Pushing Porsche Taycan Turbo to Such Great Heights: Track Time Tuesday

By S.J. Bryan - October 13, 2020

Professional driver Simona de Silvestro puts the Porsche Taycan Turbo to the test carving up the Swiss Alps.

This week’s Track Time Tuesday is a little unique. Instead of featuring a track or circuit, we’re going vertical. Well, so to speak. To best show off the Taycan Turbo, Porsche took the road less travelled. And that road–twisty, challenging, and thrilling–coils and climbs the Swiss Alps like a hot knife through butter.

Behind the wheel of the Porsche Taycan Turbo is Simona de Silvestro. The Swiss driver is a professional test and development driver for the TAG Heuer Porsche Formula E team, as well as the first female Porsche works driver.

Usually, De Silvestro is behind the wheel of a Porsche 99X Electric for Formula E. She has also raced in the IndyCar Series, Formula 1, and Australian Supercar Championship.

“The fulfilling thing about my job is driving this machine to its limit,” she says as she ascends the mountains. “It’s really something special.”

And that machine is the Porsche Taycan Turbo. When it comes to electric cars, the response has been mixed. But it is easier to make peace with a BEV when it has such a rewarding performance. In the video we see how dynamic, fast, and yes–powerful–the Taycan is. It is a Porsche, through and through.

In her time driving and testing for Porsche, she has been very involved in the development of the 99X Electric Formula E race car. She stresses how important it is to perfect software; to learn how to best use the energy.

“At Porsche, everything really does come from motorsport,” says de Silvestro.

And the lessons learned from EVs on the track translates to the real world very smoothly. Using the same technology as its race cars, the Taycan makes the most of its powertrain…and then some.

Watching the Taycan carve up the mountainside is beautiful, and damn impressive. In our opinion, the Taycan is as close to an electric 911 as we’ve seen. It is graceful, aggressive, agile, perfectly engineered, and has power.

The 750 hp Taycan Turbo sprints 0-60 mph in 2.6-seconds, and hits top speeds of 161 mph. A far cry from where EVs started; this is a rousing, satisfying ride. As De Silvestro says, it makes us excited to see where EV technology will go in the next ten years.

De Silvestro uses the Taycan Turbo as a daily driver around Zurich. “It’s agile and looks amazing,” she says. “It’s aggressive in the front, but also futuristic. The flyline is definitely Porsche.”

We weren’t sure if we could really get excited about going electric. But, we are coming around. Seeing the Taycan Turbo perform like a beast helps our EV trepidation fade fast.