This post was originally published on Autocar
Can a brilliant EV also be a brilliant used buy? Here’s what we learned
How you view the second-hand market for electric cars might depend on whether you’re a glass half-empty or glass half-full sort of person. Or, perhaps, whether you’re looking to sell an electric car you bought new or pick up a used bargain.
Take this latest addition to the Autocar test fleet: a ‘used’ Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo from its maker’s approved used scheme. It’s an early 23-plate car that arrived with us with just under 9000 miles on the clock and a known ownership history (full disclosure: it’s been well used on Porsche‘s press fleet).
Had you bought this car new in 2023 it would have cost £90,438. Now? Its value at the time of handover is about £68,000.
Given Porsche’s reputation for robust used values (a hybrid Panamera of similar age and mileage and which cost less initially is priced in the mid-£70k region), that’s probably a shock to many, especially those who bought a Taycan outright or on PCP.
But for savvy used buyers it represents a comparative bargain route into ownership of not only a Porsche but also one of our favourite electric cars.
Granted, for a similar outlay you could have a brand-new Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, but really, how many thousand drive modes and settings do you want when you can have an EV dripping in Porsche’s signature sheen?
There are many reasons why the used values for most electric cars (sharp devaluation isn’t limited to the Taycan by any means) have struggled.
For one, the ZEV mandate requiring manufacturers to sell more EVs has put pressure on prices when new (albeit often hidden using offers and incentives), while any used EVs manufacturers sell through their official schemes don’t count towards those targets.
There are also no tax breaks on offer for business or fleet buyers for used EVs- and, meanwhile, just over three years after the Taycan’s launch and with a facelift having just arrived, there’s a relative glut of ex-fleet and PCP examples arriving on the market.
Just as significantly, there’s still some scepticism about taking on a used electric car. Given the recent rate of EV progress, will it be as outdated as a BBC Master in a few years time? Will the battery life suddenly and dramatically degrade to the point that the car is unusable? Such concerns are common with new technology.
So with an increasing number of used EVs on the market, it felt like a good time to put the previously owned approach to the test – and, frankly, to get more time in a seriously good car. All of which is why I found myself at Porsche Reading to take collection of our new Sport Turismo.
Buy a car through Porsche’s official used scheme and you can enjoy the exact same handover process as a new model, complete with a cover being whisked off your shiny new (to you car in the dealership and an expert on hand to talk you through all the key features with a particular brief to explain some of the nuances of EV ownership for those new to them.
That includes obvious things, such as how to plug it in, along with easily missed features such as where the ‘frunk’ is or how to use the customisable buttons on the dash and steering wheel.
Anyway, if you’ll permit me to return to my tortured analogy about half-full glasses, as far as my new car itself is concerned, my cup runneth over. You might find plenty of used Taycans on offer, but you’d have to search hard to find another in this spec. It’s a bit of a peach: a largely base-spec, single-motor, big-battery Sport Turismo.
Its output of 322bhp (402bhp with launch control) may pale in comparison to a Turbo’s (and it is positively demure compared with the updated model), but it’s still enough for 0-62mph in 5.4sec. And the 83.7kWh (usable) battery means it has an official range of 304 miles.
I’ll take that over an excess of power I’ll most likely never use. It’s also a rare Taycan sitting on steel spring suspension, which it combines with adaptive damping
The Sport Turismo shape adds to the appeal, offering a big-booted estate body without the slight compromise of the Cross Turismo’s raised ride height.
The extended roof provides a bit more space for rear passengers, too, especially with the 4+1 seats. It’s still not the world’s most practical EV by any means, but this bodystyle certainly extends the car’s operating window.
The interior is somewhat restrained: black is the predominant colour, and it’s generally at the more sober end of the Porsche line-up. That suits me nicely, and the sports seats are proving comfortable so far.
There are other perks: our car came to us with a contract to use the Porsche Charging Network- it’s not offered as standard with a used Taycan, but you can buy access.
