STUTTGART, Germany – Cars with different drive modes are commonplace. Even a humble Kia has a Sport button that tightens up the steering a smidge and makes the throttle more responsive. Two cars in one they do not make, however. The 2024 Porsche Panamera E-Hybrid, on the other hand, comes awfully close to pulling off the trick.
This takes adaptability to a new level, allowing the car to maximize handling and ride comfort like never before – it also eliminates the need for anti-roll bars since each damper reduces or eliminates roll independently. There are air springs , but they’re really only there to support the weight of the car when it’s off.
The new 25.9-kilowatt-hour battery pack has 45% more capacity than before, yet doesn’t take up any more space in the body. A new 11-kW onboard charger allows for more rapid at-home charging , but the car itself can recharge the battery on the fly up to 80%. How far is that all-electric range? It should be better than the previous E-Hybrid’s meager 19 miles, but official figures are not yet available.
Put the car into Sport or Sport Plus, however, and the engine fires to life with the sonic accompaniment of the Sport exhaust mode. Now lay into the throttle and you’ll forget you’re not in any other internal combustion Panamera. In Sport, the PDK snaps off shifts; in Sport Plus, it can occasionally bang between them like a muscular arm slotting it into gear. The noise isn’t the ear-splitting flat-six fury of a Spyder RS, but it’s bound to make you happy.
The last Panamera’s center console featured a shift lever flanked by haptic-touch buttons for performance functions, infotainment shortcuts and climate controls. They’ve mostly been liquidated in favor of a cleaner look on top and a hidden wireless phone charger below. Those performance functions are now within the touchscreen, including the suspension and exhaust setting overrides that pop up on screen and linger just long enough when you turn the wheel-mounted mode selector.