2017 Cayenne S E Hybrid
Discussion
As an increasingly regular PH lurker I started looking in 2025 for a replacement for my 2016 320d, which had been faultless, but a change in job (30 mile commute down to 0.5 miles) was enough of an excuse (DPF, DPF, DPF...) to reason to myself for a change in car, which I had secretely been angling for anyway.
The criteria were petrol, "interesting" (eg engine, body shape, style), reasonable at least for reliability, and family friendly. Having done a fair bit of research, and a PH Thread on this last year (though with a slightly bigger budget than when that thread started), was whittling down to BMW or Merc.
The model that really took my pic was a W212 E500, the saloon shape. I test drove a coupe and wondered whether its isofix would work with one baby (and hoping for more), but then looking after my 18 month old nephew for the weekend and battling with him for the car seat made me realise back doors were essential.
I was sharing these thoughts with my father who then advised he was about to upgrade from his Cayenne, and would I be interested in a good deal. Research out the window, a good deal is a good deal and so the S E Hybrid is now in my name.
There are a few interesting readers threads with other specs of Cayenne, but I hadn't noted one with this configuration. They are still available from Porsche approved used, and many other sellers. The natural fears are the battery, and so I am going in with my eyes open...
The key specs -
Black exterior, Pano Roof, Black Cayenne GTS wheels (21") wearing winter tyres currently (Scotland car before my ownership).
Bose, wired CarPlay, black leather.
71500 miles, FPSH, still under extended warranty.
The drive to SE England from Scotland is about 6.5 hours on your own, but with wife and baby, we broke it up with two nights in the Lake District. As a follower of Harry Metcalfe, we chose Coniston (after his recent-ish trip there with a Morgan) with an aim for a quiet couple of days and checking out K7. As timing would (of course) have it, K7 was not present at the Ruskin museum as it was being refurbished to get back on the water...
Stats from the first leg:
First experience trying a charge (!) - researched the company (Pod Point), account made, £20 loaded, car park located. Of course, despite it saying "available" en route, with no cars present at all, the charger did not work... Cue a second car park later in the day (Premier spot for the PHEV...) £2.48 for half a "tank" of battery - 4.2kWh in 1 hour 13 mins.
Take homes - extremely comfortable, lots more space than our BMW X1 (no surprises really), the boot could take 3x summer tyres with ease (with suitcase slotted in the middle - very handy). MPG reasonable in "Hybrid" mode - E power and E charge not selected - 30mpg on a run. Regardless of battery status my dad always ran it in this mode, and had a wall charger. I don't have a driveway, so will be experiencing this with public charging, or charging when driving.
The criteria were petrol, "interesting" (eg engine, body shape, style), reasonable at least for reliability, and family friendly. Having done a fair bit of research, and a PH Thread on this last year (though with a slightly bigger budget than when that thread started), was whittling down to BMW or Merc.
The model that really took my pic was a W212 E500, the saloon shape. I test drove a coupe and wondered whether its isofix would work with one baby (and hoping for more), but then looking after my 18 month old nephew for the weekend and battling with him for the car seat made me realise back doors were essential.
I was sharing these thoughts with my father who then advised he was about to upgrade from his Cayenne, and would I be interested in a good deal. Research out the window, a good deal is a good deal and so the S E Hybrid is now in my name.
There are a few interesting readers threads with other specs of Cayenne, but I hadn't noted one with this configuration. They are still available from Porsche approved used, and many other sellers. The natural fears are the battery, and so I am going in with my eyes open...
The key specs -
Black exterior, Pano Roof, Black Cayenne GTS wheels (21") wearing winter tyres currently (Scotland car before my ownership).
Bose, wired CarPlay, black leather.
71500 miles, FPSH, still under extended warranty.
The drive to SE England from Scotland is about 6.5 hours on your own, but with wife and baby, we broke it up with two nights in the Lake District. As a follower of Harry Metcalfe, we chose Coniston (after his recent-ish trip there with a Morgan) with an aim for a quiet couple of days and checking out K7. As timing would (of course) have it, K7 was not present at the Ruskin museum as it was being refurbished to get back on the water...
Stats from the first leg:
First experience trying a charge (!) - researched the company (Pod Point), account made, £20 loaded, car park located. Of course, despite it saying "available" en route, with no cars present at all, the charger did not work... Cue a second car park later in the day (Premier spot for the PHEV...) £2.48 for half a "tank" of battery - 4.2kWh in 1 hour 13 mins.
Take homes - extremely comfortable, lots more space than our BMW X1 (no surprises really), the boot could take 3x summer tyres with ease (with suitcase slotted in the middle - very handy). MPG reasonable in "Hybrid" mode - E power and E charge not selected - 30mpg on a run. Regardless of battery status my dad always ran it in this mode, and had a wall charger. I don't have a driveway, so will be experiencing this with public charging, or charging when driving.
