RE: 2024 Porsche Macan 4 | PH Review

[E90_M3Ross]

Mark-C said:

911Spanker said:

Honeywell said:

Utterly charmless with a huge price when you add options. Retailed by somewhat arrogant dealers. They'll sell loads but I'd rather walk.

How would you carry luggage and go 200 miles?

Also how many times and for how long would you need to break for and recharge yourself?

This is something I often hear, and I'm not sure if I'm different to everyone else but when doing a long trip I rarely stop for more than 5-10mins. Usually stop, perhaps, every 200 miles or so. But recharging would take quite a bit longer. I do properly long trips 3x per year (well, 6 trips, if you include the return leg). All my other driving an EV would be perfectly acceptable, if I could charge at home, which I can't.

For example, next month I'm driving from Fareham to Aviemore in one trip. Last year I stopped 3 times, the first 2 were under 10mins, the last was 30mins. 581 miles. Admittedly that's a very rare thing for almost everyone, and as said if I could charge at home an EV would work well for almost all of my driving.

[plfrench]

E90_M3Ross said:

Mark-C said:

911Spanker said:

Honeywell said:

Utterly charmless with a huge price when you add options. Retailed by somewhat arrogant dealers. They'll sell loads but I'd rather walk.

How would you carry luggage and go 200 miles?

Also how many times and for how long would you need to break for and recharge yourself?

This is something I often hear, and I'm not sure if I'm different to everyone else but when doing a long trip I rarely stop for more than 5-10mins. Usually stop, perhaps, every 200 miles or so. But recharging would take quite a bit longer. I do properly long trips 3x per year (well, 6 trips, if you include the return leg). All my other driving an EV would be perfectly acceptable, if I could charge at home, which I can't.

For example, next month I'm driving from Fareham to Aviemore in one trip. Last year I stopped 3 times, the first 2 were under 10mins, the last was 30mins. 581 miles. Admittedly that's a very rare thing for almost everyone, and as said if I could charge at home an EV would work well for almost all of my driving.

You should consider entering some endurance walking races... 200 mile walk carrying luggage with only a 5-10 rest is quite a feat

[E90_M3Ross]

plfrench said:

E90_M3Ross said:

Mark-C said:

911Spanker said:

Honeywell said:

Utterly charmless with a huge price when you add options. Retailed by somewhat arrogant dealers. They'll sell loads but I'd rather walk.

How would you carry luggage and go 200 miles?

Also how many times and for how long would you need to break for and recharge yourself?

This is something I often hear, and I'm not sure if I'm different to everyone else but when doing a long trip I rarely stop for more than 5-10mins. Usually stop, perhaps, every 200 miles or so. But recharging would take quite a bit longer. I do properly long trips 3x per year (well, 6 trips, if you include the return leg). All my other driving an EV would be perfectly acceptable, if I could charge at home, which I can't.

For example, next month I'm driving from Fareham to Aviemore in one trip. Last year I stopped 3 times, the first 2 were under 10mins, the last was 30mins. 581 miles. Admittedly that's a very rare thing for almost everyone, and as said if I could charge at home an EV would work well for almost all of my driving.

You should consider entering some endurance walking races... 200 mile walk carrying luggage with only a 5-10 rest is quite a feat

Nah, I'd definitely cycle instead of walk.

[RacerMike]

E90_M3Ross said:

This is something I often hear, and I'm not sure if I'm different to everyone else but when doing a long trip I rarely stop for more than 5-10mins. Usually stop, perhaps, every 200 miles or so. But recharging would take quite a bit longer. I do properly long trips 3x per year (well, 6 trips, if you include the return leg). All my other driving an EV would be perfectly acceptable, if I could charge at home, which I can't.

Just for info: The Macan will do 10-80% in 21mins. Given it has a range of 380 miles, you'd get 133miles of charge in your 10min break. London to Edinburgh is 412 miles.

'A Better Route Planner' is a very accurate EV route planner, and it recons you'd do the trip in a Macan easily on either two stops (1 of 10mins and one of 20) or 3 of 10 mins. I don't think realistically I'd stop for less time than that on an 8hr journey! In fact when I've driven Warwick to Aberdeen, I stopped for around 40mins at Tebay (the really nice ones with a duck pond and farm shop on the M6), and another two 5mins stops (once to refuel and once for a piss).

The reality is, in the UK even now, you'd do even the longest of journeys in broadly the same amount of time in an EV as you would in a petrol car.

[E90_M3Ross]

RacerMike said:

E90_M3Ross said:

This is something I often hear, and I'm not sure if I'm different to everyone else but when doing a long trip I rarely stop for more than 5-10mins. Usually stop, perhaps, every 200 miles or so. But recharging would take quite a bit longer. I do properly long trips 3x per year (well, 6 trips, if you include the return leg). All my other driving an EV would be perfectly acceptable, if I could charge at home, which I can't.

