Porsche Taycan Turbo S

The new Porsche Taycan Turbo S doesn’t have an engine, but don’t let that fool you.

Porsche Taycan Turbo S

Perhaps it was wrong to laugh in my wife’s face when she asked me what was, to be fair, a relevant question as we careen into an electric new world of super speed. “Why?!?” she bellowed. “Why would anyone want to go that fast, ever? Who wants to do that?”

The obvious answer, after I’d stopped chuckling at her absurdity, was “me”, but it did give me pause to wonder how many humans are like me, as opposed to the larger proportion of the population who, like my clearly shaken wife and absolutely alarmed daughter (“Daddy, don’t EVER do that again!”), find the experience of accelerating from 0 to 100km/h in under 2.5 seconds not only disturbing but comically unnecessary.

Stupidly, I thought they would both get a kick out of experiencing the theme-park-ride spine punch provided by activating Launch Control in the new Porsche Taycan Turbo S (which boasts 460kW and a staggering 1050Nm).

Certainly I’d hoped it would wake them from the torpor I’d induced with a five-minute lecture on how stupid it was of Porsche to use the term “Turbo” when describing a car that doesn’t have an engine, and thus produces none of the exhaust gases necessary to run a turbocharger, which it doesn’t have either because it’s a fully electric car.

To be fair, the whole thing would have caught them more by surprise than usual, because the whole Launch Control experience in the Taycan is so serene and simple. Normal sports cars make a lot of noise when you stamp the throttle to the floor with one foot while squeezing the brake with the other (having first pressed some Launch Control buttons).

Porsche Taycan Turbo S

In the Turbo S there is the mildest of bonging sounds from the dash, and only the driver has a chance to prepare for the fact that Hell will be Unleashed when he steps off the brake and this most potent of Porsches leaves the lights like a bullet from the barrel of a silenced rifle.

Porsche claims this Taycan will then accelerate from a standing start through a brief moment in time when it is doing 100km/h in 2.8 seconds, but plenty of tests have shown this claim to be hugely conservative. Don’t get me wrong, 2.8 seconds is fast enough, but this thing has been timed as low as 2.4 seconds, and that is simply obscene.

So obscene, in fact, that my wife – after rediscovering the power of speech – declared that her mouth had briefly lodged halfway down her throat. My daughter, who’s seen me do plenty of stupid things before, was so shaken by the experience that I genuinely felt bad for doing it to her.

I, on the other hand, and a couple of young men I took for a ride that week after they’d generously let me test their fabulous $7100 Lacroix electric skateboard, found the speed hugely hilarious. Uncontrollable hooting laughter is the only way to describe the boys’ reactions to Launch Control before they screamed “Do it AGAIN!”

The way the Taycan’s electric motors pile on pace, particularly in the first few dozen metres, is simply unlike any other form of propulsion.

Some people have asked me how the experience is any different from a Tesla, which can, theoretically, perform the same party trick, and the answer is that the Taycan Turbo S is a Porsche.

Porsche Taycan Turbo S

This means that, despite feeling huge and heavy, and offering four doors and genuine space for adults in the rear, it destroys corners of all kinds with a kind of effortless bliss that both genuinely surprised me and made me very excited about what an electric 911 is going to be like.

The steering, too, is pure Porsche perfection, with just the right balance of feedback and weight. It’s as if those genius German engineers decided to reinvent their idea of a car and yet lose none of the attributes that made their old ones so good.

The quality of the interior, and the addition of a separate touchscreen for the passenger – complete with their very own G-force meter and speedometer so they know exactly how frightened to be – is another neat touch.

It would, of course, want to feel premium in there, because the tip-top Taycan costs a whopping $339,100 – quite a jump from the entry-level 4S model, at $191,000. The best car in the range, though, would be the almost-as-fast, slightly less silly Taycan Turbo, at $269,100. I’ll have mine in blue, thanks.

Porsche Taycan Turbo S

Is it upsetting that an EV Porsche no longer makes those sexy, rasping noises that make the combustion-engined ones so sonorous? Well yes, but the Taycan can fill the cabin with zooming, wooshy sound effects that will impress children while leaving most adults slightly cold (unless they’re Star Wars nerds, in which cases cue more uncontrollable hooting).

There’s no denying that my wife has a cogent argument on her side – that a car that can accelerate this fast is the very definition of the word “unnecessary”. But there are plenty of people who would snort at her in the same derisory fashion as I did, and buy one anyway.