I took Porche’s new electric SUV for a spin – and the pricey Macan is just pure perfection zac.kelly@futurenet.com (Zachariah Kelly) | usagoldmines.com

If there’s any one word that describes the Macan EV, it’s refined. Porsche hit the ground running in 2019 with the release of its first modern electric, the Taycan – an expensive sports car that quickly proved legacy automakers could readily compete with Tesla on its own terms. That release also gave Porsche an advantage over other automakers in the then-burgeoning mainstream EV market, allowing them to refine their electric offering before other major car companies would even announce plans for electrification.

Conversely, the electric Macan arrived in early 2024 (late 2024 for Australians) to drastically different market conditions – interest in Tesla’s cars was feigning, particularly with challengers from China offering competitive products, with such market conditions carrying through to today. Indeed it feels like Porsche and similarly established automakers are now the ones playing defense, with Chinese rivals like Polestar, Xpeng and IM ready to snatch up the market of drivers excited about electrification now that the tech has progressed a bit, prices have come down and charging infrastructure is a bit further along.

These brands offer models that are competitively specced and priced to the Macan Electric… though they do all lack one key thing: they’re not Porsche.

Porsche Macan EV specs

The electric experience, refined

A big touchscreen, heads-up display and minimalist, digital-first user interface aren’t innovative things in the automotive industry anymore, not even for a luxury automaker like Porsche. Tech like this has simply become synonymous with EVs, and is now a bit of a heel when done poorly. This is why I’m so thrilled with the Porsche Macan EV – because it’s not just utilising all these things, it has mastered them.

The infotainment system in the Macan EV feels thoughtful. Text is rightly sized, icons aren’t too small for a fingerpress, and indeed there are enough physical controls (for things like air conditioning) for the car to properly be driven without ever needing to tap the screen.

The inbuilt navigation app is well-made and can be relied upon, though with the car’s well laid-out interface, it’s no hassle to connect your phone and fire up Android Auto or Apple CarPlay – though with the former, I found my phone would often be quite laggy when placed on the Macan’s wireless charging pad.

One of the most impressive parts of the Macan’s dashboard is its concave instrument cluster. The screen behind the steering wheel is curved, giving it depth and ultimately making it look a lot better than similar digital clusters from other automakers. The screen can be adjusted to include up to three gauges, or it can simply be switched to portray a speed indication and a live map, giving you easy, glanceable directions on the road. It’s by far my favourite instrument cluster of any EV – or even any car – I’ve tested.

The heads-up display is the icing on the cake. In cruise control, the display will demonstrate the lines of distance you have between the car in front of you and yourself, which it will maintain like any other car with adaptive cruise. It’ll also visualise the lines it can currently see on the sides of the road – helpful for making sure lane assistance is enabled on a poorly-marked road.

Driving dynamics of the Porsche Macan are, as you’d expect, brilliant, with the car offering punchy acceleration and great road handling. It’s quite a big car and its turning circle suffers as a result, but it’s a brilliant vehicle regardless for comfortable travel in and out of town. It’s quite wide and has big 22-inch wheels, so if your idea of a Porsche is a low-to-the-ground track toy, I think you’ll be mostly disappointed with the electric Macan – though you won’t mind its exceptional handling, and with a lot of boot and rear seating space, it’d definitely be a comfortable car for holidaying.

Range and recharging speed are also a non-issue, with the gigantic 100kWh battery capable of facilitating a weekend-away’s worth of driving. A 270kW DC recharging capacity is also right for the price, though considering rivalling Chinese EVs in the luxury segment are besting this (or even EVs well below the luxury segment – the Xpeng G6 is half the Macan’s price and capable of 280kW) I’d note that this may seem unimpressive at some point in the near future. Not too near, though, as public DC chargers tend to max out at 350kW, and any greater capacities would require major infrastructure changes.

One last thing worthy of note. Thanks to having smaller motors, many electric cars are able to provide additional storage space under the bonnet. The Macan has a useful amount of under-bonnet space, but it outdoes other automakers by having a dedicated bonnet-open button on the keyfob. This gives the space actual utility, showing up other automakers that offer the space but lack an easy way to pop the hood. Cool!

But is it enough?

A starting cost of $78,000 / £68,500 / AU$128,400 is going to be unreachable for most people and will no doubt keep many buyers away from the Macan – though I think it’s unlikely that Porsche will change this any time soon. Porsche has earned the right to price the Macan like this: every aspect of the car is luxurious – although there are aspects that some potential purchasers may think are a bit much.

Similar to the preceding Taycan, there are charging ports on both sides of the car with only one equipped for fast DC charging. These ports open with the most overdesigned doors I’ve ever seen – via rolling motors that slide the ports open and closed. I think this is just unnecessary, even for a luxury car: it adds mechanical complexity to open the doors, which could break one day. A pop-open door will do.

Additionally, some of the more expensive Macan trims feature a third touchscreen display positioned in front of the front passenger seat for its occupant. It’s a cool idea, I guess, to give your passenger control over stuff like music playback from a convenient screen in front of them, but I don’t really see the point, especially with music streaming apps able to play music in groups, with multiple phones controlling the current song – it just seems excessive.

Moving onto the unexpected, I encountered a critical operating system freeze when starting the car one morning. The infotainment system locked up on the Porsche logo and I couldn’t interact with it, and needed to manually reset it. I’ve encountered this with cars in the past and it’s never not annoying, but I was kind of shocked to have dealt with it in such an expensive car.

Apart from these things, I don’t really think there’s much to dislike about the Porsche Macan Electric. The company has worked really hard to polish this car to a point of undeniable quality.

Should you buy the Porsche Macan Electric?

It’s easy for me to recommend something as expensive as the Porsche Macan Electric, but obviously it’s not for everyone. It has an unrivaled level of quality, and among luxury electric SUVs, it very much deserves to be at the upper-end of the market. My colleague Leon Poultney went hands-on with the Macan electric a bit before me and argued that it would be a shame if Porsche scaled back its EV ambitions when cars like the Macan feel so mastered – and I very much agree: Porsche has nailed the assignment and I think it offers some really special cars in the electric space.

If you’re chasing a similar level of quality, I’d recommend to you both the Polestar 3 and Polestar 4, Audi Q6 e-tron or the BMW iX. Generally speaking, these cars each compete with the Macan Electric while also undercutting it on price.

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