The Porsche Panamera 4S E-Hybrid Is Impressive, but I'd Skip Its Fanciest Piece of Tech

Porsche Panamera 4S E-Hybrid: Skip the SuspensionPorsche

The breadth of talent of the new $128,795 Porsche Panamera 4S E-Hybrid is truly remarkable. You could drive it for weeks, months, maybe even years and never experience all its talents. All the Porsche goodness—incredible body control, superb balance, the grip and response—is present and correct. But the initial impression this car gives is so calm, soothing, and luxurious that I’m not sure you’d ever delve beyond its serene everyday capabilities. In some ways this will be music to Porsche’s ears. Mission accomplished. The Panamera expressly wants to have multiple personalities, and boy, does it deliver.

However, the flip side is that the Panamera doesn’t exactly beg to be taken by the scruff of the neck and really driven, even though it responds in all the right ways when you do so. I guess what I’m trying to say is that for the most part, the 4S E-Hybrid feels like a quiet, poised, and genuinely pampering experience. But it doesn’t necessarily feel special in a sporting, Porsche-type way. Do you want a Porsche that reveals its inner, um, Porsche-ness only when pushed really hard? Or one that wears its sharpness and remarkable agility with pride even when you’re just swimming gently around the city?

Porsche

Before we delve deeper into this question, let’s take a look at the range. The entry-level car is the plain and simple $104,795 Panamera, powered by a 2.9-liter twin-turbocharged V-6 with 348 hp and 369 lb-ft of torque. The $111,795 Panamera 4 adds all-wheel drive but remains a pure ICE proposition. At the top end is the nutty 670-hp Turbo E-Hybrid, which easily trips over the $200,000 mark with a few options. As we recently found out, it’s quite the experience with stunning performance and a new Active Ride system that plays all sorts of tricks.

Today I’m in Germany with the $117,495 4 E-Hybrid and $128,795 4S E-Hybrid. Both use the 2.9-liter V-6, but here it’s paired with an electric motor, which is now integrated into the eight-speed PDK ’box. The 187-hp, 331-lb-ft motor draws from a 45 percent bigger 25.9-kWh battery pack. EPA figures aren’t in yet, but expect an electric range of around 45 miles. The E-Hybrids can do up to 87 mph under electric power alone too. The entry-level hybrid has a lower-state-of-tune engine with just 300 hp, but it combines with the motor for a healthy 463 hp and 479 lb-ft. The 4S E-Hybrid makes 536 hp and 533 lb-ft. It should hit 60 mph in 3.5 seconds. The penalty for all of this instant torque and silent EV progress? Aside from the added cost, the hybrid models are around 700 pounds heavier for totals well over 5000 pounds.

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Let’s concentrate on the 4S E-Hybrid. In this case, it’s fitted with the $7150 Active Ride system, plus optional 21-inch wheels and the $4740 Sports package, consisting of sports exhaust, rear steering, and torque vectoring for the rear diff. We’ve covered how the trick ride system works before, but essentially each damper is connected to an electrically powered hydraulic pump that provides a “volume flow” to react to the surface and the driver’s inputs. This powerful system can effectively lift the wheels over bumps and push them into compressions, hence the eerily smooth ride. Such is its effectiveness that anti-roll bars are no longer required, and the dampers can actively counteract dive (lifting the front of the car under braking and pulling the rear of it down) and even lean the body of the car into corners.

There are various driving modes: the default E-Power, followed by Hybrid Auto, E-Hold to maintain current battery power, and E-Charge. Sport mode ensures that the combustion engine is always running and the battery is kept to its minimum level to assist, and Sport Plus keeps the battery at around 30 percent. The latter two modes are customizable with Comfort, Sport, and Sport Plus suspension settings, for example. Interestingly, the suspension uses the full power of Active Ride—carving into turns, lifting the nose, and squatting the rear under braking—only in Comfort mode, because Porsche believes that some roll and a more natural feel are vital when driving harder.

Porsche

We’ll get to the faster stuff soon. But first, well, the Panamera really is a fantastic luxury car. The materials and the fit and finish are superb, and despite a pretty tricky user interface if you try to stick to the native navigation system, all feels very soothing indeed. The sport exhaust isn’t exactly musical, but it adds a little hint that the Panamera is more than just an S-class rival. The steering is clean and very precise, and the rear steer works almost invisibly. There’s no way to adjust the regen level, so no one-pedal driving here, but that does make the Panamera very easy and intuitive to drive. The switchover between regenerative braking and friction braking is a bit ragged, however.

The engine, once it chimes in, has a lovely revvy quality, but there’s not the deep-seated quality and character of the old V-8s. Oh, well, this is the world we live in. The gearbox is fantastically smooth and quick, and the performance is strong but never feels as strong as 0–60 mph in 3.5 seconds sounds. The character is more effortless than oh-my-God.

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So, to the Active Ride. It’s amazing. Surreal. Deeply impressive, and the way it reduces the sensations and discomfort of dive, squat, and roll is much more effective than other systems of this nature that I’ve tried. However, I hate it. Perhaps it’s the way my body is wired, but the softness of the ride made me feel all at sea, and hitting the brakes and then watching and feeling the front of the car raise up is highly unnatural and immediately induced a queasiness that lingered. Quite aside from my own weak stomach, I just don’t see how the car behaving counter to what’s real and natural is a good thing for comfort or performance. It feels like a party trick rather than a real engineering solution.

Having said that, in Sport and Sport Plus modes, the Active Ride is pretty amazing. Body roll is present but kept under tight check. In combination with the car’s superb turn-in response, the 4S suddenly appears to shed hundreds of pounds, and you can almost feel how efficiently it’s maintaining a perfect contact patch down at ground level. The big Panamera really starts to flow, and on Germany’s pretty excellent road network, it’s hard to detect just how heavy this car is. It never feels like a truly responsive sports car, but as sport sedans go, the Panamera has a sort of cerebral, super-precise feeling. I’m not sure it’s exactly exciting, but it is satisfying.

Yet, for me, the Active Ride would be an option I’d leave unticked. I appreciate the ultimate control but prefer a greater sense of connection and mechanical authenticity. Would I take the hybrid over the slightly more affordable pure ICE models? Again, no. For me the added performance is appealing, but this car is so refined that a pure EV mode doesn’t change the game. So why carry around all of that extra weight and complication? If you want or need the electric capability, this is a great package, though. I just wish it felt more exciting, more of the time.

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