Whenever a new model year rolls around, automakers usually issue press releases detailing any minor changes. Take the 2027 Porsche Taycan, for example. This electric sedan gets updated infotainment, a native NACS port, a larger standard battery pack, and a more powerful wireless smartphone charger. That’s all well and good, but none of those are the headline story. See, the largest addition to the 2027 Taycan is an option called E-Shift, and it’s a pretty big deal.
Tick that, and you’ll get a blue button on the front of the steering wheel and paddles on the back for Hyundai Ioniq 5 N-style virtual gear shifts. Will the Taycan be slower with simulated shifts enabled than with them turned off? Almost certainly, but that’s not the point. Simulated shifts promise additional feedback and reference: A third-gear corner is a third-gear corner, hitting a simulated rev limiter keeps a lid on wheel speed in a powerslide, and the promised torque interruption between faux-shifts should add a bit of engagement when you’re just out on the roads.
Of course, the other component of engagement is sound, as simulated shifts would be incredibly weird if they were silent. On that front, Porsche’s cooked up a new variant of its Electric Sport Sound, and it seems V8-ish. Listen for yourself:
Not as raspy as a flat-six, more baritone than a 918 Spyder, closer to the four-liter twin-turbocharged V8 in the Cayenne Turbo GT than anything. So far, it’s the best-sounding fake-shift soundtrack I’ve heard, but there’s an asterisk here.
Porsche didn’t simply copy and paste the same calibration across all trims. Instead, the marque claims “The transmission mapping and sound characteristics are tailored to each model, giving each variant its own acoustic and driving profile.” Theoretically, this means a Taycan Turbo GT will behave differently in E-Shift mode than a Taycan GTS, which will behave differently than a Taycan 4. This means that the sound clip Porsche released might not apply to all models. Actually, it definitely won’t apply to all models as standard.
Aside from on the Taycan Turbo GT trim where they’re standard-fit, Porsche’s paddles for simulated shifts are a $1,030 option on their own. However, that’s not the end of the story because certain trim levels force option bundling. On the Taycan 4, for example, it must be paired with the $1,380 Sport Chrono package, the $530 Electric Sport Sound option, and a premium audio system, the cheapest of which is the $1,310 Bose setup. The result is a bundle cost of $4,250, although it’s worth noting most customers opt for premium audio and the Sport Chrono clock anyway. The same bundle on a Canadian-market Taycan 4S will run you $5,712 CAD, although it’s worth noting that Taycan GTS and Turbo models let you just tick the box for paddles with no extra requirements.
Is that a lot of money for something that Hyundai throws in for free on its fast electric cars? Absolutely, but it’s also a sign of hope. In 2024, Australian outlet Drive interviewed Porsche factory test driver Lars Kern, who said “We don’t want to fake the combustion engine because we still produce combustion engines, so we don’t we don’t see the point of doing it.” Then Porsche got its hands on a Hyundai Ioniq 5 N. In late 2025, Drive chatted with Porsche 911 and 718 VP Frank Moser about Hyundai’s landmark EV, and Moser was singing a different tune about simulated shifts than Kern was a year prior.
“The customer could decide if he wants to drive in complete silent mode, or he wants to be part of the game, feeling the virtual sounds of a flat six and the virtual gear shifts.”
“That would be the direction for the future.”
It seems that Porsche came, saw, and, like reasonable people, changed their minds on the concept of simulated shifts. You don’t have to option them, but they’re now there if you want them. Are they anachronistic? Sure, but at a time where it feels like internal combustion is getting at least another model cycle, simulating that behavior is a way to add familiarity. Plus, it feels like virtual gears are exactly what the upcoming electric Porsche 718 needs, and Porsche now has the expertise to port that technology over.
Top graphic images: Porsche
This is like the DOOM twitter account replying to criticism with “You control the buttons you press.”
Maybe I’m too much of a “bet you’re fun at parties” purist, but this just seems a bit corny to me.
When I was more heavily involved in the photo world, Fujifilm started making a series of cameras that looked and had controls like the old film cameras of the ’60s-’70s that I love. When the chance to buy one used (read: cheap) at the shop I worked came around I jumped on it. And ultimately after about a year with it I re-sold it. It was lovely to look at and finely crafted and yet it just wasn’t the same engagement and satisfaction, everything I could do with the shutter speed knob I could also do with a dial, it still had the auto settings if I turned them on, I could manually focus, but it still had autofocus.
