New Porsche Taycan E-Shift 2026 review: ‘manual’ EV is surprisingly convincing

Verdict

The new Porsche Taycan virtual gearchanges are just as convincing here as they are in a Hyundai Ioniq 5 N or a Honda Super N. It’s easy to forget you’re driving an EV sometimes, with the Taycan offering the kind of tactile and aural feedback that some owners might miss from their old Panamera or other combustion-powered saloon. And being optional, you can, of course, still drive it like a conventional electric car. Furthermore, Porsche’s 2027 infotainment and range updates make it a stronger package all round.

This autumn sees the launch of the second gentle refresh of the Porsche Taycan since the model’s introduction in 2019. In true Porsche evolutionary style, you’ll probably not identify it at a glance – well, one variant you will, but we’ll get onto that in a bit – but the updates are meaningful all the same.

In order of least to most exciting, we start with the 2027 model year Taycan’s updated infotainment system. Given the car has a fairly screen-heavy cabin, this is more significant than it might be otherwise, and is likely to have the greatest impact on the way most buyers interact with the car on an everyday basis.

The Taycan still has four screens (a driver display, a main infotainment screen, a passenger display alongside plus an angled screen on the console with heating and ventilation controls), and the changes focus on the centre pair.

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2024 Porsche

Taycan

13,253 milesAutomaticElectric

Cash £55,943

View Taycan

2024 Porsche

Taycan

19,520 milesAutomaticElectric

Cash £58,803

View Taycan

2024 Porsche

Taycan

14,226 milesAutomaticElectric

Cash £50,676

View Taycan

2024 Porsche

Taycan

28,150 milesAutomaticElectric

Cash £36,495

View Taycan

The Android-based system is now five times more powerful than the old set-up and has 512 gigabytes of storage, up from around 128GB. The extra computational oomph means everything runs quicker than before, and the system is much happier performing the kind of pinch and swipe commands in the sat-nav – changes on the screen are basically instantaneous.

The voice command functions are now AI-powered, which we’re all a bit sick of hearing about these days, but do improve functionality, allowing the car to interpret more complex sentences all in one go (“set the temperature to 17 degrees, turn on my seat cooling, and find me the nearest ice cream parlour” would be a good start given the recent weather). And with Google results showing up in online searches, you’ve got more info at your fingertips, too.

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You can also organise commonly used widgets on the main screen, while on the lower screen there’s now a line of four shortcuts for commonly used functions, based on the anonymous usage data that Porsche harvests from the thousands of Taycans now on the road. One lets you turn off the speed limit bong for instance, while another (specific to Porsche Active Ride cars) gives you quick adjustment of the car’s ride height. They’re suitably sized to prod at with minimal eyes-down time.

Next, the base Taycan can now go further on a charge, thanks to special low rolling resistance summer tyres: the key figure is 434 miles, a modest, but welcome, 12 miles further than it could before.

Then there’s E-Shift, Porsche’s take on virtual gearshifts. Available across the range (albeit necessarily combined with Sport Chrono, Bose audio, and Electric Sport Sound, so it’s cheaper on cars which already have those options specified), it gives the Taycan eight virtual gears, and operates similarly to the systems on the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N and Honda Super-N.

Porsche mulled over the idea way back when the Taycan was introduced, but has finally offered it for drivers looking for a little more interaction and feedback. The gears are tied to a combustion-esque synthesised sound, and like similar systems, each gear has its own unique torque map, engine-braking style regen and little gearshift jerks when changing gear. The car’s behaviour and sound changes depending on gear, speed and load too, just as a conventional car with an automatic gearbox would.

Unsurprisingly, it’s pretty effective. So much so that it’s easy to forget the whole thing is just lines of code, rather than mechanical objects spinning and meshing beneath you. Press the small blue E-Shift button on the steering wheel and the ‘engine’ wakes up with a flare of revs, idling away with a V8-esque murmur and more impressively, engine-style vibrations. Porsche has coded the electric motor (or motors, in all-wheel-drive cars) to fluctuate slightly, giving the impression of a combustion engine vibrating away in the background.

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It really does feel like a conventional automatic, and an effective PDK-style one at that – gearshifts are (unsurprisingly) pretty instantaneous and it feels second nature to change down when you want more regen or for more torque going up a hill. Accelerate hard and the ‘engine’ will hit a virtual rev limiter too, set at 7,500rpm – apparently, the number that felt most natural for the car’s performance.

The sound at high revs is a little less convincing than at lower speeds, with more of a video-gamey digital growl creeping in – although the same can be said for some actual combustion vehicles with piped-in sound. And of course, you can just hit that blue button again and drive the Taycan as a near-silent EV with conventional regenerative braking. It’s all very clever, and on suitably configured models, costs only £750.

And most exciting of all? From the factory, customers in left-hand-drive markets can now order a Taycan Turbo GT with a full Manthey performance package. For the small matter of 108,900 Euros (£93,855) on top of a Turbo GT, it includes a wild carbon fibre aero kit that generates 740kg of downforce at its 193mph V-max, steamroller-like Pirelli tyres, and a small power uplift. It’s the car that recently stole back the Nürburgring EV lap record from BYD’s Yangwang U9 Xtreme, chipping off four seconds for a 6:55.533 time.

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