Using an RFID card, your key fob or the My Porsche app, you get one-touch access to any charger part of that network. You will need to use the app to find them, but it includes the fast chargers found at many Porsche dealers and Ionity and BP forecourts.
On some you will also get a discount significantly reducing the cost of charging. The network info is integrated into Porsche’s nav system, so plot a long trip and it will work out where to stop and how long to charge for while monitoring real-time charger availability.
Initial impressions are good, which you would expect: there’s a reason the Taycan is one of our favourite electric cars, and the improvements to the recently facelifted model don’t really detract from older examples such as this.
We’ll judge that more over time, of course, but just as important here will be to gauge the ownership experience for used buyers drawn in by those headline discounted prices.
They might be painful reading for those set to lose out due to slipping residual values, but a cut-price route into Porsche and electric car ownership is a mighty enticing prospect for those looking to buy.
Update 2
Porsche has so far taken a different approach to regenerative braking than many car makers moving into EVs. The Taycan doesn’t offer one-pedal driving or feature flappy paddles that enable you to adjust the regen’s strength.
Instead, there’s a small button on the steering wheel that toggles the regen on and off, and even when you do activate it, it’s notably mild.
It’s a philosophical thing relating to brake feel. Porsche’s goal was to make the Taycan feel like a Porsche to drive, and in the engineers’ view having a consistent brake pedal feel is a key part of driving engagement and regen can work counter to that.
But that doesn’t mean Taycan drivers can’t take it upon themselves to maximise how far they go on a charge; it just requires a slightly different mindset.
So I was keen to speak to some experts about how to do that. And it just so happened a few of them were in London recently, including Pascal Wehrlein and António Félix da Costa, who drive for Porsche Motorsport’s works team in the Formula E World Championship.
Regardless of your views on the electric motorsport, there genuinely is some track-to-road learning going on in Formula E. Manufacturers can build their own powertrains, and with power output capped, the key performance benefit comes from maximising efficiency.
The more efficient a car is, the faster it can go without any concerns about conserving energy. And it’s those philosophical learnings Porsche and others (among them Cupra, Jaguar, Maserati and Nissan) are applying to their road cars.
That’s the long story, anyway. The shorter version is that I had a Taycan and an invite to attend the London ePrix at the ExCel exhibition centre at the end of last month, and it sounded like a lot of fun.
The first challenge was covering the 17 miles from my home in the southwest of the ever-congested capital to the Docklands in the east. At least the Taycan is a very comfortable thing in which to be stuck in traffic.
On my arrival, I had an impromptu chance to line up my used pre-facelift Taycan against a new model driven over by a pair of Swiss journalists. It’s interesting how what looks in pictures to be a very mild makeover appears more significant by a comparison in the metal.
More significantly, the Swiss were cooing (or cuckooing, perhaps?) over their car achieving economy of close to 4mpkWh – a significant improvement on what I’ve so far managed in our older Taycan.
The pits and main straight of the circuit are actually inside the ExCel centre, with the track then snaking around the access roads and car park. So with the plan being to meet the team in the pits on the Friday set-up day before the 2023/24 season finale, my expectation was that I would be leaving the Taycan outside.
But no: I was driving to the pits. And the only way to access them was via the track. Well, I wasn’t going to complain.
The track access involved driving through the ExCel’s underground car park, turning onto the back straight and completing the tail end of the lap. With a Taycan at my disposal and a race track ahead of me, it was tempting to push on a bit, but this endeavour was hampered by several road sweepers. Seriously, they were harder to pass than Max Verstappen.
The pits were bustling with various team members, event officials, media, VIP guests and assorted others. With a sea of people ahead of me, I worried that progress might be difficult: because the Taycan is seriously quiet, pedestrians are often unaware of its presence.
