Porsche Cayenne Electric review

Stalwart luxury SUV turns electric for its next generation – with an astonishing peak output of 1140bhp

Chapter 1: Introduction
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Ah, the Porsche Cayenne. They should just rename it the Porsche Controversy and be done with it, shouldn’t they?

Back in 2002, the Cayenne arrived on a tsunami of scepticism from enthusiasts arguing that the sports SUV ‘wasn’t even a thing’, and who would want that swollen SUV-that-swallowed-a-911 abomination anyway?

Well, lots of people wanted it – more than 1.5 million people since then, in fact. The Cayenne has been one of the biggest sellers and biggest profit-makers for Porsche, and we have long passed the point where anybody questions the validity and demand for performance SUVs.

Fast forward nearly a quarter of a century and here we are with the latest Cayenne controversy. Welcome to the all-new Porsche Cayenne Electric. Not only is it battery-bowered but also, if you go for the Turbo that we’re driving here, it makes 1140bhp and 1106lb ft of torque. Yes, you read that right.

Put it in launch control and this 2.6-tonne luxury electric family conveyance will give everything it’s got in order to do 0-62mph in 2.5sec. Mind you, in default Normal mode it musters a mere 845bhp, so it’s a good thing that you’ve got the overtake button for 10sec of extra fizz to the tune of 1019bhp…

Even if you eschew the Turbo and go for the entry-level Cayenne Electric (which we've also driven out in Spain), you’re still getting 436bhp and 616lb ft. Remember when even those numbers would have been shocking?

Here we are again, then, with Porsche’s halo SUV courting all of the controversy. But let’s be open-minded, here, shall we? Let’s have a go and see what it’s like before we try to answer the question of whether an electric SUV – or any car, for that matter – is really any better for having this much power.

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DESIGN & STYLING

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The Cayenne Electric isn't a pretty car, I think it's fair to say. But it has a purposefulness to it that suits the Cayenne; the new colours, especially that rather lovely green, are appropriately Farrow & Ball; and it looks just as you would expect of a modern evolution of the Cayenne. If anything, it's actually a touch more understated than Cayennes of the past.

There’s some clever tech here too. The Cayenne Electric is based on the same platform as the Audi Q6 E-tron, but its 108kWh (usable capacity) battery gets new nickel-manganese-cobalt cell chemistry for better energy density.

We can expect a Cayenne Electric Coupé in the coming months, which should be even more aerodynamic than the standard SUV.
Vicky Parrott

A maximum charging rate of 400kW means you can have a 10-80% charge in 26 minutes, despite that chunky battery, or a 100-mile top-up will take as little as five minutes.

Meanwhile, the body scores a drag coefficient of just 0.25, compared with 2.8 for the Q6, partly thanks to the active aerodynamics, which include huge vertical wings that erupt from the Cayenne’s posterior at higher speeds. Porsche has done what it can to make this heavy SUV slide through the air as easily as possible. 

 

INTERIOR

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Slip inside the Cayenne and you’re greeted by an all-new architecture, featuring an intriguing central touchscreen that curves up the dashboard. Complete with a padded hand support to make screen prodding easier, fixed buttons for the climate control and system settings and some of the best infotainment graphics you will see in any car, it’s pretty impressive, even if it does require a lot of familiarisation before you get the hang of where everything is.

A passenger touchscreen is also optional, although this strays well into the ‘too much screen’ category for my tastes. Perhaps most importantly, the Cayenne’s interior has that unmistakable Porscheness to it. The frameless, curved driver’s readout, the precision of the graphics, the density of the materials around the cabin… Porsche interiors always feel on point, solid yet understated, and this one is just the same – provided you avoid the purple-themed screen background and ambient lighting, I guess.

You can add optional heated surfaces in the Cayenne. Even the door panels and centre armrest can be heated.
Vicky Parrott

Practicality is decent, with a huge amount of space in the rear seats for your passengers to lounge about. The optional panoramic roof with selectable opacity is rather nice and fills the cabin with light. Every model gets electrically folding rear seats, too, which makes it easy to extend the standard 506-litre boot to the maximum seats-down capacity of 1588 litres.

That’s not a huge boot capacity for a car that’s 4.93m long, but it’s competitive enough with rivals like the Polestar 3 and BMW iX.

You can even tow up to 3.5 tonnes, which makes this one of the best EVs on sale for those who want to tow bigger loads. Mind you, it’s got more torque than a tug boat, so maybe that shouldn’t be such a surprise.

