Porsche Taycan E-Shift review – Hyundai-style fake gears here to up engagement in Porsche's electric saloon

It was surely only a matter of time, after Hyundai demonstrated in the Ioniq 5 N that virtual gearshifts could genuinely add to the experience of driving a sporty EV, before other manufacturers would offer their own take on the tech. On the preceding pages you’ll have seen the Honda Super N, bringing virtual shifting to the bottom end of the market, and now it’s the turn of the Porsche Taycan E-Shift.

It wasn’t a decision Porsche took lightly. It considered virtual gearshifts during development of the Taycan but dismissed the tech on the basis that it didn’t add to the car’s performance. But, much like offering both a manual and a PDK in a GT3, the Venn diagram of speed and interaction doesn’t overlap completely, and it’s in pursuit of the latter that Porsche has decided to give the concept another chance.

Are we past caring that such an idea seems a little perverse? I’m testing E-Shift in an electric car with Turbo S badging, so the former rules of engagement no longer apply. And it’s just as effective here as in the Ioniq 5 N and Super N. I can see some owners simply leaving their Taycan in E-Shift mode and driving it much like they would a Panamera with PDK, quickly suspending disbelief that there’s anything other than a combustion engine and a conventional multi-speed transmission moving them along.

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Porsche’s engineers actually started with PDK software as a basis to create the E-Shift’s eight ratios, but the virtual gears and their equivalent torque curves and regen rates unique to each gear have been chosen to match with the Taycan’s characteristics alone. That includes integration with the Taycan’s actual, physical two-speed transmission, so the first two virtual gears are synchronised with the lower ratio, and the other six are engaged in the upper gear.

Gears seven and eight (virtual) are effectively overdrives, though that’s a weird concept here, as since they’re a façade, having an overdrive is a bit redundant. You could leave the E-Shift in third or fourth virtual gear all day, revving its digital nuts off, and it wouldn’t materially affect your real-world range. Shift points change with driving mode, driving style and load, just like with a regular automatic. So too does the intensity, volume and tone of the synthesised soundtrack, conceived specially for the E-Shift.

In manual mode it will hammer against a virtual hard limiter if you’re late with a shift, with the red pixelated paint starting at around 7500rpm. A GT3-style 9500rpm or a mad V10-era F1 limiter would of course be possible, but E-Shift project lead Markus Lindermeier tells me screaming revs felt a bit odd in testing, so 7500 was chosen to best work with the ratios, both real and virtual.

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The final piece of the puzzle is a combustion-style vibration. This is probably the cleverest aspect of the lot, given it has required no additional hardware. The near infinite variability of an electric motor means introducing minute changes in current can create vibrations and pulses to give the sound and the virtual gearshifts a convincing fizz, whether sitting at idle – where the ‘engine’ slightly hunts – or during full-bore acceleration and gearshifts.

If it all sounds a bit OTT, just know that the effect is surprisingly authentic. Activating E-Shift involves pressing a blue button on the steering wheel, while rotating that switch (much like Porsche’s familiar drive mode switch) selects between manual and automatic control. The engine noise begins as soon as you select E-Shift, even giving you a flare of revs on start-up, though the matching exterior sounds only activate once the car is in Drive. And no, you can’t rev the car at a standstill, though engaging launch control does send the revs to a virtual 4000rpm – with equivalent noise and vibrations both inside and out.

Cruise away in Normal mode and E-Shift slurs through the gears, with just a subtle V8-style burble and low-frequency rumble doing a pretty good job of making you forget it’s all basically ones and zeros. Accelerate harder and it’ll ride the torque or shift down as necessary, while switching to first Sport then Sport+ does what you’d expect, selecting lower gears, later shift points, and adding volume. At full beans the sound is less convincing, more videogamey, but no more so than the piped-in sound in some cars with actual engines. Shifts in the sportier modes have more of a kick up and down, and in auto mode the system downshifts early when you brake harder, just as a PDK would.

Price and rivals

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E-Shift is available across the Taycan range, which also gets updated infotainment (Android-based, much faster processing power, widgets to display commonly used functions based on customer data, and AI-assisted voice control), and a new high-efficiency summer tyre option allowing entry-level cars to cover 434 miles on a charge, 12 miles further than before. E-Shift can only be specified on cars with Sport Chrono and the Bose sound system (and can’t be retrofitted to earlier Taycans), but on a Taycan GTS or Turbo S, which have those already, it adds only £750 to the price, and it’s now standard on the Taycan Turbo GT. All told it adds £3079 to the price of a basic Taycan, making a new E-Shift-equipped Taycan a £91,544 prospect. For the extra interaction in an already compelling EV, it’s a no-brainer.

The number of Taycan rivals is increasing at pace. Joining the Audi e-Tron GT (from £89,555) and Lotus Emeya (from £84,990) is the excellent new Polestar 5 (from £89,500) and soon too, the new Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door electric (from £120,095). Then comes Jaguar's Type 01 next year, which is expected to start from in the region of £120,000 when it goes on sale.

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