Thankfully, Formula E pits feature whistle-wielding marshals, who quickly cleared a path for my unusual parking spot. It was quite a thrill, although my efforts at reverse parking did alarm the Porsche mechanics, who feared that I was about to take out a race car’s sidepod…
But I was there to learn, and 2019/20 Formula E champion Félix da Costa was an ideal teacher: as well as racing a Porsche on the road, he drives a Panamera and, more pertinently, a Taycan. Normally, racers insist that there’s no relationship between how they drive on track and road, but with Formula E, Félix da Costa said “100% it helps my road driving”.
He added: “Efficiency is a cool challenge. Initially with an EV, you want to show off the power, but then you think: ‘How far can I take this? How can I extend the range?’ So you get into the complexity of efficient electric driving. It means you may go a bit slower, but you save time charging and put less wear on brakes and tyres, so it’s repaid eventually.”
The key, he said, is the classic motorsport technique of “lift and coast”. And what about regen? “It depends on the situation. If it’s downhill, it’s always on. If not, it’s generally off and I let the car coast. I find that’s more efficient.”
Useful tips, which I resolved to put into practice. Although not immediately, because I had to get my Taycan out of the pits, which meant driving the first half of the circuit, this time with no sweepers in sight. Nothing crazy, though.
The learning here is that motorsport isn’t just about making cars go faster, sometimes it’s beneficial to relax and go a bit slower – something I tried to embrace on my tedious slog home.
Update 3
What sort of car should you use as suitable transport for a Bridgerton afternoon tea at a posh London hotel? That’s not something I’d ever pondered before, but my teenage niece was visiting from the US and wanted to treat my mum to dainty sandwiches and cakes inspired by the Netflix show, and it didn’t feel right to stick them on the Tube.
Besides, due to the complexity of a family visit after the final cup of Earl Grey was supped, I needed to transport my mum, niece and nephew straight to Somerset, so driving into central London – which I’d normally avoid like, well, watching an episode of Bridgerton – made sense. Thankfully, my niece agreed that a Porsche was, indeed, suitable for afternoon tea transport. And, thankfully for me, if you are going to drive a Porsche into the middle of London, the Taycan Sport Turismo is ideal.
Since it’s electric it’s exempt from all road charges, for one thing, and while it’s hugely potent, the nature of an electric powertrain makes it easy to drive at low speeds. What you’re always aware of is just how big the Taycan is, and that is made more challenging by the relatively small rear window the Sport Turismo version offers. Yet thanks to the bulging wheel arches it’s easy to spot where the front corners of the car are, and the sensors are generally effective and accurate.
My niece and nephew were both fans of the Taycan’s audio system, especially once they realised they could seize control from the back seats with wireless Apple CarPlay. And despite their tunes playing, I’ve always found the silent electric powertrain really useful when driving in cities: it allows you to hear more clearly when motorcycles or even pedestrians are about to appear from a blind spot.
Arriving at The Lanesborough hotel at Hyde Park Corner was also a reminder of just how classy the Taycan is. The doorman didn’t hesitate to leap forward and help, and the Porsche held its own even with a Bentley and a Rolls-Royce in the vicinity.
With my niece and mum dropped off for their dainty delicacies, I let my nephew pick lunch, and he opted for Five Guys (well, he is American…). There’s one on Oxford Street, so I nipped round and stashed the Taycan in the underground car park nestled beneath Hyde Park. Given the tight confines and length of the Taycan I was a little nervous heading in, but I’ve spent long enough with it to learn some tricks.
Given the Taycan’s long wheelbase and short overhangs, the trick is to turn later than you normally would when in a car park, almost like how a bus or lorry overshoots a corner apex before turning: doing so avoids risking clipping the rear alloys on kerbs on the inside of a corner.
With food at both ends of the cultural spectrum eventually consumed, it was time to pick up the ladies and then face the interminable crawl out of London before a schlep down the M5. It provided an interesting comparison of driving efficiency: while crawling through the capital I was averaging just over 3mpkWh; while at speed on the motorway the figure was closer to 2.5mpkWh.
The Taycan isn’t the most efficient of EVs (the post-facelift model is much improved), but what I do like is that it is far more consistent than many other cars, and the economy doesn’t change all that much regardless of where or how you drive it. Over a longer journey my niece did report the back seats weren’t the most comfortable she’s encountered, which we determined was due to their more upright style than many.
