Man Maths: Porsche Taycan

Let’s just pretend for now that used cars are never unreliable or costly to run. Let’s imagine your 2020 Taycan will be flawlessly dependable, only ever hitting you in the wallet when the tyres need replacing, your insurance is due, it’s service time or you have to recharge its battery (at home on a cheap overnight tariff, ideally). In that fantasy world, a £30k Taycan would be wonderful. I’d have one in a heartbeat.

But back to reality. Let’s first address this car’s vertiginous depreciation. To be fair to Porsche, all comparable EVs seem to do much the same thing, but there are used Taycans out there that will have cost their buyers close to six figures when new, only to have been traded in a few years later for around a third of the original purchase price. Call it a 70 per cent hit in five years. For the used buyer it’s a great thing, of course, although any second-hand Taycan will continue to drop in value over the coming years, just at a slower rate.

The bigger problem concerns reliability and the extraordinary cost of repair. There are some horror stories out there. Again, the Taycan isn’t alone in that – which premium car hasn’t presented some proportion of owners with a frightening bill? – but the used Taycan shopper must go to market with their eyes on stalks. Owner forums are awash with cautionary tales, such as the guy in the US whose failed battery was repaired at a cost of $42,000, only to fail again just 15 months later.

Another owner in the US reported a $24,000 bill for a replacement front motor control unit, another an $8000 invoice to replace blocked battery cooling fans. Many of the failures you’ll read about online will have been repaired under warranty, which is fine, except warranties don’t last forever. The Taycan’s battery, for instance, is only covered for 100,000 miles (or eight years, whichever comes first), unless extended. The out-of-warranty cost of a full replacement battery by a Porsche main dealer can run to more than £50,000, according to some owner reports in the UK.

The lesson? Make sure you’re covered by a manufacturer warranty. But what happens if you’re not and something goes horribly wrong? This is where it gets complicated… and interesting. There is a still nascent aftermarket industry beginning to emerge around these cars, with independents offering Taycan battery repair or replacement for a fraction of the main dealer cost. And often it’ll only be a number of modules that need replacing, not the entire battery, so that £50,000 bill might be reduced to £10,000 or so, maybe less. And these specialists can increasingly address the Taycan’s other common faults too.

How mature can the aftermarket become in the next few years? Given that there’s real money to be made with so many of these cars on the road, I’m confident it’ll develop quickly. Confident enough to sink £30,000 of my own money into a used Taycan? Er, after you, I insist.