Porsche Quietly Made Its Quickest Car Even Quicker

Image: Bradley Brownell

If you have a Porsche Taycan Turbo S electric super sedan, and you spend a lot of time at full throttle over 100 miles per hour, you might have noticed that your car has gotten quicker lately. Porsche quietly pushed out a pair of software updates which have allowed the Turbo S model to “overboost” its electric power at higher speeds to arrive there even quicker. The German automaker didn’t tell anyone about this, but Car and Driver recently tested a new 2023 Turbo S and compared it against the data it collected in 2020, and found some pretty significant differences.

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For normal everyday street use, you probably won’t notice much difference. The original car ran from 0-60 in 2.4 seconds, and the new programming hasn’t changed that at all. The two different tunes of the Turbo S start to diverge at around 90 miles per hour, as the new program gets the car to 90 in just 4.7 seconds as opposed to the positively lethargic 4.9 seconds it used to take. As a result, the car now sprints the quarter mile in 10.3 seconds instead of 10.5.

The refreshed Taycan Turbo S gets even quicker if you keep the throttle pinned for more than a quarter mile. It’ll hit 120 miles per hour in 8.3 seconds instead of 8.8. According to C/D’s testing, the revitalized Turbo S now gets to 150 miles per hour a full second quicker, in 14.2 seconds instead of 15.2.

Electric cars can only operate at full throttle for so long without the computer pulling things back to preserve battery longevity and prevent heat sink from causing bigger problems. When you put your Taycan Turbo S into Sport Plus mode and initiate the launch control protocols, the car will allow an “overboost” of power, pumping the full 750 horsepower to the wheels. When the car launched Porsche was a bit conservative with the function, only allowing drivers to give it three seconds worth of beans. The new updates have incorporated lots of Porsche scientific testing and allowed the quickest of the quick to extended the beans to a full ten seconds.

Unless you’re just out embarrassing fools at the drag strip, it’s unlikely you’ll use ten seconds of maximum overboost. It’s downright egregious to do so on public roads, but could be really useful for a racing series that requires a standing start. It’s good to know that Porsche is always striving to give its customers a max attack mode. You paid for the whole speedometer, you might as well use it. You know, when it’s safe to do so.