Edited by chocolatefingers5000 on Saturday 7th February 10:02
3.0 supercharged v6.
I have an mtc motorsports silicone large diameter intake pipe if you want it. Doubt I will have any use for it. Removes the intake silencer so you get to hear the supercharger whine.
These tune up very easily.
205mm crank pulley, tiny supercharger pulley, intake pipe, bigger fuel pump, bigger charge cooler rad and a tune and you get mid 500s from the petrol engine plus the electric boost on top.
Audi parts fit and come up used cheap on ebay from time to time.
With practice and manipulating e-charge when cruising then switching to epower in traffic, gameifying regen braking etc you can get far higher mpg on a long trip. Learning the changeover point from regen to friction braking, and using anticipation has a huge effect on mpg on these.
A friend gave me a very good steer on tyres, we went through 3 sets of £220 a corner yokohamas before he pointed me in the direction of leao nova force budgets.
I have always avoided budgets as every set i had previously were dangerous in the wet, but with these
wet and dry grip better than the yokos, and they lasted longer also. Really couldn't find any downside in them other than other people's opinion of something they had never tried.
The standard supercharger pulley is prone to failure and weighs a ton, the aftermarket ones are lightweight aluminium and are precisely balanced so they dont have the harmonic balancer that fails
A wee useful tip, that version of pcm4 came with a spinning hard drive. When it fails its an expensive dealer only repair if you dont have a backup, but if you take a backup of if while it is working, its cheap and easy to flash the backed up image to a new ssd. I noticed mine getting sluggish and quietly clicking, checked the forums, done a backup luckily just on time, fitted an ssd and a carplay daughterboard and with the ssd it was snappier than it had ever been.
Lovely car btw, the black is beautiful. Are you cursing trying to keep it clean in winter yet?
I have an mtc motorsports silicone large diameter intake pipe if you want it. Doubt I will have any use for it. Removes the intake silencer so you get to hear the supercharger whine.
These tune up very easily.
205mm crank pulley, tiny supercharger pulley, intake pipe, bigger fuel pump, bigger charge cooler rad and a tune and you get mid 500s from the petrol engine plus the electric boost on top.
Audi parts fit and come up used cheap on ebay from time to time.
With practice and manipulating e-charge when cruising then switching to epower in traffic, gameifying regen braking etc you can get far higher mpg on a long trip. Learning the changeover point from regen to friction braking, and using anticipation has a huge effect on mpg on these.
A friend gave me a very good steer on tyres, we went through 3 sets of £220 a corner yokohamas before he pointed me in the direction of leao nova force budgets.
I have always avoided budgets as every set i had previously were dangerous in the wet, but with these
wet and dry grip better than the yokos, and they lasted longer also. Really couldn't find any downside in them other than other people's opinion of something they had never tried.
The standard supercharger pulley is prone to failure and weighs a ton, the aftermarket ones are lightweight aluminium and are precisely balanced so they dont have the harmonic balancer that fails
A wee useful tip, that version of pcm4 came with a spinning hard drive. When it fails its an expensive dealer only repair if you dont have a backup, but if you take a backup of if while it is working, its cheap and easy to flash the backed up image to a new ssd. I noticed mine getting sluggish and quietly clicking, checked the forums, done a backup luckily just on time, fitted an ssd and a carplay daughterboard and with the ssd it was snappier than it had ever been.
Lovely car btw, the black is beautiful. Are you cursing trying to keep it clean in winter yet?
Edited by OldGermanHeaps on Saturday 7th February 22:44
Congratulations on your new purchase. I owned one of these and it was a decent enough car although my particular specimen had some electrical niggles that were thankfully under the extended warranty. I would definitely reflect on whether public charging or any active charging is worth it though if you don't have home charging. The battery power is very small-maybe enough for 15 miles electric only so not worth stopping for. If you got it for a good price then great but for me it was only worth the hybrid aspect as I could home charge and do city driving on electric only, plus I believe it was zero VED at the time.
Thank you OGH and fflumps for your helpful comments.
The risk of electrical and/or battery gremlins make the extended warranty definitely something I plan to continue.
Interesting re the tyres - and in fact the winters achieving low 30s on a run could probably be a few MPGs higher on summers.
The summer tyres my dad has in the shed are the Yokohamas so my plan was to put them on when the current winters ran out, rather than swap tires on the same wheels every year.
A quick eBay search shows 4x replacement wheels for £2500 so not sure the extra baggage is worth the price.
The cost of public charging vs running it mostly petrol I did some maths on, and presuming approx. 22mpg on mixed petrol driving alone, and roughly 2kWh/mile EV driving, it appears to be cost effective to publicly charge below 60p /kWh.
