Cayenne Electric gets largest-ever Porsche display
Hope you like it - because this is the first example of Porsche's new interior design DNA
Porsche may have comprehensively walked back the speed and scale of its transition to battery power, but that doesn’t mean the new Cayenne Electric isn’t a big deal. It’s a very big deal, for many reasons. Prominent among them is the introduction of a new interior architecture, one that ‘carries Porsche’s design DNA into the future’ - i.e. in the fullness of time, you’re going to see many of its more significant features regurgitated in other models.
At the heart of this step change, according to the manufacturer, is a newly developed operating concept dubbed Porsche Digital Interaction, and the all-new Flow Display you’ll actually interact with, which incorporates the largest screen ever installed in a Porsche. To get the full effect, you’ll need to option the 14.9-inch passenger display (which offers additional app control, including video streaming), though the 14.25-inch OLED instrument cluster is standard and, for the first time, Porsche has added augmented reality to its head-up display, delivering an effective display size of 87 inches.
If that all sounds like an extension of whatever touchscreen-based fever dream you’re suffering from, then you’ll be delighted to hear that the whole point of all this elegantly curved digitalisation is apparently to make the Cayenne more intuitive to operate. “The aim of redesigning the screens’ digital content was to create an even more immersive and intense connection between driver and sports car,” says Ivo van Hulten, Director Driver Experience at Style Porsche.
To that end, you get configurable widgets, a new Themes app for changing display colours and an AI-powered voice assistant that Porsche promises will comprehend complex instructions (including some that control in-car functions, such as climate control and seat heating) and respond to spontaneous follow-up questions - rather than not understanding a word you’re saying. Although, mercifully, none of this has meant Porsche dispensing with a) physical switchgear on the steering wheel, including drive modes, or b) actual buttons to control cabin temperature and fan speed - covering off some of the notorious bugbears from similar attempts to wholly digitise car interiors.
Elsewhere, the stated gains are much as you’d expect: Porsche pledges significantly more space for passengers, and with electrically adjustable rear seats and new Mood Modes (promising ‘distinctive atmospheres’ for each person), they ought to be more comfortable, too. The largest glass sunroof ever fitted to a Porsche should ensure a superior sense of airiness, while an electrically-controlled liquid crystal film means the entire surface can go from ‘Clear’ to ‘Matte’ at the flick of a switch. Or touch of a screen, presumably. Additionally, thanks to new heatable contact areas in the armrests and door panels, you’ll be warmed much more comprehensively than just a seat allows.
Beyond your physical wellbeing, Porsche has inevitably looked to indulge your personal taste, too: it claims that never before has a Cayenne been so ‘extensively and individually configurable’ as the new EV. There are 13 interior colour combinations, alongside four interior and five accent packages, among them some entirely new material choices. So if you want a Race-Tex-clad cabin with a Pepita print textile, you can have it. In fact, Porsche will allow you to nudge your SUV into legitimate ‘one-off’ territory by going through the Sonderwunsch programme. Overkill? Probably. Popular? Well, we’ll find out soon enough: the Cayenne Electric will launch later this year.
Luckily buttons for the important stuff.
Drove it at night for the first time on a pitch black motorway. The f
king reflections, especially as one was in the driver's door window and made it impossible to see anything in the mirror. Yes, it does seem like the manufacturers don't ever drive their own cars at night.
Other than the manufactures who does not know this?
Can you imagine driving this whilst of each of your passengers is setting their “ very own mood” for their area of the car.
A recipe for disaster in my opinion and fwiw looks more like a video arcade game than any interior of a car deserves to be.
What happened to just driving?
“The aim of redesigning the screens’ digital content was to create an even more immersive and intense connection between driver and sports car,”
Who doesn't want to be intensely immersed when connected to their rental?
If so, then where does it leave this model (ok it was designed and signed off before the above headline), I’m wondering how this might damage Porsche financially if they are already struggling to sell their EVs?
If so, then where does it leave this model (ok it was designed and signed off before the above headline), I m wondering how this might damage Porsche financially if they are already struggling to sell their EVs?
That said, Porsche are an SUV business and there's no real reason why all the vans can't be EV. Personally, I think they may struggle to shift the few sports cars they sell in EV form without using a lot of influencers to tell people how 'winning' the product is.
its getting like driving your phone, you take it everywhere because some get hooked on all the things it can do or find or connected to or AI or... one direct DEW and its dead?
anyhow, good to see what they can do, the more they show, the more I like the classic models, the less I'm interested in the new full electronics cars, ok its also because I can't handle to much in my head, but still.
Nice dials for the driver, buttons for HVAC with the screens for infotainment and passenger for me please.
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