2025 Porsche Taycan 4 Pumps Up the Volume

My friends and I don’t talk anymore. “How’s it going?” has been replaced by a rapid exchange of 20-second viral clips of race-car drivers flippin’ the bird at 180 mph or meal-prep recipes. Often, before I can finish the first, the queue has grown by two or three. The same could be said for Porsche; there’s always another one to watch. The refreshed Taycan sedan lineup is now seven models wide. It spans more than $130,000 in starting price, and over 600 lb-ft of torque separates the base Taycan from the frenetic Turbo GT at the top.

The year marks the first that Taycan buyers can get all-wheel drive without getting pushed into a $120,495 4S or a Cross Turismo wagon. Porsche says this trim will likely be the Taycan’s volume model, and that’s probably right. For $105,295 ($3900 above the base rear-wheel-drive Taycan), the Taycan 4 has more torque, narrowly better acceleration, and the added security of all-wheel drive.

4 Sho

Like the rear-drive Taycan, the 4 has 402 horsepower with the standard 82.3-kWh battery pack and 429 ponies with the optional 97.0-kWh Performance Battery Plus ($5780). The addition of the front motor, which the 4 borrows from the more powerful 4S, means that in the base model, torque is 431 lb-ft, and with the larger battery, it’s 449 lb-ft, an increase of 140 lb-ft over the rear-drive Taycan. That’s almost a Mazda MX-5 Miata’s worth of added torque.

Porsche claims the 4 is quicker to 60 mph by a tenth, but we suspect that’s a modest estimate. The 2025 Taycan RWD we recently tested reached 60 mph in 4.1 seconds. Shaving a couple of tenths off that would mean that one of the most affordable Taycans is a sub-four-second car, but it’s unlikely to match the 3.4-second time of the 562-hp 2020 Taycan 4S we tested.

Ninety percent of our drive time behind the wheel of the Taycan 4 was atop ice at the Porsche Ice Experience center in Levi, Finland. It’s as great a place to give Porsche cars the ol’ Scandinavian flick as it is a terrible place to be a reindeer. Our cars were equipped with a $6495 package that adds Taycan Turbo Aero 20-inch wheels and Michelin Pilot Alpin 5 winter tires, giving the 4 incredible traction in the snowy Arctic Circle.

We did low-speed sliding through Porsche’s icy slaloms, across a figure-eight track (a large snowbank prevented us from crossing through the middle), and around a drift circle in below-freezing temperatures. While that’s not the most comprehensive driving experience, it did highlight the characteristics that make the Taycan one of best electric cars we’ve driven.

Lifting off throttle, giving the wheel a crank, and then tipping back into the throttle at the beginning of the slalom puts the Taycan into a slide. There’s a lot of weight to transfer as you swing the Taycan from left to right around cones, but the steering’s linear buildup makes it easy to control. Even in a low-traction scenario such as ice and snow, the ability to balance the throttle with countersteering to hold on to an epic slide takes far less brain power than it should. The result? You look cool and sweat less.

But at What Cost?

The Porsche spec sheet indicates that the Taycan 4 is nearly 200 pounds heavier than the rear-drive car, so we estimate the weight of the all-wheel drive model to be about 4900 to 5100 pounds, depending on the battery-pack size. Brake caliper and rotor specifications remain the same, with 14.2-inch rotors up front and 14.1 inches in the rear.

Despite that the Taycan 4 is on sale now and live on Porsche’s configurator, EPA ratings for driving range have yet to be published. Based on calculations from Europe’s WLTP figures, we estimate EPA driving range will be about 260 miles for the standard battery and up to 310 miles for the optional pack. The 2025 rear-drive Taycan earned a 318-mile EPA estimate in Performance Battery Plus guise.

A big part of the refreshed Taycans’ updates for 2025 involves charging speed and management of battery temperatures. While the maximum DC fast-charging rate has increased to 320 kW (for Performance Battery Plus only; the standard Performance Battery’s max is 270 kW), that’s only part of the story.

An updated climate compressor has increased battery cooling power from 9 to 12 kW, and energy allowed for heating the battery has more than doubled from 7 to 17 kW. That makes for quicker preconditioning. And Porsche claims its new charging capabilities—feats we sampled from a prototype model—have halved its charging times in 60-degree temps.

Stealth Wealth

Short of a tiny “4” badge on the liftgate, it’s impossible to tell the 4 apart from the base Taycan. Both come with 19-inch Taycan S Aero wheels, LED headlights, and that same Taycan maw that looks a lot like Toothless from DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon. The 4 could’ve been a checkbox on the order sheet, as it’s purely the option of all-wheel drive.

The $3900 upcharge for all-wheel drive is about the same as you’d pay in far more affordable electric vehicles. Take the Hyundai Ioniq 5, for example. Upgrading an Ioniq 5 SE with all-wheel drive will run you $3500. In a Volkswagen ID.Buzz, the difference between a Pro S Plus RWD van and the all-wheel-drive Pro S Plus 4Motion is $4500.

There are more EVs to buy than ever, and the cadence of new models and updates can feel like a barrage. But like another video of a dash cam capturing instant karma or dogs demanding payment of the cheese tax, more Taycans are a good thing. We look forward to testing the all-wheel-drive Taycan 4 ahead of deliveries, which Porsche says will start in June. Feel free to send us one. Or like six at a time. Just don’t say anything. Don’t make it weird.

Source: Reviews - aranddriver.com