After 1,000 Miles in Our Porsche Macan EV, I'm a (Slightly) Bigger Fan

• I recently took a road trip in the Porsche Macan EV that's in our One-Year Road Test fleet.
• There's a lot that makes this EV a great road trip vehicle.
• But many of the Macan's core deficiencies still show up on longer journeys. 

Most electric cars aren't really suited to long, constant highway running — especially on a 95-degree day. The Macan is no exception. What this SUV should at least do is be quiet and comfortable while it's chewing through electrons and, frankly, it doesn't. Despite EVs' reputation for quiet motoring, the Macan can be a punishingly loud place to be. 

On anything other than freshly laid tarmac — where most any car is as quiet as a church mouse — the Macan allows far too much wind and tire noise to enter the cabin. At one point during the drive, at almost the exact same time, my passenger and I both blurted out, "This is a loud car." Over cracked or more severely broken pavement, the plastics in the dashboard, steering wheel, and the back of the cabin creak and rattle in a rickety cacophony you'd never expect from a luxury SUV, let alone a Porsche.

While at the Electrify America station in Kettleman City, the Macan hovered near its peak charging power of 270 kW from 27% until throttling down at around 50% charge. We've already established the Macan is a quick charger, but it's nice to see the numbers we achieved in our controlled test environment mirrored in the real world after hours of constant running.

Later on, the Macan was able to repeat its trick of charging at a higher rate than Porsche claims, hitting 273 kW during my second stop of the day. That session charged the battery from 8% to 41%, delivered 32.1 kWh of energy and added over 100 miles of range in less than 8 minutes.

The lone day I had to explore the creeks and coastlines of Northern California was an uneventful one for the Porsche, but on the drive from Jenner back to Kettleman, the Macan averaged 31 kWh per 100 miles. That's not too far off the 29.2 kWh per 100 miles it managed on the much less highway-heavy Edmunds EV Range Test. 

On a long drive like this, the Macan has one more strength worth mentioning: the front seats. The adaptive sport seats fitted in our Macan are firm, but they're also supportive and adjustable in 18 ways. The result of that support is far less fatigue than you'd expect after 16-plus hours of driving over the course of a little over two days. The only caveat is, as with all things Porsche, the sporty seats cost $1,780 (but this option is well worth the money). 

Even though the trip itself was a good one, and the destination so stunningly beautiful I want to go back ASAP, I don't think I'll be taking the Macan again. The ride quality on a long haul is just too jarring and the cheap-feeling interior is noisy. Sure, it's efficient, but a car needs more than that and a pair of good seats to have real long-distance credentials.