2021 Porsche Panamera 4S E-Hybrid review: Plug-in with power and poise

The all-electric Porsche Taycan is a incredibly hot ticket suitable now, but don’t snooze on the plug-in hybrid Panamera. Porsche’s selection of electrified Panameras presents a flavor of EV everyday living with the reassurance and advantage of a fuel-fed powertrain, and for 2021, an exceptional new variant joins the lineup: the 4S E-Hybrid.

The 4S E-Hybrid slides in over the normal Panamera four Hybrid but very well beneath the absolutely bonkers Turbo S E-Hybrid. Like the other people, you can get the 4S E-Hybrid in extended-wheelbase Executive and wagony goodness Activity Turismo entire body kinds, or just adhere with the normal liftback tested right here.

In fact, the common ol’ Panamera appears to be like far better than at any time, many thanks to the now-normal SportDesign front fascia and redesigned taillights. All sorts of twenty- and 21-inch wheel layouts are readily available, and there are a whole bunch of hues, which includes favorites like Papaya, Copper Ruby, Aventurine Eco-friendly or the Gentian Blue observed right here. Of class, you can opt for to purchase off the menu and get your have distinctive colour combo (for a significant cost), just make sure it won’t clash with the E-Hybrid-precise Acid Eco-friendly badge accents and brake calipers.

Inside of the Panamera, not considerably changes for 2021. This Porsche is comfy as heck, with supportive seats, wonderful match and complete and logically arranged controls. The backlit centre console will select up just about every smudge your fingers can lay down, and if you seem at it in immediate sunlight, you are going to see the unlit icons for the selections you ended up also inexpensive to invest in. Speaking of which, when lane-keeping aid and visitors sign recognition are normal fare for 2021, Porsche’s other goodies — which includes InnoDrive, which brings together adaptive cruise manage and lane-keeping aid — keep on being optional.

The Panamera utilizes Porsche’s slightly more mature infotainment software program, housed on a twelve.3-inch touchscreen in the sprint. This process is a lot robust, with superior-res graphics, bright hues and crisp fonts, and it immediately responds to swipes and taps. Wi-fi Apple CarPlay arrives normal throughout the Panamera selection, but this auto will need an infotainment update prior to Android Vehicle is readily available. Before long, good friends. Before long.

All electrified Panameras have 27{d11068cee6a5c14bc1230e191cd2ec553067ecb641ed9b4e647acef6cc316fdd} extra battery capability for 2021, which means the seventeen.9-kilowatt-hour battery can give more time electric driving selection, even if the EPA only says the 4S E-Hybrid will go 19 miles on a complete charge. Luckily, you can recharge the battery when driving — finest carried out on the freeway in Activity and Activity Additionally modes — and all instructed, you really should get about fifty mpge if you plug in frequently.

On its have, the 4S E-Hybrid’s two.9-liter twin-turbo V6 will make 443 horsepower and 405 pound-toes of torque, which is extra than enough oomph for a auto the Panamera’s sizing. Factor in the battery’s electric muscle and the 4S E-Hybrid’s complete process output is 552 hp and 553 lb-ft, which is enough to get this big boy to 60 mph in just 3.5 seconds. For reference, which is .3 seconds a lot quicker than the electric Taycan 4S with the general performance battery.

All Panamera styles are pleased to be tossed all around, and the immediate steering and well balanced chassis make the 4S E-Hybrid a pleasure to travel on winding roadways. Even far better, the Panamera is an absolutely serene highway cruiser, especially so when you leave it in Hybrid Vehicle mode and enable the motor shut off when coasting. Typical adaptive dampers support keep the trip easy and supple, and there is barely any noise or chatter from the Michelin summer months tires wrapping my tester’s twenty-inch wheels. General performance selections like rear axle steering and torque-vectoring for the all-wheel-travel process make improvements to the Panamera’s dealing with chops, and you can even incorporate Porsche’s ceramic composite brakes, if you feel like plunking down an excess $9,860.

The brakes, sadly, are the 4S E-Hybrid’s only dynamic weakness. Despite Porsche engineers telling me they manufactured software program tweaks to ease the transition among mechanical and regenerative braking, the on-street practical experience stays a little bit wonky. You will find inconsistent pedal feel and the brakes can be grabby at lower speeds. My buddy Andrew Krok noticed this when he tested the Panamera 4S E-Hybrid Activity Turismo, also.

Even so, which is a small blemish on what is an in any other case flawless bundle. The Panamera 4S E-Hybrid does almost everything very well — it can be speedy, comfy, fun to travel, and many thanks to its liftback style and folding rear seats, it can be really darn functional, as very well. It can be not the most extraordinary plug-in Panamera — that honor goes to the 690-hp Turbo S E-Hybrid — but the 4S is all the auto you are going to at any time need working day to working day. Additionally, the Turbo S E-Hybrid expenditures extra than $one hundred ninety,000. Yikes.

Not that the 4S E-Hybrid is what I might phone inexpensive, with a beginning cost of $114,650 which includes $1,350 for vacation spot. Add niceties like rear-axle steering, activity exhaust, heated steering wheel, 7.two-kilowatt onboard charger (for a lot quicker energy consumption), Bose surround seem process and a few other goodies, and you get to the $a hundred thirty five,510 as-tested cost of the auto pictured right here.

The Panamera is the only auto in its course to supply a plug-in powertrain and the 4S E-Hybrid is a mighty good possibility for the EV-curious. But contemplating the electric Taycan is now outselling the Panamera by a factor of 4 to one, this electrified half-step might not be the finest of the two worlds it after was.