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2026 Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid review

Fred Brown3 hours ago

13 minutes read

childcareman.xyz brings reviews, research tools and trusted buying support together, guiding you from research to delivery with confidence.

The Porsche Panamera is one of those vehicles that seems to slip under the radar.

This is the kind of car that makes enthusiasts weak in knees, a large, practical liftback body with Porsche’s reputation for dynamic excellence and an extensive range of powertrains – from turbo V6s to our Turbo S E-Hybrid’S twin-turbo plug-in hybrid V8 power train.

And yet the Panamera is largely overlooked by Porsche enthusiasts who gravitate towards the 911, and by the broader luxury car-buying population who flock to SUVs including the Cayenne.

Not to mention, the electric Taycan launched a few years ago and stole some of the Panamera’s thunder. Is the Panamera unfairly overlooked?

How much does the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid cost?

While the sales volume of Panamera variants are low, Porsche imports a large number of panamersa variations to Australia (although even more can be found in Europe).

| Model | Price before on-road costs |
| — | — |
| 2026 Porsche Panamera | $246,700 |
| 2026 Porsche Panamera 4 E-Hybrid | $283,000 |
| 2026 Porsche Panamera 4S E-Hybrid | $311,200 |
| 2026 Porsche Panamera GTS | $351,800 |
| 2026 Porsche Panamera Turbo E-Hybrid | $425,500 |
| 2026 Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid | $499,900 |

The Turbo S E-Hybrid sits on the Panamera line, and is $499,900 prior to road costs. That’s a drive-away price of $535,761… and that’ll be ahead of anything you can do with based on.

The Audi RS7 Performance, in contrast, costs $258,900 drive-away in NSW, while the BMW M5 costs $278,000. For similar coin, you could buy a Bentley Flying Spur or Bentayga Speed, or an Aston Martin DB12 Volante.

Our tester had $26,690 worth of options. Porsche allows you to tailor your car a lot, even with Paint to Sample exterior finishes for just over $20,000.

Some of the options on our tester were nice but should be standard (massaging and ventilated front seats for $2200, e.g., while some were just gilding the lily (Porsche crests on the head restraints for $1450)).

To see how the Porsche Panamera lines up against the competition, check out our
comparison tool

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What is the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid like on the inside?

It may be big and surprisingly practical, but the Panamera loses comfort to sporty look inside. And, sadly, the interior of the Panamera could be nicer for something over half a million.

Indeed, the Porsche smells like an Audi inside, and it’s not appreciably nicer than, for example, the RS7.

At the bottom of the doors, hard plastic trim is also found at Hard Plastic Trim and on the lower side of a centre console between the carpet and leather trim.

This drives the slick drive mode selector is also plasticky and there’s much too much gloss black trim, including on some weird inserts at either end of the dash.

A bucket has a sporty, gripping seat with the front and rear sure look of your hand but they are too stiff for that reason.’ behind the wheel I felt like sitting in ‘high-back dining chair’ and my shoulders and upper back were awkward. A range of five massage modes and five intensity levels meant that at least my lower back was in the lap of luxury, a lot of them.

The rear seats, too, received complaints from some passengers, though cabin dimensions here are perfectly fine, if not palatial.

A back seat has a four-way lumbar support, backrest and adjustment of the rear seats for an adjustable length (squab) but we tested with only heating and not ventilation and massage.

You can get those features as options, but it’s a bit surprising they’re not standard given the vehicle’s price.

The Panamera has a nice dashboard with some really classy touches, from an A-logue clock on the dash to the lovely knurled metal rocker switches for temperature and fan speed adjustment.

Nearly all of the centre stack is slathered in gloss black trim, Mind you (although we tested with matte carbon-fibre to break up this monotony) but our tester had some matte Carbon-Fibri.

This is a black and Kalahari Grey colourway of our press car that gives the cabin an airy feel; ambient lighting – which can even be customized to album art of the music you’re listening to – makes the room at night more like it.

