FIRST LOOK- 2024 Porsche Macan – Best-Selling Porsche Goes Electric

The Porsche Macan has gone all electric and it looks like this. This is big news. Porsche might describe itself as a sports car company, but if you look at the sales figures, it's really an SUV company with a wicked line in sports cars. It's all very well making a high-end electric car like the Taycan for early adopters, but the Cayenne and Macan are by far Porsche's biggest sellers. Going EV only early is a risk. This electric Macan needs to be good. So what have we got? Well, there'll be two models, the Macan 4 and the Macan Turbo, and they both come with a 100 kilowatt-hour battery, of which 95 kilowatt-hours is actually usable. Now, that should give you about 380 miles of WLTP range for the Macan 4, bit less for the Turbo, and they're both dual motor, four-wheel drive cars. And they are both very quick, but more on that in a minute. And it looks a bit like a very refreshed Macan, unsurprisingly. So you've got a car that's got these daylight running lights up here, a bit like a Taycan, and then down here is an actual headlight unit. And then in this front end, you've got movable flaps. Now, Porsche has paid a lot of attention to all the aero bits on this car, so we'll go through those in a minute. And then as you come down the car, it's got strong shoulders. It's actually got frameless doors like a Taycan, so there's no actual window frame. Wheels start at 20 inches, go all the way up to 22s. These are optional 22-inch wheels on this Macan, because this is a Macan 4. And then down the sides, you've got these side blades like you had on the previous Macan. They can come in three different colours, so you can have gloss black, normal plastic or carbon fibre on the Turbo. And then the side of the car is kind of nicely muscular, feels a little bit lower than before, and that's because it is. This car is actually slightly wider, slightly lower. It's got a much longer wheelbase as an electric car, though. There's 86 millimetres that's been added into here, so that should have good news for the interior. And then at the back, if you look, the Turbo has these little extra vents in the back bumper, but you also get a 3D full-width light bar with the Porsche logo slap bang in the middle. Nice little Venturi. And this spoiler is actually active. Now, Porsche has spent a lot of time working out the aero with this car. It's got a very slippery coefficient of drag, which is good for efficiency. The Macan has what Porsche calls PAA, or Porsche Active Aerodynamics. So there's those front flaps that we were talking about, the movable rear spoiler, flexible covers on a completely sealed underbody, lots of little tweaks to aid efficiency. So it's all new, but not a million miles away from what you might expect. And you probably could have called it about the interior of the electric Macan as well, because this is pretty much as you'd expect, except slicker. You sit actually really quite low. These front seats are 28 millimetres lower than in the normal Macan. And that's pretty good, because in an EV, you usually sit too high. There's a rising centre console, which you'll be used to if you drive a Macan, and it all feels quite squat and cockpit-y. Even the wheel is relatively small. It's got relatively few buttons. Things that you recognise, drive mode, spin wheel here. It's got some little rockers for the HVAC, so the aircon. And you've got some cup holders here and some storage and a little box. But the big news is this dash, because it's mightily impressive. It feels like one massive panel, but it's actually three. So in front of you, you've got a 12.6-inch driver information display, and that's got all the normal stuff on it. Then in the middle is a 10.9-inch touchscreen. And I have to say, when you press things on this, it is super, super fast. So this is Android-based, and it is one of the quickest systems, I think, I've seen. When you touch stuff, it just happens. It's really, really nice. Then next to that is an option, which is a passenger display, and then they can change all the multimedia, operate a phone, watch Netflix, completely ignore you. And for the first time, there is an augmented reality head-up display that's projected right the way down there. It looks really, really slick. Everything feels a little bit like it's just a Macan, but elevated. One of the things I really like is this LED strip that runs all the way around the cabin, and it's actually multifunction. So it lights up to tell you about different things. So when you're charging, it will change colour. It'll even work in conjunction with some of the advanced driver assistance system. So if you're about to open your door in front of a car that's coming up alongside, it will warn you. Also, it's got things like recycled carpets, leather-free leather. This is a Macan, but better. It's all Porsche perfect. It's also more practical. Like the front seats, the rear bench is now lower than before. There's a 540-litre boot, and for the first time, a frunk. So that's an extra 84 litres of storage, and that's a good size for cables and other stuff. As you might hope for a Porsche electric car, neither of these is particularly slow. The Macan 4 gets just over 400 brake horsepower and can get from zero to 62 miles an hour in 5.1 seconds. The Turbo, on the other hand, gets 635 brake horsepower, an unholy amount of torque, and can get from rest to 62 miles an hour in 3.3 seconds if you use launch control. That is epically fast. Oh, and they'll do 137 miles an hour and 162 miles an hour top speed, respectively. But more than that, Porsche needs to keep the Macan standing proud as a top-tier handling small SUV. Naturally, only the rear motor works, so the front one sort of goes dormant, and it also gets proper rear-wheel steering, giving it a tiny turning circle, plus air suspension as an option, which is standard on the Turbo. There are also two valve dampers that give you a broader range of options between full squish and sporty firmness, and the usual Porsche performance aids like traction management and torque vectoring. Given what Porsche managed with the Taycan, it seems like the Macan EV will have the go to match the show. As far as charging goes, Porsche seems to be hitting all of the right notes. Both Macans get a 100 kilowatt-hour battery, as I mentioned, of which 95 kilowatt-hours is usable, and this is all on Porsche's new premium electric platform. It's an 800-volt architecture, so it should give you a maximum charging rate of 270 kilowatts, giving you 10% to 80% charge in just over 20 minutes, if you can find a big enough charger. And it can bank charge, essentially splitting the battery into two parts, so you don't need a booster for 400-volt charging stations, which means more efficient charging and better heat management. There's also 11 kilowatt DC charging, which is useful, and don't forget that time spent at the charger is actually putting in decent range. The official figures are 380 miles for the Macan 4 and 367 for the Turbo, that's 4.2 miles per kilowatt-hour for the Macan 4, and anything over 4 is really good. So it's all good news if you read the press release, but if the Macan is actually Porsche's gateway drug of a car, price is still very important. Now, as of this week, if you were to buy a base Macan in the UK with a 263-brake horsepower four-cylinder petrol turbo, it would cost you about £53,000. And if you went for a top-spec six-cylinder Macan GTS, that's about 72 grand. That's actually really good value. The basic electric Macan 4 has been announced as costing £69,800, with the turbo weighing in at £95,000 on the button. So you're looking at a price premium, but they're electric, so you can do clever things with company car schemes and VAT returns to mitigate that a bit. But a cheaper Macan doesn't feature, yet. There is, however, a little bit of a twist here if you live in the UK. Now, Macans with engines are actually going off sale in Europe on the 1st of July 2024, not because they have to meet new emissions standards, but because Porsche didn't develop the ICE cars for new European cybersecurity rules. But if you live in the UK, the combustion Macan will live on for a bit, because we're not subject to the same rules. Porsche hasn't specified how long, but expect to be able to buy a petrol-powered Macan in the UK throughout 2024. So, should we be making the switch early or buying a late Macan with an engine and wringing the absolute life out of it? Well, I think we'll have to wait to drive the Macan Electric before we make that decision.