A 90-litre frunk is the Cayenne’s final practical flourish. It’s ideal for stowing your cables, or perhaps for the sick bowl that your passengers might need if you want to demonstrate launch control. Speaking of which…

ENGINES & PERFORMANCE

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What does over 1140bhp and 1106lb ft feel like in an electric SUV from one of the world’s most prestigious performance brands?

Well, if you just get in and drive it about in Comfort or Normal mode, it feels incredibly civilised. Almost zen-like, actually. There’s tyre noise from the enormous 22-inch Michelin tyres but almost no motor whine, wind noise is subdued and you breeze along, trying not to be tempted by the ‘push to pass’ button.

The Cayenne Electric Turbo is the most powerful production Porsche of all time. Which is either impressive or depressing depending on your outlook on hugely powerful electric SUVs.
Vicky Parrott

Activate launch control, mash the brake pedal and accelerator and the launch control mode activates in a delightfully understated Porsche manner. Given the madness you’re about to unleash, it feels there should be sirens and flashing lights and big warning triangles, but the Cayenne just shrugs and gives a deliciously nonchalant mode warning on the driver’s display before, well, accelerating really fast.

I remember when I first drove the Nissan GT-R and did a full launch, it felt like the world detonated. Big noise, big vibrations, big drama. Huge, memorable, laugh-out-loud moments, even as you prayed that the grinding noises from the gearbox were supposed to be happening.

Oddly enough, the actual power delivery of the Cayenne Turbo reminds me of the GT-R’s. It’s a touch more subdued than the Taycan and feels as if it has been tuned to be a bit more linear to suit the car’s posh family runabout nature, so there’s a bit more nuance to it. But predictably, the Cayenne just feels nauseatingly rapid. Not undramatic, but it's so easy that it’s almost underwhelming, even as you try to persuade your stomach to unclench itself from your spine.

In more normal modes, the Cayenne’s throttle response is pleasantly responsive yet easy to modulate, and while the Taycan has more feelsome brake response, the Cayenne’s (whether you've added optional ceramics or not) are still some of the best brakes of any performance EV.

After all that, the standard Cayenne Electric’s 468bhp and 0-62mph time of 4.8sec sounds almost weedy, but in practice it’s a muscular and serene thing to drive that offers 90% of what the Turbo can do for a lot less. It would be our choice of Cayenne, although there are aspects of what the Turbo offers – beyond just its performance – that will probably still make it a popular choice.

The regenerative braking is controlled via the screen, which is less useful than if it were on steering wheel paddles, and in the fixed level it’s very mild to the point of being almost a bit pointless. It’s intended to mimic normal engine braking but feels a touch lighter than you might expect. That fixed level is increased in Sport Plus mode, which feels more natural in most circumstance, so it would be nice to have that option in the other modes.

There’s also the adaptive mode, which allows the Cayenne to coast freely when there’s no traffic or will smoothly cut in when necessary. You can turn the regen modes off altogether, too, and the brake pedal relies more heavily on regen than ever before, so tou will still be getting efficiency benefits regardless of your preference.

RIDE & HANDLING

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Our Cayenne Turbo test car came with optional rear-axle steering, which allows the rear wheels to turn up to 5deg. There’s none of the nervous edge to the initial steering input that some such systems can cause. 

The Cayenne has a weighty and instinctive steering response that feels predictable and brimming with confidence, although it’s not the most feelsome. The Taycan has more texture and delicacy to its steering feel, but the Cayenne’s steering is still direct and muscular in a way that feels deliciously appropriate.

The Porsche Active Ride seems an indulgence when you're already spending well over £130,000, but it's worth the extra money for the remarkable breadth of ability that the Cayenne gains from it.
Vicky Parrott

You can feel the active, rear-biased four-wheel drive system and, on the Turbo, the rear differential working to deliver real playfulness, too. You need a quiet and generous stretch of sweeping switchbacks that are vanishingly rare in much of the UK if you want to twist the Cayenne into Sport or Sport Plus and find out what it can do; but if you manage to find an appropriate road, it's well worth doing that.

A flick of the drive mode switch and you can feel the power streaming to the rear wheels and shuffling about as it punches the Cayenne out of corners with a tiny, deliciously naughty little squirm before heading firmly in the direction you’re pointing. For a car of monstrous power, it's astonishingly friendly and accessible on a good road.

Which isn’t to say that you couldn’t get into a frightening amount of trouble faster than you could say ‘launch control’. It will understeer if you go in with more confidence than sense, and it’s up to you to sort it out. But there is a sense that the Cayenne’s got your back even as it doles out levels of torque and power that would seem more appropriate in commercial shipping. It’s truly fun and truly engaging, and I’d even say that it’s characterful if you really find space to let it show you what it can do.

