Just as the facelifted 2024 Porsche Taycan hits the road in Europe, complete with bigger batteries, increased range and more power, the German sports car marque is well underway preparing the second-generation EV sedan due around 2027.
Porsche’s first electric car is now well into its lifecycle, having launched in Europe in 2019 – more than a year after its specs were announced and four years since the car was previewed as the Mission E concept in 2015.
Now, the 2024 Porsche Taycan model line’s head of energy systems, Sarah Razavi, has told carsales that the company is well down the track with the second generation, shown here in unofficial digital renderings.
“Next generation? Yes, obviously, once we publish one model, we already [start] work on the next one, so we are currently creating ideas [and asking] what should we improve with the next generation,” she said.
We’ve just driven the facelifted Taycan in Europe ahead of its local arrival from mid-2024.
But as Razavi explained, the development team has pushed the current (J1) platform architecture as far as it can go, most notably with the Bugatti-bashing Porsche Taycan Turbo GT, which can accelerate from 0-100km/h in 2.2 seconds and 0-200km/h in a spleen-popping 6.4sec.
“I think we did a great job to really push and squeeze every bit out of the current platform. We’re probably going to see an evolution of the platform,” she said.
But she conceded the current Taycan’s J1 platform architecture “definitely has some limitations”.
Tuning the EV’s gearing, traction control and electric motors hasn’t posed a problem for the engineering team, the new Taycan now taking pride of place as the German brand’s fastest and most powerful series-production vehicle, with tyre technology the only impediment to going faster.
So where will enhancements be made in the second-generation Porsche Taycan?
Despite successfully improving recharge times and pushing more energy to its e-motors (via a 900-amp inverter capacity on Turbo GT models), it’s understood that battery density and cost-effectiveness are high on the agenda.
Porsche studying solid-state battery tech
Asked if solid-state battery technology was being considered for the next-generation Porsche Taycan, Razavi said: “We’re looking into all options, obviously, to improve range.”
Her colleague and Taycan product specialist, Mayk Wienkötter, was quick to change the direction of the conversation, insisting “It’s too early to speculate” on solid-state batteries.
“We’ve been working on it, of course, but giving a timeframe when it’s ready? It’s way too early, too early [to confirm],” he said.
“It’s not ready in one or two years. It’s coming but it will take time,” he added.
The current Porsche Taycan sources its lithium-ion battery packs from tech giant LG, and Razavi said there were options on the table regarding Porsche’s future battery strategy.
“To be honest, there’s a big discussion going on about what kind of range is appropriate? So do you really need a wide range? Do you need fast charging? What is the priority?”
She said the top priority for the just-launched 2024 Taycan is “fast-path traveling, so it needs to be the right amount of range combined with the fast charging”.
She added that bigger batteries mean more mass, so it’s always a balancing act.
“You need to find the sweet spot,” she said.
“I love driving performance cars. We’ve had a lot of discussions in the last few years about EVs and I think they’re really capable. To do it right, we learned a lot on our way [with Taycan] but we still can see quite big changes in the technology.”