The Porsche Taycan Is The 'Ring's Fastest Road-Legal EV

Not content with having the fastest overall lap time at the Nurburgring with its 919 Evo, Porsche has just bagged another record at the Green Hell.

It strapped test driver Lars Kern behind the wheel of its new Taycan electric saloon, which yielded a 7min 42sec lap record. Strangely, Porsche is merely dubbing it the fastest ever time for a four-door electric car, but so far as we can work out, this also makes it the Nordschleife’s fastest road-legal EV. After all, despite Nio’s insinuations to the contrary, the EP9 is not a road car.

Even with the Nio taken out of the equation, however, the Taycan is rather short on competition at the German track. Neither the Tesla Model S P100D nor Model 3 Performance have been sent around there for a fast run, be it by official means or via a third party like Sport Auto.

That being the case, this is Porsche setting a benchmark. It’s Stuttgart saying ‘come at me bro’ to an incoming generation of fast electric cars. We can’t wait to see who takes up the gauntlet first.

We’ll have to wait a few weeks until the Taycan’s Frankfurt debut to get all the gory details, but we do know that the range-topping version - which is presumably the car fielded for this lap - will be good for around 600bhp. Curiously, it’s expected to be called the Taycan Turbo, despite the obvious lack of, y’know, a turbo.

The company recently revealed interior shots of the Taycan, showing a cabin which will look familiar to the Porsche faithful, despite being heavily loaded with screens.