Tested: The 2025 Porsche Taycan Is Still A Fast-Charging Demon

As much as I like the Porsche Taycan, I'll readily admit that it's certainly not for everyone—even by Porsche's already-high standards for exclusivity. 

The tester you see here came in Shade Green Metallic, a highly unusual pastel-like teal that stands out in every parking lot's endless sea of gray and black cars. It's also a Taycan 4S Cross Turismo, the Taycan's wagon variant that comes with a little extra ground clearance and a "Gravel Mode," yet still won't convince anyone that it's an SUV.

Throw in the $40,000 (!!!) worth of options as equipped here and the price tag comes in at a jaw-dropping $165,655. It's a special electric vehicle, aimed at a special (and deep-pocketed) enthusiast. 

But it's impossible to deny that you're getting a lot of EV if you're fortunate enough to spring for a Taycan. And I'd argue that its performance when parked is even more groundbreaking than its performance on the highway. It remains one of the quickest-charging EVs you can buy in America today.

(Full Disclosure: Porsche loaned me a Taycan 4S Cross Turismo for a week of testing.)

As part of its 2025 model-year updates, the Taycan's charging speed has been increased to 320 kilowatts. If you need a refresher or are new to this, the higher the kW, the faster the charge, generally speaking. However, your time spent on the plug also depends on various factors, such as the size of your battery.

My tester had the Taycan's largest battery option, the 105 kilowatt-hour Performance Plus pack. But even that is still reasonably-sized compared to some of the more gargantuan units on other high-range EVs.

This means that the 2025 Taycan has a blistering charging time when hooked up to a powerful enough charger: Porsche claims it can go from 10% to 80% in just 18 minutes. 

I experienced this for myself last year at a Porsche event in California, where I charged a then-new Taycan from 8% to 80% in as little as 16 minutes. That was a massively impressive charging result and another testament to the power of an 800-volt architecture—a more advanced electrical system underpinning some EVs that allows for far greater power intake than others can offer. 

So now, almost 18 months later and with a Taycan tester in my garage for a week, I had to see if it could hold up. Spoiler alert: You had better believe it did.

2025 Porsche Taycan: The Charging Test

My test was very simple, and meant to replicate the kind of real-world driving and charging that anybody might do on a road trip or just a very extended drive about town. I drove the Taycan until the battery was low, set my local 350-kW charging station as the destination in the navigation system, drove it there, and plugged in.

I told you it was very simple.

With this battery, the Taycan 4S is officially rated at 272 miles of range, but on my home charger and in temperate weather, I saw it estimate 300 miles. And as that same charging test in California proved, the Taycan can easily exceed that if you're careful when driving—a remarkable number for a car that also packs up to 590 horsepower and can do zero to 60 mph in 3.6 seconds. 

I started my charging test at on a Sunday afternoon at 1:57 p.m. and 15%, leaving roughly 39 miles left with the car in Sport Mode (your estimate skews higher in Normal Mode or rear-drive-only Range Mode). It was a warm 87 degrees F (31 degrees C) outside and the battery had been preconditioned for the charge. 

I considered running the Taycan down on the highway to get down to 10%, but again, this was meant to be more or less a real-world test of how quickly I could get back on the road. With the charge limit set to 80%, the Taycan gave me an estimated completion time of 2:18 p.m., which later dropped to 2:16 p.m.

To my delight, my sometimes-inconsistent 350-kW charging station started working with the Taycan right away. Even more delightful was seeing the Taycan hit 300 kW right off the bat. Within a minute, the car charged from 15% to 20% and was humming at 308 kW by two minutes in.

From there, the charging speeds kept climbing, first to 311 kW and then 315 kW. For a few brief moments, I saw it peak around 317 kW. Mostly, the Taycan stayed between 308 kW and 315 kW, reaching 50% in seven minutes. At 54%, that meant an estimated 143 miles, so I had already added more than 100 miles of range in seven minutes. 

It is here where I will pause and point out how results like this fly in the face of the "EVs take too long to charge when you're on a road trip" argument. Sure, not every EV charges as quickly as the Taycan. But seven minutes is about the length of an average road-trip bathroom break. A hundred miles of range should easily get you to your destination, or at least another location with more chargers. A 20-minute break buys you three or four hours behind the wheel, too, and your back or bladder will demand a break by that point. 

The Taycan finally dropped to 300 kW around 60%, then 296 kW, about nine minutes into the test. I couldn't help but be impressed. My Kia EV6 is pretty good at fast-charging too, and the most I've seen is around 225 kW. 

Around 64% the Taycan's speeds dropped to 209 kW, but then it hopped right back to 272 kW soon after, even as I approached a 70% charge. That's an incredibly high charging speed for a battery so full. 

At this point, the line at my charging station was getting longer. This is one of the only non-Tesla stations in the area and right off New York State Route 17. A lot of folks, including one family in a Kia EV9, seemed to be on a July 4 road trip and were eager to get moving again. In keeping with my "only fast-charge to what you need" rule and to be a good fellow EV driver, I decided to call the test early at 2:09 p.m.

I had already proved my point, anyway. The final result for the test was 15% to 70% in just 12 minutes—an addition of 58.044 kWh of energy and enough to leave the Taycan with 200 miles of range, still in Sport Mode. In Normal Mode or Range Mode, it would've read well over 200 miles. Oh, and the car said it was still capable of taking up to 274 kW if I wanted to plug back in. 

That's outstanding.

2025 Porsche Taycan Charging Test: What We Learned

I never quite hit the 320 kW the Taycan is capable of, or if I did, it was in a "blink and you'll miss it" moment. The car got very, very close to that level and stayed there consistently until it charged to more than 60%.

These are the quickest charging speeds that I have ever personally seen outside of China; I have only experienced better speeds with my latest Taycan charging test and the Lucid Air Grand Touring, and even then, only very slightly. (The last Air I tested managed up to 322 kW.) The new Lucid Gravity is rated to pull up to 400 kW, but I have not tested that yet, and it would require a very high-voltage charger to do so.

Either way, this test proved a few things.

800-volt electrical architectures are the future. Many EVs still use less sophisticated 400-volt electrical systems, including newer ones that are designed to be more affordable. Having a less complex electrical architecture certainly keeps costs down. But long-term, I expect most EV manufacturers to use higher-voltage systems. You can't argue with the results here. 

Charging is getting better and better all the time. The first-generation Taycan was no slouch at fast-charging either, rated at speeds of up to 270 kW. That's still better than most. But in just a mid-cycle update, its max speeds jumped a full 50 kW, and its charge curve got way better. The Volkswagen Group never gets credit for this, but every EV it makes feels like a quantum leap over the last one. And as charging stations proliferate, they're becoming more powerful and offering more plugs at each station. Imagine where this field will be in five years.

With the right EV and the right charger, the experience can feel the same as a stop for gas. The fact that I added more than 100 miles of range in under 10 minutes alone feels like a game-changing experience. Nobody wants to wait at these stations forever. If more EVs can work that way, and more drivers learn to just fast-charge to the levels they need, then gas-powered cars are in trouble.

The Porsche Taycan remains a fast-charging champion. It's ridiculously quick, and it'll get you back on the road just as quickly, provided you can find a 350-kW charger easily. Ultimately, this was my favorite thing about the Taycan. I drive fast EVs all of the time; zero to 60 mph in the mid-three-second range is almost common now. But the Taycan's combination of range, speed and fast-charging make it truly special. 

And I'll take it as a preview of what's next. This is still a charging system on a very high-end performance car. When this technology starts to trickle down to more normal cars, as it usually does, we're all going to benefit. 

Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com