It has been 15 months since I bought the 2025 Taycan 4 (Generation J1.2), and I thought it’d be a great idea to share my experience of living with it for over a year now. To me it’s more of an EV than a Porsche, since I owned a Porsche 911 before, which comes in the purist form of a Porsche can be. This Taycan is also my first EV, so I learnt a lot during this period of the ownership.
But why#
You may ask though, why I sold the 911 and bought the Taycan? In the end, 911 is the most iconic Porsche, and Taycan, as an EV, is immature.
The move to Boston#
After we moved to Boston, our way of life changed considerably. Car isn’t the primary transportation any more. We walk, bike, and take the T - public transportation. The 911 was sitting on the driveway most of the time. I still had to take it for inspections, maintenances etc. every year. The weather here also means I can’t drive it for a long period of time. My personal interest moved on from taking the car to race tracks. There’re not many great tracks around Boston anyway. Car culture isn’t really that much of a thing here in New England as in California.
My personal needs#
I became a cyclist. I need to take the bike on the car to group rides, some of which are far from the city. We still have Ford Ranger with a bike rack, and I had been using that to transport the bike. I also had SeaSucker Talon Rack to use with the 911, but I needed to take off the front wheel. There was one occasion where I forgot to put the wheel in the car and only realized that half way to the group ride. There was another occasion where I forgot to put the wheel in the car after a ride, so the wheel was left there. Thankfully my ride buddy took it with him.
When I was buying the Taycan, I carried the bike with me to make sure it can fit in the car with back seats folded down without taking off the front wheel.
J1.2 Taycan#
J1.2 Taycan, the one after the mid-term refresh, has longer range than J1.1. My most frequent long drive is between Boston and Provincetown, which is about 110 miles. I want to be able to make that round trip without having to stop to charge. J1.1 can cover that range but barely. J1.2 can do so comfortably.
DC Charging#
The DC charging speed / charging curve may be the most amazing feature of this car (aside from the driving dynamics you’d expect from a Porsche). It comes with 800V architecture, which was pretty rare when Taycan was first announced. Tesla uses 400-500V system, as a comparison.
Peak charging speed comes around 310kW which is great, but peak charging power actually doesn’t really matter that much. One more important metric that decides how long you need to be at your charging stop during a long road trip is the charging curve - what is the charging speed at a certain SoC (State of Charge). If a car (and the charger) can hold onto the max charging speed for long time, that is optimal. After a certain SoC, the charging speed will fall. Think of the battery as a sponge and the energy as water - it sucks water very fast when the sponge is dry, but it gets slower as it gets full.
Taycan provides several ways for you to optimize charging. Engineers at Porsche really knows how to provide the essential information to drivers who want to take full advantage of the car.
The gauge shows the charging speed and the temperature of the battery, with an indicator showing the optimal range of temperature for charging. So if you are driving to your next charging station, you want to make sure the battery temperature is in the optimal range. Unfortunately Taycan doesn’t provide direct manual precondition function. However, you can put the charging station in the Nav system, and the car will automatically start preconditioning the battery to make sure it will be in the optimal temperature range for fastest charging.
Taycan will also tell you when something is not quite right. When the charging station is sending power less than the car is asking for, the car will pop up a notification saying, it’s not my fault!
Tesla Supercharger access#
Porsche gained the supercharger network access a few months ago. But that doesn’t mean you should only charge there. Tesla superchargers are mostly just 400V output, which means Taycan’s 800V architecture won’t be fully taken advantage of. Taycan boosts the input voltage from 400V to 800V, which also means Taycan can only charge at about half of the speed it is intended for (so about 140-150kW). That is painfully slow. But I also know that supercharger network has the biggest coverage and very reliable, so the supercharger access is very much welcomed.
Route planner#
The route planner in the Taycan is amazing. Not everyone wants to optimize long road trips like nerds. The most convenient way is to put in the destination in the nav system, and Taycan will automatically calculate where to stop to charge along the way. It will precondition the battery to guarantee optimal charging speed. It also allows you to specify at what SoC you want to stop charging, and at what SoC you want at your final destination. If you are a real nerd like me, you’ll fall in love with Taycan.
AC Charging#
Fast DC charging is great, but it’s probably most useful on long road trips. Day to day driving doesn’t usually go over Taycan’s range, even when kept at 85% SoC, which is the official guideline from Porsche. AC charging is actually very important for EV ownership. Home, workspace and lodge charging are the most common AC charging places because we need to spend long time at those places any way. I am fortunate to have a driveway in the city, so I installed a ChargePoint charger, with 9.6kW output. It’s more than enough to charge the car to 100% overnight.
On a few road trips I took with Taycan, I always looked for AC charging availability at the hotels I booked, including Halifax and Burlington, Vermont. Both have them, and it is really awesome to be able to charge there.
Property owners in the city, both residential and commercial alike, should really invest in AC charging. They are cheap to install, and very useful for city dwellers.
Real-world experience#
The spec and features are all great on paper, but how about real world performance? There’re several aspects to this because range anxiety is a real thing. Range and charging are affected by so many factors.
Speed#
The resistance from the wind is quadratic of the speed of travelling. So driving at 70mph and 80mph can affect the range dramatically. For some cars, like Lucid Air, which is heavily optimized for 70mph range, is affected much more by the travel speed than Taycan. Taycan isn’t the most efficient EV, especially the Cross Turismo. But that also means it doesn’t get affected by driving speed THAT much. Taycan tells you in real time how efficient your drive is.
Guess-o-Meter#
That tells you how much range you have left. Porsche is famous for being conservative, and it is true here too. J1.2 Taycan Cross Turismo has EPA range of ~270 miles, but I get over 300 miles in the summer. I ran into a suburban dad in a parking lot on a group ride, who drives a F150. He said Taycan is his dream car. He owned a Tesla before, and it way overpromises its range, so he got rid of it. I told him how opposite the Taycan is, and he said, that is how it should be. And I couldn’t agree more.
Winter#
We can’t talk about EV range without talking about winter in New England here. It affects the performance tremendously, especially when battery is cold. I can make a round trip between Boston and Provincetown comfortably on a 85% SoC, but I have to charge to about 90-95% in the winter before making that trip, or I may have to charge on the way back, usually in Plymouth. The first winter trip really surprised me how much less efficient the car became. So, be conservative at first.
Hiccups#
It is not an EV without software bugs. My Taycan had its fair share of software bugs, nothing critical though. One that happened often was that the instrument cluster screen would go completely dark during driving. It usually first flickers a few times, and then it’ll go completely dark. Leaving the car parked and locked for 15+ minutes usually solves the issue. Since I have HUD, I can still see most of the information I need for driving. I haven’t completely understood why it happens, neither the technicians at Porsche dealer. They ordered a complete electrical system to replace, but that problem just happened a few times, and then it never happened.
The navigation system is actually amazing. Most of time, it is able to pick the actual fastest route. But there were a few times - maybe twice or so - the navigation system restarted itself. I had to put in the destination again (thankfully from the recent list). This also only happened that few times, and never happened again.
These kind of bugs are annoying, but not really worth a trip to the dealer.
Conclusions#
Do I love my Taycan? HELL YES. It is a grand tourer with great Porsche driving experience, the engineering a nerd will love, and a very capable EV. It comes with a hefty price tag, but it is also the whole package like I mentioned. It is really the only EV I would buy.