Just for info: The Macan will do 10-80% in 21mins. Given it has a range of 380 miles, you'd get 133miles of charge in your 10min break. London to Edinburgh is 412 miles.

'A Better Route Planner' is a very accurate EV route planner, and it recons you'd do the trip in a Macan easily on either two stops (1 of 10mins and one of 20) or 3 of 10 mins. I don't think realistically I'd stop for less time than that on an 8hr journey! In fact when I've driven Warwick to Aberdeen, I stopped for around 40mins at Tebay (the really nice ones with a duck pond and farm shop on the M6), and another two 5mins stops (once to refuel and once for a piss).

The reality is, in the UK even now, you'd do even the longest of journeys in broadly the same amount of time in an EV as you would in a petrol car.

That's interesting, thanks how likely is it you'd find a suitably fast charger enroute at the moment that's unoccupied? Genuine question, not being an arse!

[RacerMike]

E90_M3Ross said:

RacerMike said:

E90_M3Ross said:

This is something I often hear, and I'm not sure if I'm different to everyone else but when doing a long trip I rarely stop for more than 5-10mins. Usually stop, perhaps, every 200 miles or so. But recharging would take quite a bit longer. I do properly long trips 3x per year (well, 6 trips, if you include the return leg). All my other driving an EV would be perfectly acceptable, if I could charge at home, which I can't.

Just for info: The Macan will do 10-80% in 21mins. Given it has a range of 380 miles, you'd get 133miles of charge in your 10min break. London to Edinburgh is 412 miles.

'A Better Route Planner' is a very accurate EV route planner, and it recons you'd do the trip in a Macan easily on either two stops (1 of 10mins and one of 20) or 3 of 10 mins. I don't think realistically I'd stop for less time than that on an 8hr journey! In fact when I've driven Warwick to Aberdeen, I stopped for around 40mins at Tebay (the really nice ones with a duck pond and farm shop on the M6), and another two 5mins stops (once to refuel and once for a piss).

The reality is, in the UK even now, you'd do even the longest of journeys in broadly the same amount of time in an EV as you would in a petrol car.

That's interesting, thanks how likely is it you'd find a suitably fast charger enroute at the moment that's unoccupied? Genuine question, not being an arse!

All going to depend on when you're tryin to travel I imagine. Bank holiday Friday...probably got every chance of it being busy, but on a 350kW super fast charger, clearly people are going to be there less time than they are on a 50kW 'legacy' DC charger. Tebay has 4 150kW chargers and 2 50kW ones, the services before have 6 350kW and 3 60kW fast chargers. Next services after Tebay have 3 60kW chargers. It's far from perfect at the moment, but even compared to 3 years ago, it's getting there.

Long range in an EV is not a 'get in and think about it on the go' kind of experience still (mainly due to the charging infrastructure). In theory, give it another 5 years and we might be in a position where every major motorway services has say 10-20 350kW high speed chargers and at that point I would say we are in a 'get in and think about it on the go' situation. Actual charging speed is much less of a barrier now on things like the new Taycan and Macan. You can feasibly add well over 100 miles of range in under 10mins which is good enough for most UK journeys if you're starting at home with north of 300miles of range at 100%.

Stuff coming in the next 2 years will easily do north of 300 miles on a charge and do 200 plus miles of range in less than 20mins.

[Gnevans]

I generally use my Ionity card or stop at a Porsche dealer which pretty much guarantees you a charger (they will free one up for customers).

It’s not cheap but i rarely charge outside of home on Octopus.

I have a Macan Turbo (non turbo) on order.

Is anyone getting a discount?

Edited by Gnevans on Monday 29th April 10:28

Edited by Gnevans on Tuesday 30th April 19:14

[E90_M3Ross]

RacerMike said:

E90_M3Ross said:

RacerMike said:

E90_M3Ross said:

This is something I often hear, and I'm not sure if I'm different to everyone else but when doing a long trip I rarely stop for more than 5-10mins. Usually stop, perhaps, every 200 miles or so. But recharging would take quite a bit longer. I do properly long trips 3x per year (well, 6 trips, if you include the return leg). All my other driving an EV would be perfectly acceptable, if I could charge at home, which I can't.

Just for info: The Macan will do 10-80% in 21mins. Given it has a range of 380 miles, you'd get 133miles of charge in your 10min break. London to Edinburgh is 412 miles.

'A Better Route Planner' is a very accurate EV route planner, and it recons you'd do the trip in a Macan easily on either two stops (1 of 10mins and one of 20) or 3 of 10 mins. I don't think realistically I'd stop for less time than that on an 8hr journey! In fact when I've driven Warwick to Aberdeen, I stopped for around 40mins at Tebay (the really nice ones with a duck pond and farm shop on the M6), and another two 5mins stops (once to refuel and once for a piss).

