Plug vs petrol: Porsche Macan EV faces BMW X3 M50, Audi SQ5

Sales of the electric version exceeded those of the petrol-fuelled version – as well as those of the 911 sports car. Not bad going, then, and quite contrary to what you might have heard.

But here’s the thing. The Macan Electric has given us road testers some mixed messages since it first arrived in the UK. When we road tested the Turbo Electric back in February, we expressed significant reservations about its busy, stiff-legged ride and at times unintuitive handling.

Later, our full test of the single-motor Macan Electric recorded much more positive impressions, along with compliments for a car with more of the dynamic roundedness you would expect of a premium sporting SUV.

So what about the mid-range, dual-motor, potential sweet spot: the Macan 4S Electric? Is it more like a single-motor car with superpowers, or is it more akin to a Turbo, with similar ride and handling shortcomings?

And, leaving all the benefit-in-kind and carbon emissions baggage to one side, does it stand up as a £77,000 everyday-use Porsche when you bring a couple of more traditionally powered alternatives – say, a BMW X3 M50 xDrive and an Audi SQ5 Sportback – along for comparison?

End of an era, new beginning

There’s less than a year to go until Porsche ceases production of the petrol-powered Macan. And now that we know that the car’s indirect ICE-powered replacement will have an all-new model identity, we also know that the future for the Macan is all-electric. And we’re looking at it.

The good news is that it’s still small. I have always liked that about this car. Even when the Macan first appeared in 2014, it was little for its class – and that told you, loud and clear, what this car’s dynamic priorities were.

It had lots and lots of imitators, but none more vividly demonstrated what could be gained by a more svelte and athletic SUV. All you had to do was drive one.

Now, as then, you only get hatchback-class passenger space in the rear of this car. Park the Macan Electric alongside a BMW X3 M50 xDrive and an Audi SQ5 Sportback, and you’ll see three quite different practicality offerings.

The Porsche is for an owner who knows he or she is  unlikely to carry adult passengers in the back very often or over any significant distance and perhaps only needs the space for younger children. The BMW, meanwhile, is for someone who expects quite different.

The Audi sits somewhere in between. As a 6ft 3in adult, I can sit happily enough in the back of the SQ5 Sportback without feeling as pinched and squeezed as I do in the Porsche, but the sense of space isn’t as generous as it is in the BMW.

Meanwhile, if carrying bulky loads is something you do on a regular basis, the X3’s much taller, squarer boot will be a lot more useful. Audi does, of course, make a regular, non-Sportback SQ5 should you need that bit more carrying space, so things aren’t exactly cut and dried here.

The cars provide quite differently for their drivers. If you want something higher-riding but which still feels couched and a bit sports car-like, the Macan ticks the box better than either rival.

You don’t lower yourself down into it, yet, given the straight-legged driving position and the height of the car’s beltline around you, you feel almost as if you must have.

The X3’s driving position feels broadly similar: quite straight-legged, with a high-sprouting steering column, so you could almost be in some ‘all-road’ saloon or estate. In contrast, the Audi is higher of hip point and lower of column, so more ‘sit up and beg’ and, to be honest, more ordinary.

We would all like our £75,000 sporting SUV to come with a touch of quality, wouldn’t we? Well, if the BMW is topping the order for space and practicality, it’s the Porsche that hits back on tactile quality.

There’s a true sense of maturity, elegance and understatement about the Macan Electric’s cabin and, in truth, neither the BMW nor the Audi has an answer to it.

The Macan’s control layout is similar to that of a Taycan, although not quite identical. The primary controls match up, from the overly diddly, fascia-mounted drive selector to the rotary drive mode selector inboard of the steering wheel rim.

It’s a familiar refrain, but the absence of regeneration paddles on the steering wheel is a curious omission. Simply put, electric cars need to take every avenue available that leads towards greater driver engagement and give you more than just two pedals and a steering rim as seams of interaction and control.

For those EVs with a sporting agenda, surely that goes double. Also, I miss the Taycan’s second driver-configurable ‘diamond’ button on the edge of the instrument screen.

While the pseudo-saloon gives you two of these within easy reach, each of which you can use to toggle battery regen on and off, deactivate a particular ADAS function or achieve a number of other genuinely useful things, the Macan gives only one.

For the overall refinement of its design, though, and for its convincing tactile quality, the Porsche’s interior beats the Audi’s and BMW’s by a clear margin. Inside, the X3 is like a Denis Villeneuve movie, with its neon-illuminated decorative features and science-fiction shapes.

If you like that progressive sort of streak in your everyday-use SUV, then fair enough. I think it might get a bit much in a daily driver, but even if it’s for you, parts of it – conspicuously plasticky interior door handles, for instance – will still look and feel cheap to you, I’d be willing to bet.

The Audi, meanwhile, is aiming for Ingolstadt’s familiar old touch, with luxury materials and restrained design, while mixing in so much domineering touchscreen technology and not really convincing at the task.

It has too much material gloss and razzle-dazzle and not enough genuine richness or tactile heft about it. It’s got a comfier seat and a more grown-up feel than the BMW, sure, but this is certainly not an Audi interior for the ages.

