Review: Porsche Macan Electric 2024

Do the Germans have an impressively long word for something that is all new, yet feels reassuringly familiar? If they do, that’s how we’d like to describe the new all-electric Porsche Macan.

It looks similar to the old Macan on the outside, works a lot like the new Cayenne on the inside, and drives with the equal measures of refinement and enthusiasm that give Porsche SUVs their trademark feel. Sporty soundtrack aside, the fact that it’s electric is neither here nor there.

It isn’t called the “e-Macan” or the “Macan EV.” It won’t be sold alongside an identical petrol version built to appease drivers too scared by range anxiety to commit to electric (although the old model is available until the end of 2025 in some markets, including the UK).

It’s just the new Macan. An electric Macan that draws absolutely zero attention to the fact that it’s powered by batteries. No green badging, no cutesy wheels designed to look like plugs, no lightning bolt icons. Not even a radical interior redesigned to make the driver feel like their purchase is akin to forging a path into a brave new world. It’s just a midsize Porsche SUV that happens to be electric. This might not be an exciting move, but it is one brimming with quiet confidence.

Revealed in January, priced from $78,800 (£69,800 in the UK), and available to order now, the new Macan goes up against the upcoming Polestar 4 and the aging Jaguar I-Pace. For context, the electric Macan 4 is $16,000 more than the previous base model, or just $4,300 pricier than the outgoing Macan S, while offering similar straight-line performance.

The electric Macan Turbo takes Porsche’s smaller SUV into six-figure territory for the first time, but at $105,300 it costs slightly less than the $109,000 Maserati Grecale Folgore despite being quicker, more powerful, and with a greater range and faster charging.

It’ll also do battle with the Audi Q6 e-tron, with which it shares its underpinnings. Both cars are built on the new Premium Platform Electric (PPE) architecture, codeveloped by Porsche and Audi. It’s an 800-volt system that allows the Macan’s 100-kWh battery (95 kWh usable) to charge at up to 270 kW. That’s a little behind the otherworldly 320 kW maximum charge rate of the recently facelifted Taycan, but still means the Macan can be filled from 10 to 80 percent in as little as 21 minutes, Porsche claims.

Split Trick Charging

Porsche knows such potent public chargers aren’t always available, so the PPE has a trick up its sleeve. Plug the Macan into a lesser 400-volt charger and a high-voltage switch is flicked, effectively splitting the 800-volt battery into two 400-volt packs, letting the car charge at up to 135 kW without a high voltage booster.

Plug in at home and the Macan will refill at up to 11 kW, and, while driving, its regenerative braking system can feed electricity back into the battery at up to 270 kW.

There are currently two versions of EV Macan, called the 4 and the Turbo, with more to come later. If you’re familiar with electric cars then you’ll already know the 4 is the one to get, as it’s cheaper, goes further, and is still more powerful than anyone needs a family SUV to be—even one with a Porsche badge on its nose.

Both models have the same battery and dual-motor, all-wheel-drive setup. The Macan 4 produces 300 kW (402 horsepower) when Overboost Power mode and Launch Control are used; it accelerates to 60 mph in 4.9 seconds and has a top speed of 136 mph.

If you really must go for the Turbo (which starts at $105,300/£95,000), the rear motor is beefed up to deliver a total output of 470 kW (630 horsepower) and the 0-60 mph time falls to a supercar-like 3.1 seconds. Top speed is raised to 161 mph.

EPA range estimates haven’t been published at the time of writing, but on a brand-hosted media drive Porsche claimed a WLTP combined range of up to 380 miles for the Macan 4 and 367 miles for the Turbo. WIRED drove both models but spent more time with the Turbo, in which our average energy consumption hovered around 3.5 miles/kWh, giving a theoretical maximum range of about 330 miles.

Slight, Successful Changes

Although the new car looks broadly similar to its predecessor, there are a lot of changes to its physicality. The EV is sleeker, lower, and wider, with a wheelbase stretched by some 86 millimeters.

The seating position is also lower, and that splitter extending slightly from the chin means Porsche’s smaller SUV has dropped all pretense of being some kind of off-roader. Indeed, you won’t be surprised to learn that departure angles, wading depth, and other metrics that excite off-roading enthusiasts are missing from Porsche’s Macan vocabulary. Despite the all-wheel drive, this is most definitely an on-roader.

The 4 and Turbo differ slightly, but the changes to their exterior styling are so subtle they’d be good content for a spot-the-difference quiz, especially when the 4 is equipped with the larger 22-inch wheels of the Turbo. Yes, 22 inches. Remember when exotic supercars rode on 18s?

We digress. It’s a stylish looking thing, with a good amount of road presence and a set of headlights similar to the Taycan’s.

Sensible Cabin

Inside, the cabin shares a lot with the larger and recently updated Cayenne. This means the drive selector now sprouts from the dashboard instead of residing in the center console, where there’s now space for a welcome set of physical climate controls. Metal toggle switches click nicely up and down when adjusting temperature and fan speed, while a press of the illuminated seat heating (or cooling) controls sees the whole panel move with a satisfying click.

This, along with the volume knob and physical steering wheel buttons, shows that Porsche has thought carefully about the user experience. Plainly, the sensible Germans took one look at the touchscreen obsession shared by their rivals and issued a firm nein. The Macan is all the better for it.

