America to provide easy access to the approximately 1700 charges. At 350 stations in the US. While those charges are almost all significantly faster than Tesla superchargers, Tesla has numbers on its side with over 16,000 superchargers at nearly 1900 locations in North America. There's one final cover yard if you're buying either of these cars, you probably own your own home which means the vast, vast majority of the time you'll be charging at that home. So portable charge availability isn't as big a deal as most people make it out to be. However, that doesn't stop this category from For being a big win for the Tesla. Suffice to say that these are two of the quickest cars on the road, quicker than most supercars, quicker than most race cars, quicker than just about anything else I've ever had the privilege of driving, and I've been lucky to drive a lot of stuff. And the beautiful thing about these cars is that they do it completely silently and without any complex entering of launch codes or enabling hidden options and menus. Just put your foot down and they absolutely rocket forward. The top shelf icon Turbo S will officially sprint 260 in 2.6 seconds. The Motor Trend and plenty of others have clocked in at 2.4. That for the record is the same as a $3 million Bugatti Sharon, when they tie icon launched that figure made it one 10th quicker than it has a lot less performance. However, with a new Cheetah stance upgrade the Model S performance now goes to 60 in just 2.3 seconds, take that Porsche. Does a 10th of a second matter in the real world? No, either of these cars will embarrass just about anything else on the road while doing a very fine job of terrifying your passengers. Insuring that trunk full of groceries is in a proper state by the time you get home. Still. Since we have to pick a winner point to the Model S by hair. For the revision of the Model S released in 2019, Tesla made a host of subtle changes that were minor in isolation. But combined together with a hefty batch of new control software, the result was a car that not only offered significantly more range and acceleration than before, but also a better handling and better ride quality and lower rolling resistance. To be frank, I was pretty blown away by how big a difference those little tweaks made when I first drove the new car last summer. To improve handling and ride quality in one shot is no mean feat. So an impressive update for sure, but still not enough to outpace the Porsche. The Tesla may be quicker by a hair but the Porsche is far, in a way, the more rewarding to drive on a good road. The ti-con just responds that much better, heighting it's predacious weight with more skill and doing a much better job of staying settled when the asphalt gets rough That's doubly impressive, because the Porsche, actually weighs more, 5100 pounds, compared to the roughly 4900 pounds, for a dual motor Model S. When push the Model S, just seems to wallow a bit in the corners, while the rear steering of that icon works wonders. It dives, so aggressively into the terms that you'll probably find yourself unwinding the wheel, before you get to your first few apex. Point to Porsche here. As I said in my review of the most recent long range model S, it's a good thing the original car was so pretty because it's basically still here. Sure 2016 nip and tuck made the Tesla a lot sharper, but this thing just looks plain old at this point both inside and out. That's a real problem in the luxury performance sedan segment where freshness is key. No problem there with a tie icon. Sure we've been looking at some flavor of it since it was the mission II concept back in 2015. But damn, that car made everybody's jaw drop and their production car isn't far off. It's a clean and fresh design. borrowing a few cues from the Panamera itself. Quick look are these days. But adding a lot more edge. The only shame there's no lagging like sport charisma trim, at least not yet. And what about interiors? Here the icon is miles better than what Tesla is offering. Sure I give Tesla credit for including features like dog mode and century mode. But when it comes to the fundamentals like quality materials and compelling design, the Porsche wins by a mile We're all tied up two points to two though that was a narrow win in the acceleration category for Tesla. So it's price that will crown our winner, and conclusively so the cheapest Porsche icon you can buy right now is the four s with an MSRP of about $104,000 plus delivery. For that you get an official though oddly conservative EPA rating of 203 miles and of zero to 60 time of 3.8 seconds. However, that's the price if you don't take any boxes. Being a Porsche that's gonna be awfully hard to do. The inner drive active safety suite costs not so sweet 30 $600 wallet Performance Package including rear steering and torque vectoring is a further 6400 A Base Model S Long Range Plus which will do 391 miles per the EPA and 0 to 60 in 3.7 seconds starts at $80,000. Other than some premium paint, interior and wheel choices and $1,000 for these still hopelessly optimistically named full self-driving capability upgrade. Which does give you auto lane changing in so many right now, there's not a lot to add. Take all the most expensive boxes and you're looking at $96,490 plus delivery. About $7000 less than the base Porsche, which at that price doesn't even have adaptive cruise. I won't compare the Model S performance to the Taycan Turbo or the Turbo S, because the financial rift just gets way, way wider. Suffice to say the Porsche is the more premium looking, and feeling, and hailing car. And it is priced accordingly. So which is the winner? Well, if budget were not a factor, I have a Taycan in my garage right now. But of course price is always a factor and when it comes to speed range and features, the Model S wins this fight. Eight years on, the Tesla still has legs. [BLANK_AUDIO]