2022 Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo In-Depth Review | Sponsored by MotorEnvy.com

As a former Corvette guy, Porsche is one of those car brands that I never quite understood. I couldn't figure out why they were so prized, so coveted, so expensive, until I finally drove one. And ever since I couldn't get enough of them, every car they manufactured just seemed to make sense. So one day, I decided that I should win the Dark side Say hello to our 2022 Porsche Taycan Cross Turism. So this is the new Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo. It's not the range topping Turbo S, turbo or even A4s, but the humble base trim, the Taycan 4. Today I want to find out what makes Porsche's electric wagon stand out in the sea of EVs. Press the little power button on your left and the car boots up with no noises or drama. The first time you do it, it's weird. So is the second, the third, and the fourth. Honestly, I don't think I'll ever get used to it. But the first thing you notice afterwards is how nice the steering wheel feels in the hand. It's pretty much the perfect diameter and thickness. You'll also notice that my wife is riding shotgun with me today because without a person in that seat, the Taycan disables the optional passenger display, which is a shame, but I understand the potential safety implications. It's basically a duplicate of the main screen that allows your co pilot to control almost everything that you can, which I find super cool. Kind of like the Ferrari GTC4 Lusso. Oh yeah, there aren't any paddles either, which also feels a little strange. But the gear selector is up here on the right of the wheel, so let's get. There is a slight electric wear as you drive around, but it's barely audible from inside the car. The Cross Turismo rides on a three chamber air suspension setup which allows you to electronically switch through drive modes at a fraction of a second. It also gives you different ride heights to choose from. Our particular vehicle is equipped with the off road package, which adds cool black arrow bits, but also further lifts the car even higher in gravel mode and that basically makes it a quasi suv. Normal mode here is the equivalent of comfort or tour, so it should be the most plush suspension setting, but as you can see on these roads, it doesn't really soak up the bumps all too well. It's definitely no Mercedes or Cadillac, but it's better than a GT4 or maybe my Lotus, I guess. Regardless, it's basically on the borderline of what I would deem daily drivable in the communist State of New Jersey. So there aren't any physical H VAC controls. Actually, there aren't any physical buttons anywhere except on the steering wheel. But this bottom screen here controls all your pertinent settings. Takes a little getting used to, but it has haptic feedback, which is nice. I'm usually a physical buttons kind of guy, but I think this was pretty intuitive and is way easier to operate than the equivalent software in a Tesla. There's also shortcut buttons on the top of the screen to get you to different parts of the infotainment. Overall, I like it. Not too distracting and I don't find myself overreaching like in a traditional car where the controls are under the center stack. I also find the steering quite fantastic. I don't know how to explain it, but it just feels right. Like I said earlier, the steering wheel is the perfect size for sporty driving. Even in normal mode here it feels a lot like the Sport plus setting in most luxury sports sedans today. So I can't wait to actually throw it into Sport plus to see what kind of cool stuff happens. Actually, let's just do that now. This car has the optional GT steering wheel with the Sport chrono package, which to me is a necessity. It's quintessential Porsche. If you don't get it, it's like drinking an old Fashioned with crushed ice. Anyway, it gives you the mode dial here on the bottom to quickly go through your drive modes. Fiddle with some of the buttons on the steering wheel and you can change the gauges on the panoramic digital dash. Okey doke. Here we go.

It.