But it’s relentlessly composed. Even when I had a few passenger laps of a rally course, with the Turbo in the hands of a Porsche pro driver, it felt civilised. Well, civilised for a luxury EV that had suddenly revealed that it could handle loose sand and jumps like a Dakar-prepped rally raider. By which I mean that it handled it sideways. Very sideways. But also very controlled and with a remarkable magic carpet ride comfort.

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And that’s not least due to another optional feature here that I really must talk about. Every Cayenne Electric gets adaptive air suspension as standard (which works brilliantly well on the standard model that we also drove), but the Turbo offers the option of Porsche Active Ride. This brings electrically controlled hydraulic pumps, which act in real time to give independent control at each corner of the car. It allows the system to keep the car's body more level, reducing pitch and roll – even allowing Porsche to omit mechanical anti-roll bars altogether. Naturally, it also gives more articulation when it’s needed, giving more control on rough surfaces yet also more bump absorption.

That’s the theory, and I have to say it's also the reality. It's astonishing how effective the system is. With this suspension, the Turbo delivers an almost eerie breadth of ability. It’s this system (not to mention greater standard equipment and what is arguably quite a decent price for this level of performance) that will sway a lot of buyers into this range-topping Cayenne, despite the more modest models seeming so much better value.

Speaking of the more modest models, the standard Cayenne Electric on its adaptive air suspension also has huge ability. It doesn’t wallow and float too much, and while you’re conscious of the lean in corners, it’s still neat, tidy and satisfying on a right road. Maybe not nuanced and tactile in the way that the best Cayennes of the past have been and in the way that the Taycan has managed, but it’s precisely what potential buyers will want of a Cayenne Electric.

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MPG & RUNNING COSTS

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It’s strange to say it, given that EVs with 400 miles of range only arrived in recent years, but some buyers may feel that the Cayenne’s range isn’t quite enough.

There’s some clever battery tech and good aerodynamics here; it’s not like Porsche hasn’t done an impressive job with such a heavy, performance-oriented beast. But while cars like the BMW iX3 and Volvo EX60 may be closer rivals to the Macan Electric, if I were considering a Cayenne and saw that these other posh electric SUVs were offering 100 miles more range for substantially less money, I would pause for thought. We don’t know what the forthcoming BMW iX5 will manage in terms of range, but that may be another worry for Porsche.

Porsche is a master of the options list, and the Cayenne Electric is no different. Standard equipment is actually good, but most owners will still be tempted into a lot of optional extras.
Vicky Parrott

Then again, if you’re interested in a Cayenne Electric, especially if you’re thinking of getting a Turbo, you’re probably more interested in the performance and image than in the efficiency and range. And this is a car that you can option up to be well north of £160,000 – and that’s before you’ve designed the matching Swiss-built Porsche watch to go with it. So it really is on another level and, electric or not, that comes with high running costs. 

VERDICT

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The Cayenne Turbo Electric is an astonishment of comfort, control, refinement, playfulness and savage brutalism.

Does it need this much power? Of course it doesn’t. I’d argue that its greatest achievement – which is the way it still handles on a good road with real depth of ability and reward – is achieved despite rather than because of that output.

Is the basic Cayenne Electric a more sensible option that does 90% of what the Turbo does yet costs a nearly-new Porsche Cayman less? Of course it is. But we're here because we love cars, and it's impossible not be awed by the Turbo. It's as comically unnecessary as it is thrilling, relentlessly capable and explosive and just precisely as impressive as you would hope of the latest halo Porsche.

Naturally, people will love to hate this car. That’s nothing new for a Cayenne. Whether it’s the battery beneath its floor or the sheer vulgarity of its performance, there are more reasons than ever why that will continue to be the case.

Admire it, dismiss it, hate it, love it or possibly even buy it, what isn’t up for debate is that the new Cayenne is an awesome car in far more ways than the blunt performance figures suggest. The rest, really, is a matter of opinion. 

Vicky Parrott

Vicky Parrott

Vicky Parrott has been a motoring journalist since 2006, when she eventually did so much work experience at Autocar that it felt obliged to give her a job.

After that, she spent seven years as a features and news writer, video presenter and road tester for Autocar, before becoming deputy road test editor for What Car? in 2013. After five years with What Car?, Vicky spent a couple of years as associate editor of DrivingElectric and then embarked on a freelance career that has seen her return to writing for Autocar and What Car? as well as for The Daily Telegraph and many others.

Vicky has been a Car of the Year juror since 2020, and the proud owner of a 1992 Mercedes-Benz 300-SL 24V since 2017. She aspires to own an Alpine A110 and a Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo.