Porsche’s Idiot’s Guide video to charging the Taycan EV

October 8, 2020October 8, 2020 Iain Curry 4088 Views charging, porsche

To paraphrase the joke, how do you know someone’s a Porsche aficionado? Answer? Don’t worry, they’ll tell you. And it will take hours.

But all this new fangled electric stuff – specifically the new Taycan electric sports sedan – leaves some of the Stuttgart faithful befuddled.

They may know the exact wheelbase of a pre-1969 911; the weak points of a 915 four-speed gearbox and what Jacky Ickx had for breakfast during his 1982 Le Mans win, but they may not know how to plug in a new Taycan EV.

Porsche Australia’s produced a video to remedy this. It’s presented by Kate Reid, founder of Melbourne’s Lune Croissanterie, who in a previous life was aerodynamic engineer with the Williams Formula One team.

YouTube player — Patissier Kate Reid simplifies the charging science of Porsche’s Taycan

She talks viewers through charging basics, battery details, how temperature affect charging, why charging power slows down, types of charger and recharging speed.

Also covered are a Taycan’s 800V electrical system, its on-board DC charger, Porsche’s AC Destination Chargers and the minutes or hours needed to charge the EV depending on the type of charger you access.

There are lots of numbers, a bit of science and you may need to watch it a few times to grasp everything, but it’s a welcome explainer for those getting to grips with this brave new EV world.

And this being Porsche, there’s also some lovely footage of the Taycan scything its way through snowy mountain roads along with superlatives to emphasise ze driver enjoyment.

So next time you sit beside a Porsche fanatic at dinner, prepare yourself for an earful about usable battery capacity rather than Nikasil-coated cylinders. Small blessings. Maybe.

Iain Curry

A motoring writer and photographer for two decades, Iain started in print magazines in London as editor of Performance BMW and features writer for BMW Car, GT Porsche and 4Drive magazines. His love of motor sport and high performance petrol cars was rudely interrupted in 2011 when he was one of the first journalists to drive BMW's 1 Series ActiveE EV, and has been testing hybrids, PHEVs and EVs for Australian newspapers ever since. Based near Noosa in Queensland, his weekly newspaper articles cover new vehicle reviews and consumer advice, while his photography is regularly seen on the pages of glossy magazines.