Is Porsche’s Big Electric Macan Risk Paying Off?

• InsideEVs Editor-in-Chief Patrick George drives the electric Porsche Macan 4.
• The electric Macan is not mechanically related to the gas-burning car and is quite a bit more expensive.
• It’s not perfect, but it’s a great overall package that shows Porsche has learned a lot from building the Taycan.

You see a lot of Porsche Macans around the world, driven by people with expensive sunglasses and designer handbags. It is the cheapest way to enter the Porsche universe, and it blends excellent road manners with style and practicality, making it a global favorite.

But now that the combustion engine Macan is being phased out and replaced by a considerably more expensive pure electric model, does it have what it takes to maintain its popularity? Both flavors of Macan are still on sale today, and so far this year, and it’s the electric model that has proven more popular, even despite going electric (and potentially alienating part of its buyer pool) and hiking the price.

Even though the electric Macan is proving successful, Porsche isn’t taking any chances and has confirmed that it’s working on a new midsize combustion crossover. It will arrive in 2028, and it won’t be called Macan. 

While the Macan EV is more expensive than the ICE model, it’s also a better, more grown-up vehicle. The two are not mechanically related and the electric model rides on the VW Group’s Premium Platform Electric (PPE), which also underpins a couple of Audis. Thanks to this platform, it has a big 100-kilowatt-hour battery pack and offers big luxury car features such as rear-wheel steering.

This isn’t the first time we’ve tried the Macan, but now InsideEVs Editor-in-Chief Patrick George has spent more time with the car and had mostly positive things to say about it. His tester was a Macan 4 with a dual-motor powertrain providing 402 horsepower and 479 lb-ft of torque. That’s enough to send the Macan EV to 60 mph in 4.9 seconds and up to a top speed of 137 mph.

The Macan 4 has an EPA range rating of 308 miles, but that goes down to around if you get the larger RS spider-design 22-inch wheels like the ones on Patrick’s tester. Interestingly, when Out of Spec Reviews drove a Macan Turbo at 70 mph, it actually exceeded its 288-mile EPA claim by 2 miles on 22-inch wheels. Tom Moloughney got 343 miles in the base rear-wheel-drive Macan on 20-inch aero wheels, surpassing its 315-mile EPA range prediction by almost 10%.

With a starting price of $81,600, the all-wheel-drive Macan 4 is definitely expensive. Patrick’s tester had some options, so it cost $94,855, which is a lot for a Macan, no matter what powers it. Patrick missed one-pedal driving, which the Macan doesn’t really offer, and it could also do with a bit more drama when you’re going fast in one. But overall it works really well, it’s practical, it’s well built and it’s just a cohesive package. It really shows Porsche has gained experience making EVs, and in many areas, it feels like an improvement over the Taycan.

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