There's only one word I can use to describe this car in Sport Plus. Sharp. Everything is on point. Power delivery is instantaneous. It's super linear and torquey. The feedback in the steering is amazing. Very little body roll. The suspension is noticeably stiffer, and the fake noises make it feel like I'm piloting a spaceship. This doesn't feel like a 5100 pound quarter quasi SUV. I mean, our XXM50 was a 5000 pound quasi SUV and this car makes that feel like an absolute whale. Okay, so let's go back into comfort mode here and play with the menu. The main screen allows you to access more of the car's functions and there's quite a lot of them, so it can be a bit annoying to dig through. Here you can customize your drive mode and change your ride height. There are five different options. It only takes the car a few seconds to implement them and you can do it While you're driving too. Range mode is the eco mode, and that makes you turn off the passenger display for maximum efficiency, but we won't do that. This car is also optioned with massage seats and the menu setting is the only way to get to them. There's no physical button, which I find annoying because I have to constantly activate them through the menu. But it's worth it because the massage function is actually useful. It's way better than the BMWs, and I would say it's on par with something in a Range Rover. You also have a few options for your instrument display. I like the extended map for cruising around town. It makes the car feel even more futuristic. Now, while we're in this mode, let's talk about the elephant in the car. Porsche claims around 227 miles as the rated EPA range. Many consumers and testers have found that they can get up to around 280 in certain conditions. I personally found that 250 is reasonably attainable for the normal person, but with my style of driving in sport plus all the time, I get around 200 or so before needing to charge. And that's honestly plenty, unless you plan to commute over 100 miles a day, in which case you should really just buy a Tesla anyway. I rarely end up under 50% because charging overnight nets you about a quarter tank, and I expend much less than that doing my daily chores. Either way, I plan to set up a solar system on my garage roof so that I can basically charge for free. Another thing is Porsche doesn't have one pedal driving. The regenerative braking is very mild and it's only activated in Sport plus, which makes it feel a bit more like a combo combustion engine sports car. In normal or range mode, they expect you to coast the car to maintain speed and in that way the motors disconnect and then you get maximum mileage. Anyway, as much as I enjoy blabbering about saving the environment, I think it's about time we move on to more important stuff. The performance tests. Now, before we get to the runs, let's go over some of the technical aspects of the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo. The Cross Turismo is a mystical four door luxury sport wagon. And although they are common in Europe, we barely get any cool wagons here in the US because manufacturers seem to think that nobody wants them. But I have no idea what they're smoking. And since this is the only electric wagon on the market, it's really in a class of its own. Regardless, at this power level, we'll compare it directly to our XXM50 as well as a few other electric offerings. Anyway, like we mentioned earlier, the CT4 weighs around 5,100 pounds, but it doesn't feel that way. With a 469 horsepower rating, the power to weight ratio sits at a modest 10.91. That makes this car severely underpowered, especially at this price range. And though I think it handles exceptionally well for how big it is, I really hope I don't get disappointed by the straight line performance. The Cross Turismo comes with all wheel drive as standard and obviously there's no engine, but there is a nice little front compartment here that can hold a gym bag and maybe some groceries. The car has meaty 245s in the front and 285s in the rear, so I don't anticipate any traction issues at all. I really like how this car looks from pretty much every angle. The black bits from the off road pack make everything look more aggressive. The roof rails are superficial for me, but I think they are an absolute necessity to complete the look. The rear of the car is probably the sexiest though, it's just got the widest looking hips and I would dare to say that it is probably one of the best looking wagons on the market. Actually I would go as far to call it as one of the most attractive four door cars that you can buy right now, but of course I might be biased. The interior is pretty futuristic looking and I love the overall aesthetic, but frankly some of the tech isn't out of this world. The self driving autonomy is only level 2 and in some cases our old BMW would perform more reliably in that department. The heads up display is absolute garbage and the self park is as useless as ever, but the panoramic roof is such a cool touch. The slate carry seats are the standard option, but they already offer a tremendous amount of lateral support. They are pleasantly comfortable, but I wouldn't go more than two hours in them without the massage function. We really love the neodymium gold in the wood accents that we optioned as well. The Bose sound system is the standard audio package and unfortunately it's one of those things that we wish we upgraded since there's nothing else to listen to while you're driving. Anyway, let's move on. We can't really cold start a rev an ev, but I've always been curious about what it sounds like from the outside. The car definitely attracts a lot of attention. We get compliments on it pretty much every day. I think that the Mamba green metallic certainly makes it a lot more flashy than the usual boring black, white or silver taycans that we see, but I'd like to think that it's also people's affection for wagons. There isn't much that I would do to this car aesthetically besides putting on bronze wheels for now. I'm planning to put on some spacers after I finish this episode to widen the stance. Some people tend to slam these cars even more to make it look sportier, but I actually like the lifted look, especially if you got some nubby all terrain tires to go with it. Alright, it's time we got this party started. Something I forgot to mention earlier is that this is one of the only EVs that has a transmission. It has two ratios and you'll see that it actuates that gear change around 80 or 90 miles per hour. The car has launch control and it's pretty simple to engage sport plus foot on the brake, floor the throttle and you're off. The launch is surprisingly soft, but the gear change makes it feel like it gives the car an extra boost on the top end. Let's do that one more time. So we talked about the power to weight ratio earlier and how the car is just under 11. 1, which puts it in the entry level sports sedan category. And that means C43, AMG, CT4V, Maserati Ghibli, or maybe even the M340i if we're lucky. But this car seriously surprised me and we might have to rewrite physics a little here. Let's start with our in house 40100 where the cross turismo ran a very impressive seven seconds flat, and that's just a hair slower than our XXM50, which I really wasn't expecting, but it also punches way above its own weight class when it comes to cars with similar power ratios. Even though it's a base car, it still outperforms some range topping trims here. Something to keep in mind is that EVs are generally not impacted by changes in density altitude like most combustion cars are, which means that you'll probably run these times in the middle of summer, even when everything else is performing a full second slower. 60 to 130 is where the Porsche really impressed me and it ran a 11.98 second time. Now this is slow in the grand scheme of things and I'm used to owning cars that are in the 7 or 8 second range, but considering that it's only 469 horsepower, it's already faster than Audi's 600 horsepower RSQ8 and over a full second faster than our 530 horsepower and X6 M50. I'm sure a range topping Model X plaid would be faster, but a long range version would stand no chance if the P100D is already slower here. The standing half mile is my favorite part because it's all about top end and the trap speed is what matters. The CT4 crossed the line at 137.4 and that's basically the V max in the car. I'm not sure if it's electronically or mechanically limited, but the car felt like it had a little bit more left to give in it regardless. That's really fast for something like this, and honestly it's it throws the notion of EVs having no top end right out the window. This thing has a faster trap speed than the LC500, X6M50 and even a base BMW X3M. I could go on forever here, but we really need to move on to the handling test.