There’s a nice digital instrument cluster with multiple views, including one that simulates analogue dials. It has no binnacle of the cluster but we never had any problems with glare. Even if you’re using maps through smartphone mirroring, your turn-by-turn navigation directions will appear on the screen.

And if Porsche has implemented functional modern technology with an elegant touch, this isn’t the case all the time. Take the air vents, for example – they’re simple and elegant to look at but if you want to change them you’ll have to use the touchscreen. Who asked for this?

A soft or strong air flow is a choice, but an Xpeng about tenth of the price offers much more customisation here.

Porsche has also deployed touch-capacitive switchgear on the centre console, and this too is finished in smudge-prone gloss black trim.

At least there’s still traditional switchgear like an actual volume knob, and not everything has been relegated to the touchscreen.

Thankfully, that’s good because the touchscreen sometimes needs a firm stabbing while the embedded satellite navigation is slightly awkward and there’s no shortcut to smartphone mirroring on the anchored side bar.

Aside from that, infotainment system has crisp, modern graphics and a rational menu structure. While we were working with Panamera, Wireless Android Auto was faulty.

If you open the rear hatch and it’s not too deep, but there’ll be an extensive cargo bay – just like that. Still, that’s why the Panamera is much more practical than an M5… Well, an at least m5 Sedan.

To see how the Porsche Panamera lines up against the competition, check out our
comparison tool

What’s under the bonnet?

Panamera has a wide variety of powertrains, from ‘bi-turbo V6 with or without plug-in hybrid system to. bi-tuber V8 with/without PHEV system’ (Phuferr).

In the powertrain of the Turbo S E-Hybrid, a sonorous V8 engine with PHEV system is combined to deliver maximum performance and good efficiency (at least for something that produces outputs as big like these).

In a loop that includes inner-city, suburban and highway driving (in hybrid mode) with battery charge the entire time we recorded fuel consumption of 4-4. A of 6L/100km is 6 L/ 100km.

Over the course of our time with the vehicle, fuel consumption crept up to 13.8L/100km.

The Turbo S E-Hybrid doesn’t support DC fast-charging, but it can be charged at up to 11kW on AC power.

It cleverly identifies you on the embedded satellite navigation – thanks to a blue outline – how far can you go on your remaining EV range, and tells us with each drive how much of your total driving time was zero emissions (and also your average energy consumption)?

To see how the Porsche Panamera lines up against the competition, check out our
comparison tool

How does the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid drive?

The Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid gives you options.

Want to commute everyday with purely electric power, then go for a wild backroad blast on the weekend and let V8 roar? You can!

This is a quiet transition in E-Power mode, and the shifts between electric power and petrol power are seamless except for an occasional clunkiness when it slows down (although this was even noticeable in both of E–Power modes).

If you can leave it in E-Power mode, the petrol engine will only fire if you really lay into the accelerator pedal. The Panamera can be driven in E-Power mode at speeds of up to 138km/h, but off the line it feels slightly dull.

In one of the other modes, pop it (though), wow – panamera is so fast off the line that you feel it in your chest as you’re shoved back in seat.

Honestly it’s too good for Australian roads, as you get to the national highway speed limit – or over-it ‘too fast that just know you’re going to rack up some demerit points. And just imagine this on an Autobahn in its home country…

The Taycan may be a rapid, too, but the Panamera – by virtue of having v8 engine – sounds much better.

There’s a lot of drive modes, including . Besides the words E-Power, there are also sports and sport+ which recharges the battery as well as fast too.

Hybrid mode is reformed into E-Charge and E–Hold modes, where one uses the petrol engine to charge the battery while the other maintains that level of charge.

Within each mode you can adjust the ride height, suspension tune and exhaust sound.

Porsche’s Active Ride Suspension is a 400V high-voltage system that powers the Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid, which has been designed to be an active ride suspension. Each of its two-valve active shock absorbers has an electrically operated hydraulic pump that Porsche says actively generates forces in the rebound or compression direction, reducing pitch and roll and keeping the car flat.

