Porsche Cayenne Coupe Electric review

By that do you mean ‘Is the Coupe horribly impractical compared to the SUV?’

Obviously.

Good news! It’s actually okay back in the back. You can have the rear bench as a two-seater or a 2+1 layout, and while the seats themselves could be more enveloping (especially given the dynamic credentials of the car), there’s plenty of space in spite of the sloping roofline. Anyone of average build will have a couple of inches of headroom to the standard panoramic roof (a Lightweight Sports package – which saves an eyebrow-raising 17.6kg – replaces it with carbon), and there’s lots of wriggle room for toes even if the aperture for your feet is quite narrow under the front seats.

Bootspace takes a bigger hit compared to the SUV, with the 534 litres on offer here (or 500 in the Turbo) almost 30 per cent smaller than the big ‘un. With the back seats down that jumps to 1,347 litres (1,313 on the Turbo), although the 90-litre frunk is consistent across the line-up.

In any case it should still manage trips away. There’s some storage beneath the boot floor, handy nets behind the wheelarches, and levers to pull down the back seats with minimal effort. Ahh.

And how is it in the front?

Impeccably well finished, as you’d expect. You can have various combinations of leather (or go leather-free) and the front seats are tremendously well shaped and comfortable.

The volume of screenage is a problem though. 14.25in instrument display, 12.25in central touchscreen, optional 14.9in passenger screen… that’s more than 40 inches of pixels. Strewth. And if you opt for the augmented reality HUD as well, you might as well be playing a computer game. Which you can actually do on the passenger screen. Enjoy hours and hours of Asphalt 9.

Porsche’s OS is tremendously legible – it’s one of the very best systems in that regard – but the structure of the main touchscreen is far, far too fiddly. Settings and drive modes require endless scrolling, not helped by the kink in the screen that must’ve sounded like a good idea at the initial product meeting several years ago but in practice is just annoying. There is at least a pad for you to rest your wrist as you jab away, but it requires way too much attention while driving. Rethink urgently needed.

Oh, and don’t get us started on the fact that you can’t tweak the direction of the vents by hand. Yep, that’s in the touchscreen too. Actual humans chose this, folks. Incredible.

What about storage?

Er, there is some… but not loads. The sweeping centre console is something of a Swiss Army knife, housing a wireless phone charger, USB-Cs, (removable) cupholders and a well of space that might swallow a handbag with some encouragement. The door bins aren’t huge, and neither is the glovebox. Buy cargo pants instead.