It’s a car you can drive without recalibrating your brain to deal with touchscreen wipers, steering wheel indicators, or the lack of a conventional speedometer. Everything is where it should be and works as expected. It isn’t a new approach and it isn’t a particularly exciting one, but it’s safe, sensible, and, in our view, correct.

Even the audible alerts that chime when you stray over the speed limit are relatively inoffensive, and can easily be switched off with a couple of taps through the logical settings menu.

Speaking of which, the 10.9-inch touchscreen and its Android-based operating system is among the most responsive we’ve ever used. It never once lagged during two days of driving, and the navigation is so good—complete with clearly labeled local high-speed chargers—that we didn't long for the Macan’s wireless Apple CarPlay. Mind you, if we had used CarPlay, we’d discover the Macan now finally (finally) displays navigation prompts from the connected phone’s mapping app in the 12.6-inch driver display.

There’s wireless charging too, accessible in a dashboard cubby that is cooled by the air conditioning, so your smartphone supposedly charges more efficiently and won’t overheat.

Also handy is the optional, secondary 10.9-inch touchscreen, fitted ahead of the front-seat passenger. This at first looks like overkill, but on our shared drive I was able to use this screen to fix a navigation issue by finding and deleting a missed waypoint—and I did so without the driver even noticing, because the second screen has a coating that makes it appear black when viewed at an angle. This means the passenger can even stream videos distraction-free.

New for this generation of Macan is an LED light strip that runs along both front doors and across the entire dashboard. It glows blue by default, but can also display battery charge status when plugged in, and it handily flashes red if you try to open your door into approaching traffic.

Behind the wheel there’s a new generation of heads-up display that uses augmented reality to seemingly project arrows onto the environment ahead of you. This takes some getting used to, since its scale is designed to resemble an 87-inch TV placed 10 meters away. Sometimes it offers more distraction than direction.

There’s a new voice assistant, summoned by saying “Hey, Porsche.” It works OK, and is better than some others we’ve tried recently. It determines who has spoken to it, so when the passenger asks it to turn their heated seat on, it knows which one to activate. It’s fairly quick at answering simple questions and delivering the weather forecast, but has no form of memory and can't chain queries. So if you ask about the weather in London tomorrow, then follow up with a simple “Will it rain?”, it’ll instead deliver the local, present forecast. This is some way off from the ChatGPT car assistants we saw at CES in January.

Shun the Turbo, Go for the 4

Time to hit the road, and we're happy to report that the Macan lives up to its billing. It feels and drives like a Porsche. The drivetrain responds much like that of the Taycan, and it also sounds similar if you’re the kind of EV driver that enables the optional Porsche Electric Sport Sound.

It doesn’t take long to spot the typical Porsche trait of the control weights being perfectly matched. The resistance of the pedals and steering are all nicely judged, and, again like the Taycan (but unlike almost every other EV), there’s very little regenerative braking when you lift the accelerator.

Porsche takes this approach to make its EVs feel more like gas-powered cars, and it works. This means that Electric Macan owners will miss out on the joy that comes from perfectly judging a stop without touching the brake pedal. So they’ll instead see how the Macan can be driven in a more conventional manner. Keener owners will also recognize the benefits of how weight transfer is easier to manage, since the car doesn’t brake and dive the moment you come off the power. Rear-wheel steering is also available as an option, improving both low-speed maneuverability and high-speed stability.

Both the 4 and Turbo feel fast at any legal speed. Each is equipped with huge reserves of torque (a massive 1,130 Nm or 738 lb-ft in the latter), ready to slingshot you out of corners, past slower traffic, or down a highway on-ramp.

If the higher cost and slightly lower range aren’t a concern to you, then plump for the Turbo. It’s incredibly quick and comes with larger wheels, air suspension with more sophisticated dampers (the 4 sits on springs as standard), and Porsche Torque Vectoring Plus, which shuffles power between the rear wheels depending on which has the most grip.

However, most drivers should stick with the 4. It feels like reasonable value at just under $80,000, and is as entertaining to drive as it is practical. There’s a lot of weight here, to the tune of almost 5,300 pounds (2,400 kilograms), but it’s hidden well thanks to precise, responsive steering and an ability to remain flat and composed through corners. Only when braking downhill does the mass really make itself known, and while mostly comfortable, the 4 on its conventional springs rides slightly firmer than we’d like.

Lastly, that extended wheelbase over the previous Macan means more space in the second row, with decent headroom. Behind that there’s 540 liters of cargo space in the trunk, plus a further 84 liters in the frunk, the latter around a third larger than that of the enormous Kia EV9.

A Winning Second

The new Porsche Macan is not a groundbreaking car. It doesn’t form a new mold in the way the Taycan did five years ago, and it doesn’t quite match the latest Taycan for performance or outright charging speed.

But there needs to be a hierarchy—and clearly the sportier, pricier Taycan is, for now at least, at the top of Porsche’s electric tree. Instead of being a splashy new EV, the new Macan is, primarily, exactly that: just the new Macan.

But it’s also an electric SUV that drives like a Porsche, has an excellent interior full of sensibly implemented tech, and charges more quickly than its rivals. It also makes the Maserati Grecale Folgore look expensive, and it reminds us that the Jaguar I-Pace really is getting on a bit, with no successor in sight.

So, somewhat unsurprisingly, with its Taycan and Macan, Porsche has nailed the first two steps toward electrification. What comes next—a hybrid 911 and a pair of all-electric Boxster and Cayman sports cars—might not be quite so easy.