It also provides the Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid with a super plush ride, which soaks up everything in tandem with single-chamber air-suspension. Then, even speed bumps melt away – regardless of how you have the Panamera in – yes, and even Sport+. This is why the Panamero is a very well-being commuter… good, except those seats.

The Panamera felt ‘bit firm’ only surfaced on concrete highways, the only one where they were feeling that was in fact “the same” as it did with . The Panamera is one of the most comfortable cruisers, despite still being an original .

But it doesn’t float, as body control is an example of how to do what you think. The Panamera is perfectly flat, so you won’t even notice road surface changes in this.

The Active Ride Suspension can also raise the car so it is easy for a person to get into. The suspension raises so quickly but it’s a bit of confusion and, in some cases I swear that after several times in’very few rows showing people this to them.’ It is not surprising how much my paranoid feeling was going down? fun party hack, but it’s a fun trick.

You can program in a few places where you want the Panamera to raise its ride height (e.g., if you have sloping driveway) for it. First program a location, the car will ask you “if you always want to raise the vehicle there” and then it’ll remember it.

While the Panamera doesn’t need such a system as much as, say, a 911, it’s still a very handy inclusion.

It is one aspect of the Panamera that focuses more on the sport and not the luxury side of this spectrum, which’s most important to you when you drive along some coarser-chip surfaces and highways it creeps into the cabin.

The panameran steering is really connected, indicating what’s going on below. It may add weight to it, not that it needs the drive mode chosen by you depending on which driver mode is used.

This luxurious luxury car has a great grip, and the rear-axle steering helps to maintain high speed stability and low-speed manoeuvrability. It also helps reduce the turning circle, which is useful given how long the wheelbase lasts.

Together, these dynamic elements make the Panameri a blast along swaying mountain road (though you always know just how wide it is).

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This is a Porsche Ceramic Composite Brake setup with 440mm front and 410mm rear rotors, which allows stopping performance. It feels very wooden, but the brake pedal is a bit like .

It’s a bit of’mix bag, mixed bag in terms of the active safety and driver assist technology. It is slightly twitchy, and the lane-keep assist (a bit swayed) centring aid sometimes sees the car ping-pong inside its Lane.

The cameras are the best and most advanced camera, while the lane assist technology is inferior to much cheaper cars, Panamera also has a clever feature called the Lane Light when the automatic high-beam is on.

It uses matrix LED headlights to illuminate the lane you’re travelling in, giving a clear visual corridor for this feature. operation, it’s very impressive in terms of.

To see how the Porsche Panamera lines up against the competition, check out our
comparison tool

What do you get?

There are six variants, four of which – our Turbo S E-Hybrid tester included are plug-in hybrids in the local Panamera lineup.

2026 Porsche Panamera equipment highlights:

Adaptive air suspension incl. Porsche Active Suspension Management
Integrated Porsche 4D Chassis Control
20-inch alloy wheels
Tyre repair kit
6-piston front and 4-piston rear fixed monobloc brake calipers
2-way adaptive rear spoiler
Twin single-tube exhaust outlets
HD matrix LED headlights with four-point LED daytime running lights
Power-folding exterior mirrors
Rain-sensing wipers
Panoramic glass roof
Power tailgate
Privacy glass
Proximity entry and push-button start
Soft-close doors
Head-up display
12.65-inch digital instrument cluster
12.3-inch touchscreen infotainment system
Satellite navigation
Wireless Apple CarPlay and Android Auto
Porsche Connect
Bose sound system
DAB+ digital radio
2 x USB-C outlets (front) and 2 x USB-C outlets (rear)
3 x 12V outlets
4-zone climate control
14-way power-adjustable front ‘Comfort’ seats with memory
Heated and ventilated front seats
Partial leather interior
Individual rear seats with folding armrest, 60:40-split/folding
Ambient lighting

Other than varying powertrains, the 4 E-Hybrid (and also 4-S E–HYbriD) and 4SE-Hud differ mostly in minor cosmetic details. The only panameran to have a lower ‘Sport chassis’ has been the V8-powered GTS.

