Porsche’s all-electric Macan will feature 800-volt electrics for super-speedy 270 kW charging, and judging from our latest spy shots, that’s just as well, especially for anyone planning on using theirs in cold climates.
Our spy photographers captured the much-delayed electric SUV being put through its Arctic paces ahead of an expected launch later this year and managed to grab some shots of the interior, including the Macan’s fully digital gauge cluster. One close-up image shows both the remaining battery charge and the remaining electric driving range, and the figures aren’t pretty.
We can see that the battery is charged to 80 percent but the driving range display shows just 234 km (145 miles) available before the driver needs to find a charging station. Those kinds of numbers, while never great, could be considered quite normal in a cheap EV with a small battery pack. But we already know that every version of the Macan EV will come with a large 100 kWh battery.
The data in the photograph doesn’t exactly tally with intel from Porsche insiders, who have suggested that over 300 miles (483 km) should be possible on a full battery. But anyone with EV experience will tell you that how and where you drive an electric car has a massive impact on the driving range. And most obviously, we can see from the other photographs that the Macan was being driven in northern Sweden, close to the Arctic circle, which is hardly the optimum environment for an EV battery. That said, the temperature display says 0.5˚ C (33˚ F), which isn’t really that cold.
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It’s also possible that the first 20 percent of the battery’s charge could have been smoked with the Macan’s throttle pedal mashed firmly into the carpet while the test team pounded around a frozen lake and made use of the 603 hp (612 PS) dual-motor drivetrain’s thumping 737 lb-ft (1,000 Nm) of torque.
Other than that range figure, though, we like what we see in these pictures. The curved instrument cluster looks slightly smaller than the one fitted to the Taycan sedan and it’s nice to see that Porsche has fitted physical toggles for the temperature controls on the lower console.
We’re expecting Porsche to reveal the Macan, which will be sold alongside the existing ICE version, at this November’s Los Angeles auto show and it should arrive in showrooms the following spring as a 2024 model. But there’s a strong likelihood that Porsche will let slip key details, including the true driving range before the covers come off.
