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We Took a 2025 Porsche Taycan Prototype on an Unofficial Range Test – With Bonus Déjà Vu

Official 2025 Taycan details are TBD, but let's see how far it'll go on a single charge

2025 Porsche Taycan 4S Prototype front
  • We took a prototype of Porsche's refreshed 2025 Taycan on an unofficial range test in Southern California.
  • Our test vehicle was a Taycan 4S. The last time we tested one of these, it achieved 323 miles on the Edmunds EV Range Test.
  • Despite a much higher average speed (55 mph) than on our range test, the prototype still covered an impressive 343 miles.

It's déjà vu all over again, as we're back with yet another unofficial range test involving a Porsche prototype. And this time, we're going to try to go even farther.

A few weeks ago, we took a 2024 Macan Turbo EV prototype on a long highway run in Southern California, and it covered 305 miles — an impressive number given this electric SUV's prodigious output of 576 horsepower.

This time, we're in a prototype version of the refreshed 2025 Taycan 4S, going on another long highway run in Southern California — a completely different route, however — with the same goal of finding out how far the sedan can go on a single charge. A quick note about these prototype tests: We are not allowed to share any details about how the car drives, feels or what features Porsche added for the Taycan's update (though we can share the features we observed). So if it feels like we're leaving some details out, it's because mum's the word for now.

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Another way this new test is different from the Macan EV: We know virtually nothing about the updated Taycan. That means any updates to the battery, charging architecture and electric motors were complete unknowns heading into the drive. But since our test ends at a fast-charging station, we're able to learn a few new facts about Porsche's electric sedan. All that in mind, let's hop in with Porsche's Taycan program director, Steffen Christian, and hit the road.

The unofficial range test

Porsche had a range of Taycan variants available for testing, but we opted for a 4S. Why? When we put one on the Edmunds EV Range Test in 2020, the Taycan 4S put up one of the most surprising results we've ever seen. The sedan covered 323 miles, beating its EPA-estimated 203 miles of range by a whopping 60%, the highest percentage gap we've seen in our testing. Fast-forward to 2024, and the prototype Porsche brought to Los Angeles was similarly specced to the car we tested in 2020: 20-inch wheels, dual-motor all-wheel drive and the Taycan's larger battery pack. That pack had a capacity of 93 kWh in the 2020 4S, but the 2025 Taycan's battery specs are TBD.

2025 Porsche Taycan Prototype profile

Our planned route took us from Los Angeles all the way down to the U.S./Mexico border, then back up to Torrance where we'd stop at a fast-charging station. There were a few more city miles on this route than the one we took in the Macan EV, so our average speed over the trip was 55 mph, instead of the 60 mph average we hit in Porsche's electric SUV. That's well above the 40 mph average we aim for on the Edmunds EV Range Test, which is designed to provide an accurate real-world driving figure. But this would still give us a great baseline from which to evaluate the new Taycan 4S' range (and battery) potential.

We set the climate control to 72 degrees on its eco setting, which was enough to keep the cabin comfortable on a day of typically mild Southern California winter temperatures. (It was between 69 and 77 degrees the whole drive.) Speeds were kept to within 5 mph of the posted speed limits at all times, with the adaptive cruise control set to 70 mph on the highway for as long as possible. We also drove the Taycan in its Range drive mode, which lowered the air suspension to its lowest setting and made the Taycan as aerodynamic as it could get. This is exactly what we would do in our Edmunds EV Range Test.

For this drive, there were two big differences compared to how we'd normally range test an EV. The tires were filled up to their maximum inflation rating (we use the OEM recommended pressures, which are lower) and Porsche had us run the test with regenerative braking set to off (we generally use a higher regen setting). Porsche told us that it thought that turning off the regen would be the most efficient way of driving, given the coasting we'd get on the highway portion of the route.

After roughly six hours behind the wheel of the Taycan 4S, we pulled into a charging station with the trip meter showing 327 miles and 16 miles of range remaining (6% battery). That gave us a total range result of 343 miles. Also notable was the consumption: just 28.3 kWh/100 miles, which is much better than what the 2020 Taycan 4S achieved on our range test (32.3 kWh/100 miles).

2025 Porsche Taycan 4S Prototype front

Getting charged up

Charging speed is a figure that's just as important as range, especially for buyers who will be using public charging infrastructure frequently. That's why we launched the Edmunds EV Charging Leaderboard, so you can see which EVs can jam those miles back into the battery with the most urgency. The current Taycan's architecture allows for charging speeds up to 270 kW, a figure that was verified in our testing and puts the current Taycan in a tie with the Lucid Air for the fastest observed charging speed.

That's a figure we were pretty sure the new Taycan would beat. During the test drive, a small display on the left side of the cluster indicated the percentage of battery remaining, as well as the maximum charging rate that it would accept at the start of charging — a rate that would go up once the battery hit its sweet spot, Steffen informed me gleefully. I saw that number go as high as 290 kW during the drive.

We plugged into an Electrify America 350-kW charging station that had been blocked off for our use, specifically to achieve the highest charging speeds. That means the charger wasn't being shared with another EV, so we could get maximum juice that would only be limited by the vehicle's architecture. Upon plugging in, the charging speeds quickly increased well past 290 kW and topped out at 332 kW, which is 62 kW more than the current top charging speeds on our leaderboard. It took just over 20 minutes to refill the battery from 6% to 83%, and according to the trip computer, 260 miles of range were added. That would extrapolate to 780 miles of range added per hour and put the Taycan 4S in second place on the Edmunds Charging Test by that metric, trailing only the Hyundai Ioniq 6.

2025 Porsche Taycan 4S Prototype screen

What about the battery?

Oh, you wanted more math? We've got you. The charging station indicated that, in order to add that 77% of battery charge, it added 83 kW of energy, which translates to just under 108 kW to fill the entire battery. We noted a charging loss of about 9% in the previous Taycan and that would give the new, larger battery a usable capacity of 98 kWh. Factor in a gap of roughly 8 kWh between the battery's usable and net capacity, and we land at our estimate for the new Taycan 4S' battery pack: 106 kWh. That would represent a significant jump over the 93-kWh battery on the current Taycan and it means that when we get this vehicle on the official Edmunds EV Range Test, it's got the potential to go really, really far.

Porsche, of course, wouldn't confirm any of our findings. The officially official figures will have to wait until the production version of the 2025 Taycan is unveiled — a wait that hopefully won't be too long.

Edmunds says

The refreshed Taycan seems to have had major work done to its battery and charging architecture, resulting in very impressive range (343 miles) and charging (332 kW) figures. We can't tell you how the Taycan was to drive, but we can say these testing results left us impressed.

2025 Porsche Taycan 4S Prototype rear