Porschephiles will see the subtly different bumper on this Panamera sedan and identify it as a 2021 model, fresh from a midlife facelift. Jonathan Gitlin The refresh fixed one of my chief complaints about the Panamera by replacing the old multifunction steering wheel with this new one. Porsche The midlife refresh also applies to the Panamera Sport Turismo and the long-wheelbase Panamera Executive, but we only got a chance to drive the regular sedan, in the new 4S E-Hybrid flavor. Porsche With 552hp, the 4S E-Hybrid replaces the old (not-hybrid) Turbo, sort of. Porsche You can always tell a Porsche hybrid by the volt-colored accents. Porsche Sadly, there's nothing to see under the hood other than plastic covers. Porsche The other main visible change for MY2021 are new LED taillights. Porsche The haptic controls of the center console work well, but the fingerprints will annoy anyone fussier drivers. Porsche You can't see it, but underneath the seats is now 17.9kWh of lithium-ion battery storage, up from 14.1kWh. Porsche USB-A ports have been replaced with USB-C ports. Porsche I've been calling this a sedan, but even the regular Panamera is actually a hatchback. Porsche Sport Plus mode turns everything up to 11. It also charges the battery while you drive. (As does E-Charge mode in normal.) Jonathan Gitlin The bigger battery means more of your trips can be electric. Jonathan Gitlin Overall MPG for the last few hundred miles. Jonathan Gitlin Just in case you forgot what you were driving. Porsche
It takes a lot of time and money to design and then produce a new vehicle, so the longer the car stays on sale, the more time there is to recoup that investment. Eight years is about the lifespan of a new model, which unfortunately is long enough for customers to get bored.
Enter the midlife refresh. The idea is as simple as it sounds—halfway through a model's lifespan, it gets treated to a makeover. There are always things that can be tweaked to make production easier, to satisfy customers, or to take advantage of some new gadget or gizmo that showed up in the meantime.
Such is the case for Porsche's Panamera sedan, which emerges fresh from the styling department with a sharper new face, a subtle tweak to the taillights, and of most interest to our audience, a 27 percent bump in battery size for the plug-in hybrids in the model lineup.
In days of old, Porsche would have assembled a selection of its face-lifted sedans in one spot and let us jouRead More – Source
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