The GTS also adds:

Porsche Torque Vectoring Plus
21-inch alloy wheels with central lock
4-way adaptive rear spoiler
Twin dual-tube exhaust outlets
18-way power-adjustable front ‘Adaptive sports’ seats with memory
Race-Tex interior with “extensive leather items”
Heated steering wheel

The Turbo E-Hybrid adds:

Rear-axle steering
10-piston front brake calipers
21-inch alloy wheels
Turbo-specific front and rear apron with air blades in Turbonite
Heated rear seats
Turbonite interior accents
Leather upholstery
Roll-up rear sun blinds

The Turbo S E-Hybrid adds:

Porsche Active Ride suspension
Porsche Ceramic Composite Brake
21-inch alloy wheels with central lock

Options

The Turbo S E-Hybrid on test was also given a number of options, as well as several free alternatives such as the striking Madeira Gold Metallic exterior.

These included:

Sport Chrono Package with Porsche Design Subsecond clock: $2160
Sports exhaust system with tail pipes in Dark Bronze: $6470
Porsche Ceramic Composite Brake with high-gloss black calipers: $1720
Two-tone leather interior in Black and Kalahari Grey: $1510
Massaging front seats: $2200
Passenger display: $3140
SportDesign side skirts in Turbonite: $2220
Body-colour exterior mirrors: $940
Body-colour door handle inlays: $250
Tinted HD matrix LED headlights: $1040
Exclusive Design tail-lights: $1750
Matte carbon-fibre interior trim: $980
Porsche crest on head restraints, with comfort pillows in the rear: $1450
Illuminated, brushed aluminium door sills: $880

To see how the Porsche Panamera lines up against the competition, check out our
comparison tool

Is the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid safe?

The Porsche Panamera has never been tested by ANCAP or its sister authority Euro NCAP.

Standard safety equipment includes:

Adaptive cruise control
Autonomous emergency braking
Blind-spot monitoring
Lane-keep assist
Traffic Jam Assist
Dual front airbags
Dual front knee airbags
Front and rear side airbags
Curtain airbags (front and rear)
Surround-view camera
Front and rear parking sensors
Tyre pressure monitoring

To see how the Porsche Panamera lines up against the competition, check out our
comparison tool

How much does the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid cost to run?

Porsche’s three-year, unlimited-kilometre warranty is one of the shortest in the business history but you can choose to extend your aftersales coverage to up to 15 years.

It is eight years or 160,000km covered, and Porsche promises to 80 per cent of the battery capacity for up to three years (or 60,000 km) before 70 percent until the warranty period ends.

To see how the Porsche Panamera lines up against the competition, check out our
comparison tool

childcareman.xyz’s Take on the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid

It’s a great sports sedan (or liftback, to be more accurate) that is extremely fast than. BMW M5 or Audi S7 but we’d say those extra thrills aren’t worth an additional $200,000-plus plus.

There’s some clever technology in the Porsche The suspension of the car, which is a twin-turbo V8, and separately enjoy zero-emissions driving means you can have your cake and eat it too.

But wow, talk about an expensive cake. And one with rather disappointing insides.

No one is like a Turbo S E-Hybrid, but it’s the fastest and most high-tech Panamera out there. But for the relative few customers in this segment, that may be enough to justify .

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Thanks for reading 2026 Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid review

How much does the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid cost?

Let us help you find your new car

What is the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid like on the inside?

What’s under the bonnet?

How does the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid drive?

From expert reviews to the right deal

What do you get?

Options

Is the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid safe?

How much does the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid cost to run?

childcareman.xyz’s Take on the Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid

Fred Brown

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