Porsche Gave The Electric Cayenne To A Man Famous For Crashing. What Could Go Wrong?
Image Credit: Porsche.
There was a time, not so long ago, when carmakers treated their prototypes like state secrets. They'd be swaddled in so much camouflage they looked like mobile Rorschach tests, driven only at night in the desolate wilderness of some frozen wasteland, and guarded by men who looked like they gargled gravel. If a photographer so much as pointed a lens in their direction, they'd vanish in a puff of smoke and shredded NDAs. How things have changed.
Today, it seems the new marketing strategy is to take your priceless, one-of-a-kind electric future-mobile and give it to a television presenter best known for his intimate, and often upside-down, relationship with gravity.
Image Credit: Porsche.
Porsche, full of supreme confidence, handed the keys to its yet-to-be-released all-electric Cayenne prototype to none other than Richard Hammond - the chap who once re-landscaped a British hillside with a jet-powered dragster.
This wasn't some hush-hush affair, either. It was all for a film on the DriveTribe YouTube channel. They took this camouflaged family hauler to the legendary Shelsley Walsh hill climb, a ribbon of tarmac so steep it looks like it was designed by a sadist. It's a place where Hammond himself has a bit of history. Giving him a pre-production Porsche here is like giving a pyromaniac the only lighter in town. Brilliant.
You might think the main event was to see if he could keep it shiny-side-up. But Porsche had other ideas. They wanted to prove that their new electric beast could still do proper SUV things. First on the list: towing.
Image Credit: Porsche.
Apparently, even people who buy silent, warp-speed Porsches have a horse trailer or a vintage race car they need to drag around. The official number is a beefy 7,716 pounds of towing capacity, exactly the same as its gasoline-swilling cousins.
To demonstrate, Hammond hitched up a gorgeous old Lagonda on a trailer, a combo weighing somewhere around 4,000 pounds. And did the electric Cayenne pull it? Of course, it did. This was a Porsche-sanctioned video, not a candid documentary on roadside failures. The big EV towed the classic with the sort of nonchalant ease you or I might use to carry a bag of groceries.
It was a completely unsurprising, yet deeply impressive, display of electric muscle. Point made, Porsche. Your EV can still do the heavy lifting.
Image Credit: Porsche.
But you don't buy a Porsche - even a big one - just to be a glorified tractor. You buy it for the power. And oh my, does this thing promise power. Porsche is being coy with the exact numbers, but they did let slip that it will have more horsepower than any Cayenne currently on sale.
That means it will eclipse the absurd 729 horsepower of the Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid. A family SUV with more than 729 horsepower, delivered with the silent, instant ferocity that only electric motors can provide. The acceleration won't just be fast; it will be an event.
With the sensible towing part out of the way, it was time for the fun bit: the hill climb. Wisely, Porsche decided to let a professional handle this part. They handed the wheel to Gabriela Jílková, a development driver for Porsche's Formula E team.
Image Credit: Porsche.
This was no longer about just getting up the hill; it was about tearing it a new one. The course is 1,000 yards of increasingly steep asphalt, kicking up to a 16.7% grade. It's a challenge for any car.
Gabriela went and humiliated it. She blasted up the hill in 31.28 seconds. That's not just fast for an SUV; it's supernova-fast. She beat the previous SUV record by more than four seconds, which in motorsport is an eternity. Even more mind-boggling was the launch.
The Cayenne covered the first 60 yards in just 1.94 seconds. Porsche claims that's a time usually reserved for single-seater race cars on sticky slick tires. This behemoth of an SUV did it on standard summer road tires. I've seen rockets leave the launchpad with less urgency.
Image Credit: Porsche.
Part of this physics-defying magic comes from the Porsche Active Ride system, a fiendishly clever bit of tech borrowed from the Taycan and Panamera. Essentially, it's an anti-roll system that actively counters the car's desire to lean in corners.
The result is a vehicle that stays unnervingly flat, no matter how hard you push it. It's the kind of engineering that makes you giggle, a big, comfortable SUV that corners with the tenacity of a housefly.
The big question is, when can we get our hands on this electric wonder-wagon? Porsche says deliveries will start in 2026, which probably means it'll land in the States as a 2027 model. And in a nod to pragmatism, it won't replace the gas and hybrid models but will be sold alongside them.
For now, it's making an appearance at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, still wearing its camouflage pajamas. I can't wait to see what it looks like naked.
