Why Top Gear’s Richard Hammond Would Tow A House With One

• Porsche reveals the towing rating of the upcoming electric Cayenne.
• It is rated at the same 7,716 lbs as the combustion variant.
• Richard Hammond was asked to demonstrate its towing effortlessness en route to a hillclimb event.

If Porsche had called me up to do a video illustrating the upcoming new electric Cayenne’s excellent towing capacity, you probably wouldn’t have watched it. Thankfully, they asked former Top Gear and The Grand Tour presenter Richard Hammond to do it, and he made it effortlessly entertaining to watch.

Hammond had a heavy-looking early-1900s car on a flatbed hooked up to the back of the Cayenne EV, which he then drove to a hillclimb event in the UK. While we’re not told the exact weight of the car and trailer combo, it’s likely approaching the tow limit of the electric SUV, which is rated at the same 7,716 pounds (3,500 kilograms) as the gas-burning variant.

In his DriveTribe video, he towed in the Cayenne on some typical British backroads, which include sometimes steep uphill and downhill parts, as well as tight corners. This type of road rewards a pokey powertrain and good agility, and Hammond said the Cayenne’s oomph made him forget that he was towing something that heavy.

Porsche doesn’t say how powerful the new electric Cayenne will be, solely stating that it will match the current range-topping combustion variant. That would be the Cayenne Turbo E-Hybrid, whose plug-in hybrid powertrain pairs a 4.0-liter twin-turbo V8 with an electric motor to make 729 horsepower and 700 pound-feet (950 Nm) of torque.

The Cayenne Coupe with that powertrain needs 3.5 seconds to hit 60 mph (96 km/h) from a standstill, but the EV will likely be even quicker. Porsche says the new EV will be “at least” as powerful as the ICE variant (which will remain on sale alongside it), which means it will likely be more powerful, and, as Hammond himself speculates (knowing how powerful the Taycan is now), it wouldn’t be surprising if it had a four-figure peak power rating.

The reason why Hammond drove the Cayenne EV prototype to the Shelsley Walsh Hillclimb was for it to have a go at breaking the event’s SUV record set by a Bentley Bentayga. In the hands of a professional driver, the electric vehicle broke the record by over four seconds, and we’re also given an extra bit of information about its straight-line performance.

They measured how quickly the vehicle covered the first 60 feet (18.3 meters), which in the prototype’s case was 1.94 seconds. For reference, a Tesla Model S Plaid was recorded at 1.52 seconds to 60 feet, although it was on a perfectly level drag strip. There appears to be a slight incline at the start of the Shelsley Walsh Hillclimb, which may add a tenth of a second or more to the time, so it’s not a direct comparison.

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Source: Porsche

The Cayenne EV should be capable of sprinting to 60 mph in the mid-to-low three-second range, so it should be marginally quicker than the hottest combustion variant. Being built on the same PPE 800-volt platform as the Macan EV, its larger brother could borrow its drive units. The spiciest dual-motor Macan, the Turbo, produces a combined 630 hp, sending it to sixty in 3.1 seconds and on to 162 mph.

The same powertrain will result in a sprint time closer to 3.5 seconds in the larger, heavier Cayenne. But Porsche said we can expect it to have at least 730 hp, which would bring it closer to the three-second mark. Porsche is expected to begin Cayenne deliveries next year with a starting price of around $90,000.