Porsche Taycan Spends Under 2.5 Hours Charging On Cross Country Drive, Smashing World Record

The Porsche Taycan has earned itself a Guinness World Record for the shortest time spent charging on a cross-country trip. It recently drove from Los Angeles, California to New York, New York while charging for just 2 hours, 26 minutes, and 48 seconds.

The 2,834.5-mile (4,561.6 km) trip was completed by Wayne Gerdes in a standard 2021 Porsche Taycan equipped with the Performance Battery Plus. It also had a few luxurious amenities like the Premium Package, adaptive cruise control, and Porsche Electric Sport Sound.

In order to certify the record, Gerdes had to meticulously note every stop and find independent witnesses for each charge. Every mile he covered was filmed and the GPS data tracked before a panel of adjudicators awarded Gerdes with the record. How close to his 2:26:48 time was the previous record? Not very. The time Gerdes had to beat was 7 hours, 10 minutes, and one second.

“I’m proud and honestly a little surprised to have set the new benchmark by such a margin,” said Gerdes. “The Taycan performed even better than expected.”

Some of that performance must come down to preparation, though. In anticipation of his trip, Gerdes plotted his route across the continental U.S. using Plug Share and the Electrify America app to find the fastest chargers he could.

“Comparing charging performance from a variety of EVs I have driven to date, the Taycan sets the bar,” he said. “The first time I charged on a 350KW charger, 6 to 82 percent occurred in just 22 minutes.”

Porche did not reveal the total time for this trip (maybe Gerdes decided to sleep at some point), but the best time we’re aware of for a cross-country trip in a Porsche Taycan is 44:25:59 and was announced in January 2021. Even if this trip took a vaguely similar amount of driving time, that’s quite a small portion of the trip spent charging.

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