I Thought Fake Gears Made EVs Better. Then I Drove This Porsche Taycan

Simulated engines and gears are being pushed as a way to make EVs feel more engaging. The best ones don’t need them.

Taycan driving

Photo by: Andrei Nedelea

Andrei Nedelea

By: Andrei Nedelea

Oct 2, at 12:52pm ET

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I was pretty surprised when Porsche reversed course on its previous position and added fake gears to its EVs. It seemed to contradict the brand’s ethos of letting real engineering and its cars' handling shine. Porsche was just adopting a trend.

Trying its simulated engine and gears, it’s obvious a lot of work went into making the system as good as you would expect from a Porsche. But it also didn’t define the driving experience as it does in other cars like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 N or the Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door EV.

AMG went out of its way to make its fake V-8 believable, and it’s probably the most realistic such system currently available in any EV at any price. Porsche's solution is in some ways similar to what Hyundai is doing, with an approach that makes it clear what you’re listening to is a simulated video game-esque engine, not the real thing.

Gallery: 2026 Porsche Taycan 4

2026 Porsche Taycan 4

Source: Andrei Nedelea

This brings me to my recent drive of the refreshed 2026 Porsche Taycan a few weeks ago. You can optionally add the simulated engine and cog swapping if you want, but my tester didn’t have it. Sure, I would have liked to experience it on a Taycan to see what it feels like in a sedan, but I frankly didn’t miss it.

The Taycan is such an accomplished driving experience that it rewards the keen driver even while completely silent. I’ve never driven another car quite like it, regardless of what powered it. Put another way, the Taycan is a corner-carving weapon, and it’s better than most other performance cars I’ve tried. I didn't need anything fake to have fun.

Its chassis is so neutral, poised, and predictable that I quickly fell into a rhythm and gained huge confidence on a bendy road. It flowed from corner to corner in a way I hadn't experienced before, and while threading corners together in it, the last thing on my mind was that it didn't have an engine or gear shifts.

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My Taycan 4 tester had the more basic spaceship-like acceleration sound. You need a sound to help you gauge your speed in an EV; otherwise, you have to keep checking the speedometer more often than you would in a combustion car. Having a sound, whatever it is, gives you a reference for when and how much to brake, which you can do more by feel if you also hear what the vehicle is doing.

This was the point a BMW engineer made when explaining how and why they created the acceleration sound for the upcoming electric M3. He argued that it’s about having an audible reference to gauge your speed, rather than recreating a gas-car-like experience.

That resonated strongly with me. It reminded me of the spirited drives I've taken in the Tesla Model 3 Performance. It’s a fantastic driving car and provides the closest experience to the Taycan you can get at that price. But having no sound at all isn't ideal, and truly dulls the experience.

2027 Porsche Taycan

2027 Porsche Taycan 'shift' paddles

Photo by: Porsche

Sometimes I carried a little more speed than I'd like into corners and was pretty alarmed when I glanced at the speedo, so I had to brake really hard to stay on the road. This has never been an issue when driving combustion cars, regardless of whether they are performance-oriented or not.

The second issue is less intuitive accelerator modulation: judging how much power you’re feeding in as you balance the car through a bend and accelerate out of it. A sound that responds to accelerator input adds another layer of feedback, potentially making those adjustments feel more natural. Research supports sound’s role in perceived power delivery, though that doesn’t establish that silent EVs are inherently harder to control.

The flipside of a completely silent EV is that all other sounds the car makes feel amplified. The most important of these comes from the tires, and you can hear how close you are to the limit of grip in an EV more clearly than in a combustion car. This sound is usually drowned out by the engine, but in an EV you can start to appreciate how it subtly changes depending on where you are in its grip range.