The reality is, in the UK even now, you'd do even the longest of journeys in broadly the same amount of time in an EV as you would in a petrol car.

That's interesting, thanks how likely is it you'd find a suitably fast charger enroute at the moment that's unoccupied? Genuine question, not being an arse!

All going to depend on when you're tryin to travel I imagine. Bank holiday Friday...probably got every chance of it being busy, but on a 350kW super fast charger, clearly people are going to be there less time than they are on a 50kW 'legacy' DC charger. Tebay has 4 150kW chargers and 2 50kW ones, the services before have 6 350kW and 3 60kW fast chargers. Next services after Tebay have 3 60kW chargers. It's far from perfect at the moment, but even compared to 3 years ago, it's getting there.

Long range in an EV is not a 'get in and think about it on the go' kind of experience still (mainly due to the charging infrastructure). In theory, give it another 5 years and we might be in a position where every major motorway services has say 10-20 350kW high speed chargers and at that point I would say we are in a 'get in and think about it on the go' situation. Actual charging speed is much less of a barrier now on things like the new Taycan and Macan. You can feasibly add well over 100 miles of range in under 10mins which is good enough for most UK journeys if you're starting at home with north of 300miles of range at 100%.

Stuff coming in the next 2 years will easily do north of 300 miles on a charge and do 200 plus miles of range in less than 20mins.

Thanks for taking the time to give that information, it's really helpful

[RacerMike]

Ultimately, I think the biggest barrier is that you need a degree in charging to understand what you can, can't and want to do. You have to know what charge speed your car will accept, what charge speed the charger can provide (and indeed whether that is provided if someone is using the charger next to you....hint: it's not in many cases and will be half the rated speed in that scenario), where the chargers are, what the backup plan is if you can't get a charger, which app to use, what your destination has in terms of charging and whether you're in a rush or not.

Remember that in the UK 57.4% of the population have numeracy skills at Level 2 or below. As a summary of what that means:

Understanding information given by numbers, symbols, simple diagrams and charts in graphic, numerical and written form. This includes:

• calculating costs and change
• adding and subtracting two-digit numbers

Adults below Entry Level 2 may not be able to use a cash machine, for example.

So faced with all of the above, you can see the actual problem we have. Carry on with what they know, pull up to a petrol pump, lift the handle and fill their car up or look on an app, read the specs of their car, find a charge station that delivers the max speed that their car can charge at, work out what percentage they need for their journey etc etc.

Unfortunately the charging infrastructure and charging standards have been designed by engineers and legislated for by government. There is zero user friendliness.

[E90_M3Ross]

I HATE the idea that you need an app to charge your car. Why can't you just pay using a credit card? What about, say, my nan who is a complete technophobe, she'd never be able to do it. It's becoming the same with parking!

[RacerMike]

E90_M3Ross said:

I HATE the idea that you need an app to charge your car. Why can't you just pay using a credit card? What about, say, my nan who is a complete technophobe, she'd never be able to do it. It's becoming the same with parking!

The government did mandate that they all now have to allow POS payments with a contactless card, but many charge you more to do so which is utterly criminal. There really needs to be a concerted effort at a ministerial level to actually sort it out as it's the biggest barrier to EV adoption currently. We need more on street AC charging in towns and cities for those of us who don't have driveways (that also doesn't cost an absolute fortune compared to domestic supplies) and we need some motivation for suppliers to install more DC chargers on busy routes.

[E90_M3Ross]

RacerMike said:

E90_M3Ross said:

I HATE the idea that you need an app to charge your car. Why can't you just pay using a credit card? What about, say, my nan who is a complete technophobe, she'd never be able to do it. It's becoming the same with parking!

The government did mandate that they all now have to allow POS payments with a contactless card, but many charge you more to do so which is utterly criminal. There really needs to be a concerted effort at a ministerial level to actually sort it out as it's the biggest barrier to EV adoption currently. We need more on street AC charging in towns and cities for those of us who don't have driveways (that also doesn't cost an absolute fortune compared to domestic supplies) and we need some motivation for suppliers to install more DC chargers on busy routes.

Agree with all of those points. I can't charge at home, which is one drawback for me.

[rmuss]

I think it's clear that the majority of the buyers will be in a company car scheme, at least when buying new. It's interesting to see there are almost double the amount of cars for sale for the Taycan vs the Panamera right now. I wonder with more EV models hitting the market, will that has a positive impact on future residuals or will the EV Macan go the same way.....

[cidered77]

cerb4.5lee said:

JAMSXR said:

ChrisCh86 said:

Agreed!

The options prices on Porsche's are crazy. I think I'd rather take the Tesla for half the price if I had to electric...

Agreed. I like this but a model Y will provide the same experience. With the change you can purchase a nice ICE for having some fun.