It's.

The car posted a respectable lap time of 50.17 second seconds. To be honest, I'm a little disappointed that we didn't get a sub 52nd time and I'm sure we probably could have gotten it with a few more laps. However, we have to play by the rules here of only having a maximum of three hot laps for testing. The car felt amazing though. I keep referencing the 5,100 pound curb weight, but because most of that is from the batteries at the bottom of the car, it makes the center of gravity extremely low. Couple that with rear wheel steer, aggressive spring rates in the air suspension and how linear the steering feels, you have an extremely nimble car, especially for something with the footprint of a mid sized suv. Even the brakes felt good. For something this heavy there wasn't much fade at all, and that's because the electric motors actually handle the majority of the braking first, regenerating the power so the brakes don't get touched unless you're at the limit. Overall it's predictable, it's smooth bumps don't seem to unsettle at speed, and the instant torque gets you out of a corner fast, but frankly this is something I've almost come to expect from a Porsche. To see more times in the metrics, check out the fastlisk link in the description below. I feel like I spent this entire video praising the car, but the Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo is not without fault. The biggest problem in my opinion is the power rating. Yes, it's fast, but it's a conditional kind of fast. Which means that the performance we attained is only available through activating the overboost function via launch control. Because no matter what you do from a roll, you only have 360 and that means that it's a completely different car. It's not slow, but it's not the 469 horsepower animal that I want to have all the time. This problem translates over to road racing as well because effectively you only have that 375 when you're going around a road course. Now I really wish they gave us a temporary 22nd overboost function like they do in some of their other cars. The next problem is price. But this applies to all Porsches. When they tell you a car starts at 95 grand, expect to add another $20,000 on top of that. Because everything is an option and every option is something that you either want or need at this price point. So even a base Taycan Cross Turismo is effectively a $110,000 car, or in our case, 130. And at this price, I'm expecting better tech, more luxury amenities and a decent sound system. But I think I might be asking for a little bit too much. Because a lot of what you're paying for here is the Porsche branding and their guarantee that you're getting a perfectly balanced, over engineered vehicle that is practical in a lot of ways, but will still outperform almost everything that it should compete against. However, that doesn't mean that the touring mode shouldn't be more comfortable, that the heads up display couldn't be larger, or that the car can't lock itself. When you walk away with the keys, there are just these little things that make it short of perfect. But then again, nothing in life is perfect.

So the Taycan, it's been out for a few years now, but I still.

Stand by the fact that I think.

It'S probably one of the best EVs you can buy at the moment. And it's not because we own the car. Well, it's definitely one of the reasons.

Why we bought it in the first place.

But I feel like everything Porsche does, they do it right. And their first four right here into the electric car world is no exception. Yeah, their autonomous tech sucks. The car is kind of expensive, and the sub 300 mile range is pretty mediocre, on paper at least.

But the core of it was that.

They wanted to make an EV fun and exciting. Somehow I think they succeeded. Will that ever match the fun you get from a combustion engine sports car? No way in hell. But it's like the Impossible Burger or Beyond Meat or whatever those fake beef patties are called. They aren't half bad if you do it right. I mean give me a real cow any day, but if I had no choice and beef was seven bucks a gallon, sure I'll eat a vegan burger, but let's not get too carried away here. The Cross Turismo to me is a better car than the normal Taycan because it's arguably better looking, more rare, more practical, and I don't believe you lose a lot in terms of handling or straight line performance if you spec the car right. The GTS is probably the best balance, but but I really like all the aggressive aero bits that you get with the off road pack. You can't really option that on a Sport Turismo or even the normal coupe style Taycan.

Regardless, there's no sexier wagon on the.

Market right now, EV or not.

Do I regret not buying a 4S or Turbo?

Yeah, but after testing out the base trim CT4, it exceeded my expectations in every way. And I feel like more power isn't really necessarily the answer in something like this. Would it make the car better?

For sure.

But the Taycan Cross Reasonable is already a hell of an option for those who want something electric, something sexy, practical. At the same time, I think my only gripe is probably that I can't make it faster via a tune or anything like that. At least not yet.

But what do you guys think of.

The Taycan Cross Turismo? Did we buy the right car? Let me know in the comments below. I'm definitely going to be having some.

More Taycan content coming on in the.

Next few months, so stay tuned for that.

That's going to do for me on.

This episode and as always, I'll catch you all on the next one.

I hope you guys enjoyed this video and special thanks to Eldar and the team at Porsche Mechanicsburg for making the Taycan Cross Reasono a reality. Even though this is our personal car, I always try to remain unbiased and give an honest opinion as a car enthusiast, as well as provide the most realistic performance data possible. So if you like this video, go ahead and give it a thumbs up. And if you're new to the channel, subscribe. Don't forget to check out some of my other stuff and hit that subscribe button if you like what you see. Thanks for watching.