Porsche Taycan E-Shift review: Porsche joins the fake gear club

So Porsche's electric car now has a copy of Hyundai N's fake shift pattern?

A copy of a fake sounds like an idea that deserves nothing but derision. On the other hand a good idea surely deserves to be shared. And Hyundai had a good idea. Porsche's execution is in some ways even better.

What does that do?

Optional now on the Taycan, and standard on the Turbo S, is an extra knob on the steering wheel that controls E-Shift. Press its centre and you switch from a silent EV to one that has eight stepped virtual 'gears', linked to synthesised sound, and a 'rev-counter' that replaces the power meter in the driver's screen.

Twist the knob that surrounds the button and you're switching between auto and manual modes. In manual you use the paddles.

What do those affect? Just a silly gamified noise?

Oh no. To be clear, there are no extra gears beyond the Taycan's native two-speed rear transmission. But the motor torque characteristics are modified to seem that way.

Shift up a few times at lowish speed, floor the accelerator and not a whole lot happens. Along a treacly busy road, driving a car with the native acceleration of a Taycan, a less brutal pedal is a relaxing aid to smoother driving.

Shift down approaching a bend and the car slows. That gives you very useful extra control too.

Matched to that is the sound. It rises and falls in pitch proportionally with 'revs', and changes tone and volume with accelerator travel. Just like an engine. It's not meant to sound like any particular engine, and there are theremin undertones. It's interesting and pleasant. Definitely car-ish not sci-fi.

So far, so Hyundai?

Porsche adds its own intricacies… the generators use the outside pedestrian warning speakers too, so you get a change in sound when you drive past a wall, and it also changes front-rear balance depending on actual torque distribution.

Also, the Taycan introduces a high-frequency power variation to the drive motors so they shake a little, bringing subtle ICE-type vibrations into the seat, pedals and steering wheels. Again that's rev-dependent.

So it's not just the physical aspect of improving car control. It's psychological – and that's just as important. It improves your perception of speed. Judging corner entry, or indeed knowing where you are relative to the speed limit, is very hard in an EV. To know you're in a second-gear bend, or that you've accelerated towards the top of third and need to ease off, is really helpful. You simply drive better.

You can even do gear-type things, like suddenly shifting down to send a torque pulse to deliberately break traction. And to get maximum performance – exactly the same performance as the car without E-Shift by the way – you have to drive it properly.

Overall, you've more to perceive and more to do and more control. It's simply more involving.

Involving but… fake?

Of course there are no pistons and valves reciprocating away. No torque converter or double-clutches, and these (absent) mechanisms aren't linked to a (non-existent) multi-speed transmission. But honestly if you hadn't been told this wasn't a petrol car I don't think you'd realise. Anyway not beyond the fact the sound, although interesting in itself, isn't recognisably a flat-six or V8 or whatever.

If you hadn't been told this wasn't a petrol car I don't think you'd realise

Why fret? The torque output is like a petrol's. A good petrol's. They could have chosen any number for the red line on the (fake) rev-counter. They chose 7000, because it doesn't feel like a peaky screamer – the torque curve is pretty flat. But it isn't laggy like a turbo either.

OK but why have an EV mode as well as an auto mode?

Well EV mode is an easy one. The central dial becomes a power/regen meter, the paddles change regeneration. It's pretty well silent and delivery is seamless. Your regular quick EV. As you were.

Auto mode when in E-Shift is the one that initially baffled me. Why impersonate stepped delivery? Auto transmission engineers have for ever tried to shift imperceptibly. Like an EV.

But driving it changed my mind. I wouldn't use auto mode personally because I like shifting, but it does give you feedback and speed perception.

The software engineers ported across all the features of Porsche's real PDK. So it doesn't shift gear part-way round a bend. It picks a lower gear if you're going downhill. It adapts the shifting map to the way you've been driving. The shift map also becomes more aggressive if you twist the drive mode to sport or sport+, settings that also sharpen the suspension and so on.

And you can switch it off…?

Yup. As you were, Mr Taycan.

But E-Shift must be slower if you're sometimes not getting full torque?

No. Provided you always shift at the red line, you're getting it all. Full-power in auto mode does that for you. Even during the shifts it doesn't lose out because although there's a brief power interruption the motors are slightly over-powered the instant afterward, to get a petrol-authentic kick.

And of course the system doesn't affect the actual revs of the motors. So at a given speed, whichever of the available gears you select won't affect energy efficiency one bit. In that that sense it's completely unlike a petrol.

OK you convinced me. What does it cost?

Well on a base-model Taycan it's £750, which brings the software and the special steering wheel with selector and paddles. But there's a big 'but'. Tick that box and it also demands the Sport Chrono pack (the mode selector knob) for £847 and Bose sound £1,093 and Porsche Electric Sports Sound £389 – a total of £3,079. Still, who specs a bone-stock Porsche? Those are very common options anyway.

And as you move up the Taycan range, some of those things become standard regardless. Indeed for a Turbo S it's all there.

The Taycan by the way these days starts at £88,465. That's for the RWD, 465bhp, air suspension, 421 mile range, and 18 minute 10-80 per cent charging. So think of E-Shift as an extra topping. Or stuffed crust. Or [insert your own pizza metaphor here]. Tasty.