I think like an engine and gearbox you need the mental weight of what you’re doing being necessary. Nearly every really satisfying thing comes with the knowledge of the possibility and consequences of doing it wrong. Knowing I really could break my car if I truly screwed up a gear shift is part of why it’s so rewarding to do it right. Part of why I appreciate engine noise is not just the loud, it’s that I can hear the difference between a stock Honda with a fart can and one with cams, headers, and a tune that is straining for every last horsepower. When I go to the race track it’s not just that the cars are loud, it’s that you can tell they are mechanically different from a street car because of the noise. I even had a V8 Porsche, and it made a glorious noise, but not least I could appreciate it because I’ve had other V8s that sounded good but none of the others had that highly tuned and luscious combination of bellow and silky smooth DOHC scream easily revving right up to red line. This Taycan is an impressive feat of audio engineering but not of mechanical. Even as I admit it does sound good in the clip, I predict most owners will turn it off once the gimmick has worn off. And once you’ve turned it off and have to make the conscious decision to turn the noise back on I imagine it will happen less and less often.
And of course happy to be proven wrong, I’d love to drive one of these or a Hyundai N.
Low-speed pedestrian warning sounds aside, I like hearing various hybrids making their natural sounds coming up and regenerating to a stop sign on the 55 mph two-lane in front of our homestead out in the country.
OTOH, it could be fun to pipe in Star Trek era warp engine noises, as well. But a “silent” option rather than all this synthetic stuff is probably what I would (voice of Picard) ENGAGE, most of the time.
The only auditory prank I ever pulled was on my dad. I recorded the startup of my TV station’s Bell 206 to a cassette and stuck it in the deck of my newly acquired Peugeot 504 before picking him up for a doctor’s appointment. Seated and buckled in, as soon as I turned the key, the lovely sound of an Allison C250-20 spinning up was playing through the speakers.
I will never forget the look on his face. Growing up, my brother and I were exposed to the sounds of a number of boat and truck engines. But THIS was something he had never heard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV8hQpak9MA
Full start at about 4:25 into the clip.
Electric motors require actual gears to be efficient. If this why current battery cars are so inefficient?
Reference
My Panasonic electric bike driven through the gearset.
Why not? A couple reviews I’ve seen for the ionic 5 N have suggested to me that if this is done well it does do a pretty good job of increasing driver engagement when pushing the car around.
Fake shifting on a fake car…
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Paying that much for fake shit?
suckers and losers
This news is actually hiding the real tragedy. Porsche is discontinuing the Sport/Cross Turismo. *sobs*
Future cars will be nothing but little buses.
Uhhhh, okay, but when are they going to release a version that allows me to simulate spark advance via an analog lever control? Or one where I can, if I choose, turn the car on by pressing a button on the floor with my foot, then quickly turning a faux key to engage a virtual magneto, a process which, if I do not complete it quickly enough, causes a virtual stall and makes me start over for maximum authenticity?
If I had one of these things and I had to explain to my passenger that, actually, the car is making fake vroom-vroom noises and letting me pretend to shift gears so I feel like I’m a big boy, the sheer embarrassment would cause me to collapse in on myself until I became a singularity and evaporate forever due to quantum effects.
Driving from your home to your downtown office to your lunch meeting in a 911 GT2 is already kind of a dorky thing to do — you’re taking what is essentially a race car and using .01% of its capabilities to ferry yourself between discussions on Excel reports — but at least there’s something there about the car being _capable_ of wild on-track exploits, even if you aren’t. The car, even outside of its natural habitat, is still cool, still a purposeful machine designed for smashing lap records; it’s not pretending at anything, though most owners probably are. But taking a purely electric car, especially one already as capable and refined as the Taycan, and making it pantomime being something it isn’t by jerking the throttle and playing the soundtrack of a different car is just a much more expensive (though Porsche would probably prefer “exclusive”) version of making engine sounds with your mouth while driving your partner’s crossover. If anyone caught you doing it, you’d probably be embarrassed, but if you had to then tell that person that you paid human money for the privilege, they would literally never stop laughing at you.
I can’t wait until we complete the circle and someone “invents” a manual transmission.
Your wait might come sooner than you think (well… kinda, sorta):
I Drove Toyota’s Manual Transmission For EVs.