The ‘foot garage’ design – dips in the car’s leg room, but only if you sit quite straight. Given my niece quite likes a doze on a long car journey, that didn’t work so well Still, that was a relatively minor complaint after a genuine test of the Tacan’s versatility.
Update 4
Not long into a 120-mile journey, I realised that. I had forgotten to plug my EV in to charge and didn’t have enough range to reach my destination. A few years back that would have been a recipe for disaster, but in the Taycan Sport Turismo it was a showcase of the new world of EV charging that we had been promised for so long.
If you buy a new Porsche EV you get free access to the Porsche Charging Service for three years, and beyond that there’s a monthly charge. The service essentially gives you easy access to a ‘virtual’ charging network: instead of building up its own network like Tesla, Porsche has fast chargers at a number of its dealerships and partnerships with many chargingnetworks across the UK and Europe.
Using the Tacan’s infotainment system or My Porsche phone app, I can search for chargers and filter those that are part of the service. But really, why search when I can let the Taycan do the work? Once on the road, I entered my destination into the car’s sat-nav, which worked out that I didn’t have enough charge and then calculated the best place to stop and charge to minimise the journey.
You can stipulate which chargers you want in this search and a minimum state of charge with which you want to arrive. For this jaunt down the M4, the Taycan picked out the Ionity chargers at Chippenham Pit Stop, a quick detour at junction 17. It automatically set the route, worked out how long I needed to stop for, calculated a total journey time and guided me right to them. Brilliant.
It also offered real-time information on how many of the six chargers there were in use. It was a bit ‘squeaky bum’ as I was in the closing stages and just one was free. But as I was on the final country road stretch to the chargers, that popped back up to two.
Moments later, I saw a Cupra Born driving the other way – real-time indeed The Porsche Charging Service can be accessed by an RFID card, via the My Porsche app or through a plug-and-charge service (meaning payment is taken automatically from an account linked to the car).
Sure enough, I plugged in the Taycan and, after a brief pause for the digital handshake’, charging started without further ado. By the time I sat down, energy was being delivered at more than 250kW. This is proper game-changing speed: no wonder my stop was scheduled to last just six minutes.
I didn’t even have time to check out Chippenham Pit Stop’s toilets, shop or truckers’ cafe. Even better: Porsche Charging Service users get a half-price rate of 39p per kWh on Ionity chargers. That’s still pricier than home charging but cheaper than some slow lamp-post chargers. It’s a great example of how Porsche is trying to enrich the ownership experience and provide peace of mind in the EV age.
This brings me to another point: in a recent new versus used feature, we suggested a replacement battery for a Taycan could cost around £20,000. Not so: Porsche has noted the cost isn’t even half as much, which we’re happy to clarify. Besides, it’s a bit of a moot point: the battery is covered by an eight-year/100,000-mile warranty.
Final update
There’s still plenty of trepidation about buying used electric cars, most likely reflecting the fact that it’s developing tech.
People don’t tend to like the unknown, and there are many scare stories about failing batteries and other issues. This seems odd to me: most batteries are covered by extended warranties, EVs have fewer moving parts that can break and people often still buy old Alfa Romeos despite literal warning lights.
It has led to some sharply falling prices for used EVs, even those from premium brands known for rock-solid residuals, creating a feedback loop that makes buyers even more nervous. But I reckon that in years to come, buyers might rue missing some bargains – such as the Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo to which I’ve just waved a very sad goodbye.
It arrived on our fleet as a nearly year-old model with just under 10,000 miles on it, expertly checked and fettled on Porsche’s approved used scheme.
When new, it would have cost around £90,000 fully specced (the 93.4kWh Performance Battery Plus was a £4,454 option; single-motor models got a 79kWh unit as standard), but it reached us valued at about £65,000. That’s a ridiculous bargain for one of the best EVs on the market sporting one of the more desirable badges.