What?! Surely if you like an EV...then having fun isn't even on your agenda?



I do genuinely take my hat off to you lot who can get onboard with both ICE/EV for sure though!

I'm not anywhere close yet in comparison, however I'm not daft enough to say that it couldn't happen one day though in fairness.

It's an SUV - who cares about "fun" in an SUV? It's just a family car... the "turbo" option is just like all of the hot SUVs before it, just for bragging and occasional traffic light grand prixs.

Not too long ago you could buy one of these with a diesel. Did loads of angry middle aged men get all frothy about those also?

Most driving is boring. Most cars are boring also. This offers a powertrain that works for some buyers - company car buyers, obviously - but not all. Why these cars threaten people so is genuinely beyond me...

(not you chaps above necessarily, but scrolling back through comments this seemed as random a place as any to say the above)

[Chris-c1qtx]

The Macan 4 simply isn't fast enough for the money. Five secs to 60? in a £70k (or £90k) premium sports EV? Not good enough. Is there a chance they've throttled it to make the Taycan more relevant?

Porsche also needs to get over this aversion to one pedal driving. For every day use its one of the best features of an EV. Make the mode user selectable if need be, so its two pedal driving when pressing on, but to not offer strong regen modes is a mistake.

[The Wookie]

E90_M3Ross said:

Agree with all of those points. I can't charge at home, which is one drawback for me.

The road trips and other stuff you mention wouldn't be an issue for me but personally I wouldn't do it yet if you can't charge at home, or at least reliably at the office. The big appeal for me with my Taycan is that for every extra 5 minutes I spend at a charging station on a long journey I save half an hour in petrol stations for my day to day use.

Without home charging it's less convenient and marginal in terms of economics against a comparable ICE car, at least until the charging network is pervasive enough (it will get there) and the prices drop.

[The Wookie]

Nicolas Lazar said:

That is the epitome of a pointless concept. Only fit for major urban conglomerates, which require neither high speed, nor offroad-ish capabilities. Try driving from somewhere in Western Europe down to the Balkans! LOL. For those old enough, think back on the first year of catalytic converters requiring unleaded fuel - huge parts of Europe were just off limits. Same now with charging infrastructure. There are still areas in Greater Europe where even today the rarety of gas stations require some fuel monitoring. And then the high-speed part. Even not talking about legal speed limits, an Autobahn high speed run with a BEV drains the battery inside 30 minutes. Just not do-able. I like the interior, and the rear. The front is very forced and unharmonic. In any case, it would be more honest to just offer it with front wheel drive.

That's a new one on the anti-EV bingo card, 'You can't drive it to the Balkans'

[Greenmantle]

Chris-c1qtx said:

The Macan 4 simply isn't fast enough for the money. Five secs to 60? in a £70k (or £90k) premium sports EV? Not good enough. Is there a chance they've throttled it to make the Taycan more relevant?

Porsche also needs to get over this aversion to one pedal driving. For every day use its one of the best features of an EV. Make the mode user selectable if need be, so its two pedal driving when pressing on, but to not offer strong regen modes is a mistake.

I have been following the Porsche Macan EV for some time now. An EV will be my next vehicle to replace my daily. (I have an ICE as backup). This thread is just indicative of why I have been thinking that the Macan EV will be a flop. Apart from the post above and maybe a few others everything else is NOT about the Macan EV. I dont think the interest is there and you cant assume that the take up will be identical to the Taycan since we all know that was mostly done for financial reasons and the financial situation is completely different now.

[E90_M3Ross]

The Wookie said:

E90_M3Ross said:

Agree with all of those points. I can't charge at home, which is one drawback for me.

The road trips and other stuff you mention wouldn't be an issue for me but personally I wouldn't do it yet if you can't charge at home, or at least reliably at the office. The big appeal for me with my Taycan is that for every extra 5 minutes I spend at a charging station on a long journey I save half an hour in petrol stations for my day to day use.

Without home charging it's less convenient and marginal in terms of economics against a comparable ICE car, at least until the charging network is pervasive enough (it will get there) and the prices drop.

I wonder whether the charging network will ever get cheaper. I suspect once enough people have EVs they'll get taxed one way or another so their costs will be similar to ICE cars in the main.

[The Wookie]

E90_M3Ross said:

I wonder whether the charging network will ever get cheaper. I suspect once enough people have EVs they'll get taxed one way or another so their costs will be similar to ICE cars in the main.

Perhaps but at the moment there's a lot of investment in infrastructure from the charging station operators, probably funded by borrowing offered based on strong margins and being paid off by income from a relatively small number of sites.

There's also little in the way of real competition between operators yet as the network is still sparse enough to be working on more of a 'need' basis than being able to pick and choose where to stop.

Also I daresay it's more likely that ICE will be punitively taxed as time goes on.