Porsche Cayenne & Cayenne Coupe Electric

So what use is 1141bhp on the UK roads of 2026, you may be wondering, in a full-size electric SUV? Well, you can actually use it, believe it or not. Most of it, at any rate – and in very short bursts – because Porsche’s tuning for the Cayenne Electric’s controls is so good. 

You only get access to all of it during launch control starts; but dialling up Sport Plus mode on the rotary drive mode knob lets you tap into a little over 1000bhp of power, which the car deploys surprisingly progressively.

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The accelerator pedal isn’t made to feel like a switch, as in some fast EVs. Instead, you can just squeeze, and squeeze, and squeeze. The Cayenne’s capacity to find ever more urgency makes you feel a little like you might actually have been ‘beamed’ from one place to another without actually visiting any of the spaces in between. On smooth surfaces, the car can accelerate and then cover ground mesmerisingly quickly.

Alternatively, if you just get in and drive it about in Comfort or Normal mode, the car feels incredibly civilised. Almost zen-like, actually. There’s tyre noise from the enormous 22in Michelin tyres, but almost no motor whine; wind noise is subdued; and you breeze along, trying not to be tempted by the ‘push to pass’ button. 

Meanwhile, while the Taycan has more feelsome brake response, the Cayenne’s (whether you’ve added optional ceramics or not) are still some of the best brakes of any performance EV.

And what of the mid-range S model? Well, a 657bhp electric Porsche Cayenne is not, it turns out, in want of urgency. It doesn’t quite rocket off the line like the Turbo; but still, any car this size that can hit 62mph from rest in less than four seconds has to be considered a very serious performance prospect indeed. The S feels like the rubicon beyond which Cayenne Electric performance extends into the realm of the gratuitous; or, to put it another way, it’s all the Cayenne Electric anybody really needs.

Porsche meters the car’s accelerator and brake pedal progression in suitably linear fashion, so the car only ever responds to either how you expect it to. Unlike in the Taycan, no gearshift is necessary in order for the car to keep piling on the pace, which it’ll do urgently all the way up to fast autobahn speeds. Regen, meanwhile, is controlled either through a handy shortcut ‘button’ on the central touchscreen, or via the selected drive mode dialled in via the steering-mounted rotary knob (if you want it off entirely, you can have that).

After all that, the standard Cayenne Electric’s 436bhp and 0-62mph time of 4.8sec sounds almost weedy – but in practice it’s a muscular and serene thing to drive, that offers 90% of what even the Turbo can do in most cases for a lot less money. It wouldn’t leave anyone feeling short-changed.