Power struggles

If this were the petrol-powered Macan, this is the bit where it would disappear for the hills with all of the credit. Few cars that I can bring to mind have enjoyed such a clear sense of dynamic superiority over their rivals as that one.

The Macan Electric is clearly intended to pick up the thread but, even here in dual-motor 4S form, the driving experience just doesn’t come together in the same way. It somehow doesn’t seem as convincing or amount to as much. In this electric guise, the Macan has as many conspicuous failings as apparent strengths.

You can’t ignore what it’s good at. The 4S Electric feels a lot quicker than either the BMW or Audi, even if the 0-62mph performance claim puts its advantage at only about half a second – because, well, electric motors. You can catapult it away from rest, flicking its torque on like a switch and making it respond and forge onwards so much more instantly.

And that makes it exciting, in a sort of physical, ‘net effect of outright force on your senses’ type of way. It is also supremely linear in just about any of the ways that it responds to your right foot.

But it’s notably less engaging than either the Audi or the BMW, which have power deliveries that build to a climax as their engines rev. That’s true even with the Macan’s imitation engine noise switched on. Regen paddles might help bridge that gap, but I don’t think they would close it.

The Audi feels like the slowest car here, and its turbo V6 isn’t quite as forthcoming as the BMW’s straight six. It prefers to aim for refinement and isolation, only really raising its voice at high crank speeds – although that change in character does make you willing to extend it from time to time.

The BMW’s engine, however, is the standout. It is torquey and responsive at accessible revs and very willing to work to the higher ranges, with plenty of outright potency and a slightly digitally enhanced but still genuine-sounding combustive charm and presence. It’s clearly a little bit special.

From a performance perspective, this is ‘point and shoot’ rather than ‘plan, invest, unleash and enjoy’. We have read it all before, but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Even so, I would still have given the Macan a very good chance of shading the BMW and Audi as a driver’s car in an aggregated sense – if only its ride and handling were as good as those of its predecessor. But, for various reasons, they just aren’t.

The Macan does feel smaller and narrower on the road than its rivals, which is a promising start. It steers well enough, although the more fluent, communicative wheel of the X3 shows how much genuine feedback the Macan is missing.

There’s an agility, balance and poise about what the Porsche does through tighter bends that feels like its dynamic calling card, and it belies the usual inertia that typically characterises an SUV.

But this calling card also costs the car a fair bit, primarily by way of ride comfort. The Macan 4S Electric rides as if its anti-roll bars were the thickness of scaffolding poles (and, unlike on the bigger Cayenne, PDCC active anti-roll bars aren’t offered).

So much lateral stiffness in the axles causes the body to fidget restlessly from side to side and the ride to decline to settle on a testing country road.

There’s also a slight coarseness apparent in the secondary ride, and our test car’s 22in alloy wheels conducted a lot of surface noise into the cabin, apparently via the stiff axle bushings and tyre sidewalls needed to make a 2.3-tonne car turn in so keenly.

You can’t really miss noticing any of this when there are dynamically talented rivals at hand. The Audi is a refinement specialist compared with the Porsche: it’s settled, isolated and pleasant, and while it doesn’t seek to approach the Macan’s outright agility, there’s just enough composure and cutting edge to the way it goes around a bend to keep you interested in what it’s doing – and what you’re doing while operating it.

The X3 is better still, though. It is tauter-feeling and better connected to the road surface in its body control than either opponent, but it is still more fluent and better settled than the Porsche over lumps and lumps. The BMW manages to convey that unmistakable sports saloon dynamic character.

And while it feels like the Porsche’s dynamic conjuring tricks, produced in part by its four-wheel steering and active air suspension systems, can become opaque if you drive the car hard enough, the X3’s sporting appeal manifests with less apparent sleight of hand. There’s more robustness and integrity to the way it goes down the road.

All that said, there isn’t a sporting SUV here as unambiguously superior as the old petrol-powered Macan once was. As it is, the Audi finishes third. Pleasant and easy to live with as it undoubtedly is, it falls behind by being too grown up and failing to commit hard enough to either sporting or traditional Audi priorities.

The Porsche beats it for cabin quality and interior design refinement and by doing some things exceptionally well on the road while performing conspicuously poorly at others.

But our winner is the BMW X3 M50 xDrive – even though its Blade Runner exterior design and cabin styling are both quite divisive. That aside, those who want a bit of soul, pace and athleticism along with space, versatility and refinement from their mid-sized premium-brand SUV should now look to Munich, and not Stuttgart, to best meet their requirements.

Should that amount to another Porsche profit warning? We would hope not – although it’s about as close as Autocar is likely to get. 

1st. BMW X3 M50 xDrive

A bit bright and garish in places but, to drive and enjoy driving, it delivers almost across the board. Lots of SUV practicality, too.

2nd. Porsche Macan 4S Electric

Lots of apparent class in its design and interior, and plenty of appeal about its SUV-coupé positioning, but a slightly mixed bag on the road.

3rd. Audi SQ5 Sportback

Slightly prosaic in design and restrained in character compared with these opponents. Lacking a little in trad Audi cabin appeal, too.