The journey from one side of the USA to another has become infamous over the years; you only need look at the recent inclusion of the Cannonball Run Countach into the National Historic Vehicle Register for proof of that. Alongside the oldest known jeep in the world and the first Indy 500 winner sits a car from a goofy comedy, because everybody loves the mystique of driving almost 3,000 miles from one US coast to another. That allure continues into the EV age, too, albeit without the car chases. Or the 12 exhaust pipes.
Porsche has claimed a Guinness World Record for the least time spent charging to cross the United States in an EV. Which, admittedly, will make the Taycan less notorious than any of the supercars used over the decades for New York to LA, but does have a tad more relevance for real-world customers. Using the Electrify America and Plug Share apps, driver Wayne Gerdes was able to spend just two hours, 26 minutes and 48 seconds charging to drive 2,834.5 miles. Though that's without a total journey time (presumably as it would look slow against all the naughty ones), it remains an incredibly short amount of time to be plugged in for such a journey. The previous record, for reference, was seven hours, 10 minutes and one second - that's how quickly things are moving on. The record isn't a guarantee that every charger will work on a long EV journey - we've all been caught out in that regard - but it does prove what's now possible. Imagine suggesting this sort of thing had happened even five years ago.
A base Taycan with the Performance Battery Plus was used for the journey, with independent adjudicators (hopefully having been paid a lot) there to witness and time every charger. Every mile had to be filmed, tracked and accounted for, too, so this is as legit as it's going to get for a coast-to-coast claim.
Gerdes said of this record: "I'm proud and honestly a little surprised to have set the new benchmark by such a margin. The Taycan performed even better than expected... I'm grateful to both Porsche for supporting me and to Electrify America's network, which made it possible." With both the US coast-to-coast and Lands' End to John O'Groats charging records now comprehensively beaten, it makes you wonder what might come next - bring on London to Sydney...
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