It was a pre-facelift Taycan in enviable spec: single motor, biggest battery, estate-esque Sport Turismo body, steel suspension, smart-but-not-showy Dolomite Silver paint. Rare is the EV of which my favourite version hasn’t been that with the least power and the longest range, and 322bhp is plenty when it’s as easy to access as in the Taycan.
The Taycan was among the first EVs that overcame the inherent extra weight and offered genuinely dynamic handling. As decades of 911s attest, Porsche’s chassis and vehicle dynamics engineers really know their stuff, and that expertise was well applied here.
It gave the Taycan an incredible breadth: it’s easy to drive around town, a refined long-distance cruiser and genuinely fun on a flowing road. It’s big, but having the wheels pushed out to the corners and short overhangs helps. As does the view out the front, framed by those oh-so-Porsche wheel bulges.
It’s a proper Porsche inside, too, with a nicely understated sporting opulence. Finished mostly in black, our car’s was restrained and classy, and while there was the obligatory touchscreen, it retained plenty of neat analogue touches, such as the dashboard clock and the steering wheel’s driving mode selector dial.
A family visit meant I made good use of the Sport Turismo’s estatey body. Clearly we’re not talking Skoda Superb levels of suitcase swallowing, but it was a useful uplift from the saloon (446 over 407 litres), even if the sculpted body meant using all of it took some effort.
When I needed to cart my mum, niece and nephew to Heathrow airport and saw the pile of bags, I wished I’d borrowed the BMW 15 Touring that Matt Prior was running, but with some effort everything fitted in. The revelation was the Taycan’s 84-litre frunk, which gobbled up more stuff than its dimensions would suggest.
One area where our Taycan did show its age a bit was its range and efficiency. The official range of 304 miles was essentially 250 miles in the real world. And despite my best efforts, I seldom reached 3mpkWh economy. Generally, I class 300 miles as the minimum needed to make an EV truly everyday-usable (depending on your mileage and charging set-up, of course), which sounds disqualifying, but it rarely proved much of an issue in practice.
That was in part because the Taycan was so nice to drive that having to plug it in a bit more often was a sacrifice that I was willing to make. But it was also because the efficiency was generally consistent, so the predicted range was accurate, which gave me the confidence to forego contingency charging and use more of the given range.
It helped that the Taycan could charge at up to 270kW on the right charger, greatly reducing waiting times. And with my membership of the Porsche Charging Network, some of those fast chargers were more affordable than you think.
But after all that appreciation, what about the depreciation? Well, there’s actually not a huge amount to report. The Taycan left with an extra 5000 miles and several months older (granted, a relatively short time), but that wasn’t enough to notably wipe off much value. That makes sense: as with an ICE car, the big whack often comes in the first year or so, so buy a nearly new car and someone else has taken the hit.
One reason for pause when considering a used EV is that the tech is evolving so fast that your purchase might soon seem dated. Indeed, our Taycan arrived just as the model was given a far more significant upgrade than its light exterior modifications suggested. The new car offers substantially more range and better efficiency – enough to remove those few range compromises I mentioned earlier.
I would still take ‘my’ Taycan over many newer EVs that you could buy at this price point. It’s everything that’s good about Porsche combined with everything that’s good about EVs, at a better bargain price than anything knocking around in the January sales.
Used Porsche Taycan Sport Turismo specification
Specs: Price New £80,200 Price as tested £90,438 Options Performance Battery Plus £4454, 20in Turbo Aero Wheels £1676, Sport Chrono Package £875, Dynamic Silver Metallic paint £852, park assist £575, 4+1 seats £371, ambient lighting £329, Driver Memory Package £282, gloss black side window trims £269, electric folding mirrors £231
Test Data: Engine 2x permanent magnet synchronous motors Power 322bhp Torque 627lb ft Kerb weight 2295kg Top speed 155mph 0-62mph 5.4sec Fuel economy 3.2mpkWh (claimed) CO2 0g/km Faults None Expenses None