I have no desire to have 14 different EV charger accounts so will see how this goes over time.
PS - yes I love the black but my lord it looks dirty after 500 winter miles (washed it just before the Lake District trip)
PPS - sadly no longer free VED, is about £200p/a
The risk of electrical and/or battery gremlins make the extended warranty definitely something I plan to continue.
Interesting re the tyres - and in fact the winters achieving low 30s on a run could probably be a few MPGs higher on summers.
The summer tyres my dad has in the shed are the Yokohamas so my plan was to put them on when the current winters ran out, rather than swap tires on the same wheels every year.
A quick eBay search shows 4x replacement wheels for £2500 so not sure the extra baggage is worth the price.
The cost of public charging vs running it mostly petrol I did some maths on, and presuming approx. 22mpg on mixed petrol driving alone, and roughly 2kWh/mile EV driving, it appears to be cost effective to publicly charge below 60p /kWh.
I have no desire to have 14 different EV charger accounts so will see how this goes over time.
PS - yes I love the black but my lord it looks dirty after 500 winter miles (washed it just before the Lake District trip)
PPS - sadly no longer free VED, is about £200p/a
chocolatefingers5000 said:
Thank you OGH and fflumps for your helpful comments.
The risk of electrical and/or battery gremlins make the extended warranty definitely something I plan to continue.
Interesting re the tyres - and in fact the winters achieving low 30s on a run could probably be a few MPGs higher on summers.
The summer tyres my dad has in the shed are the Yokohamas so my plan was to put them on when the current winters ran out, rather than swap tires on the same wheels every year.
A quick eBay search shows 4x replacement wheels for £2500 so not sure the extra baggage is worth the price.
The cost of public charging vs running it mostly petrol I did some maths on, and presuming approx. 22mpg on mixed petrol driving alone, and roughly 2kWh/mile EV driving, it appears to be cost effective to publicly charge below 60p /kWh.
I have no desire to have 14 different EV charger accounts so will see how this goes over time.
PS - yes I love the black but my lord it looks dirty after 500 winter miles (washed it just before the Lake District trip)
PPS - sadly no longer free VED, is about £200p/a
That is good it’s under warranty- I also had gearbox issues which would have been eye watering out of warranty. No battery issues just several wiring loom ones. As a car though it was a very nice experience to own and transport the family . Also black as are so many- my first black car and my last as I rarely wash my cars! Really liked the interior though -Porsche is one of the best for quality and solidity. Even in newer models you’ll never see a non integrated screen unlike BMW or Mercedes or Range Rover. Mine had a dark red interior which is not to everyone’s taste but I always go for non black interiors.The risk of electrical and/or battery gremlins make the extended warranty definitely something I plan to continue.
Interesting re the tyres - and in fact the winters achieving low 30s on a run could probably be a few MPGs higher on summers.
The summer tyres my dad has in the shed are the Yokohamas so my plan was to put them on when the current winters ran out, rather than swap tires on the same wheels every year.
A quick eBay search shows 4x replacement wheels for £2500 so not sure the extra baggage is worth the price.
The cost of public charging vs running it mostly petrol I did some maths on, and presuming approx. 22mpg on mixed petrol driving alone, and roughly 2kWh/mile EV driving, it appears to be cost effective to publicly charge below 60p /kWh.
I have no desire to have 14 different EV charger accounts so will see how this goes over time.
PS - yes I love the black but my lord it looks dirty after 500 winter miles (washed it just before the Lake District trip)
PPS - sadly no longer free VED, is about £200p/a
My battery failed at around 140 or 150k i cant remember. It was 2 grand for a used one. Easy diy fix but a boot in the b
k pricewise nonetheless.
Recommended bit of maintenance on these is walnut blast the carbon off the back of the intake valves. Made a noticeable improvement to smoothness and response, mine was full of crap by the time it hit 120k.
You have got me missing ours now, it was hilarious something so lardy moving so fast. Addictive sound it made, quiet but fruity.
https://youtube.com/shorts/j4ehTp2uxbU?si=kUtC-iid...
First lot of mods took 0-60 to 4.9s second lot of mods got it to 4.5s
k pricewise nonetheless.Recommended bit of maintenance on these is walnut blast the carbon off the back of the intake valves. Made a noticeable improvement to smoothness and response, mine was full of crap by the time it hit 120k.
You have got me missing ours now, it was hilarious something so lardy moving so fast. Addictive sound it made, quiet but fruity.
https://youtube.com/shorts/j4ehTp2uxbU?si=kUtC-iid...
First lot of mods took 0-60 to 4.9s second lot of mods got it to 4.5s
Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff