There’s something intriguing going on at Porsche. Instead of rolling out an electric version of its popular Macan crossover, the automaker insists its first EV will be a sedan or a station wagon. In fact, it’s the only electric wagon on the market. This may be the vehicle that breaks America’s love affair with luxury SUVs.

Luxury SUVs promise it all: stylish comfort, cargo space, and off‑road capability—if you’re brave enough. And with a badge like “Porsche,” you might expect sports‑car handling. It’s no wonder Porsche has been selling a rebadged Volkswagen Touareg as the Cayenne for more than 20 years. But many of the promises of a luxury SUV are false. And Porsche, of all companies, seems determined to prove it—and usher in a new era of the station wagon in the process.

How Porsche is breinging back the wagon

Porsche has done some clever marketing to position its Taycan Cross Turismo as an SUV competitor. For example, it offered a press car to TikToker @AndieTheLab to take camping with her dogs. Deb, who runs the TikTok account and often reviews vehicles with her labs along for the ride, said the Taycan “drives exactly like you’d expect from Porsche.” She took the wagon “from New York City to the Catskills to go glamping with the girls.”

She was quick to say, “This is a non‑SUV Porsche that’s 100% approved by the labs.” Why? “How easy it was for Andie and Abby to get in, especially with the air suspension fully lowered… The Cross Turismo’s hatchback design gave Andie and Abby plenty of space to be comfortable, even on a long road trip.” She added that the EV offered dog‑owner benefits, “Without engine vibrations or exhaust noise, so the girls stayed calm the whole time.”

This highlights a couple of features of the Taycan Cross Turismo that Porsche is hoping will appeal to luxury SUV buyers. The wagon configuration offers far more space than a sedan—42.8 cubic feet with the rear seats down. That’s less than a Honda HR‑V’s 55 cubic feet, but beats out Hyundai’s subcompact Venue crossover, which offers just 31.9 cubic feet with its rear seats folded down.

Porsche has redesigned the 2025 Taycan with available active air suspension. This makes it stiffer while cornering but unlocks a couple of other party tricks. The vehicle’s default mode is to rise to full height when you open any door handle. The goal is to make it as easy to slide into as a crossover. Then, when you close the door, it drops to a standard ride height to improve both range and performance.

Trims such as the Cross Turismo offer higher standard ride heights. And according to Deb, you can lower them so your furry friends can hop aboard easily. The Cross Turismo also comes standard with a package that lifts the bumpers to improve approach and departure angles and adds plastic trim to protect the paint from gravel. But you can order this option on other Taycan trims.

So just how capable is the Taycan Cross Turismo? When the automaker first launched the EV, it invited journalists to try and take press vehicles over Colorado’s gnarly Ophir Pass. The Taycans’ electric motors offered ample traction to make the climb and control the descent. That said, these pre‑air‑suspension models had very little ground clearance, and the drivers were constantly crawling around obstacles. You can see that adventure in this next video:

Now that you can order a Taycan with air suspension and the off‑road body kit, is it as capable off‑road as your Wrangler? Absolutely not. It is still a low car and a heavy vehicle. Its electric AWD system is fantastic in limited traction situations, but it is far from a rock crawler. But all the places it can’t go are places where you would be terrified to scratch your brand‑new Macan anyway. The kind of drivers who pay for a brand‑new luxury SUV may want to know they could go off‑roading—but they won’t take it off‑roading. If they want to hit the trail, they can afford a dedicated wheeling rig anyway.

So what does the Taycan gain with its lower ride height? A lot. Its advertised range is 230 miles, but owners report that the real‑world range is often much higher. The 1,000‑horsepower “Turbo” trim claims 1.9‑second 0‑60 times. But any Model S Plaid or Lucid Air Sapphire can accelerate just as fast. Porsche sets its Taycan apart with exceptional handling: it lapped Laguna Seca so fast, the next fastest car was the McLaren Senna.

The truth is that electric vehicles need to have lower ride heights or sacrifice a ton of usable range. So the station wagon is making a comeback. And that’s probably the real reason Porsche didn’t start its electric lineup with a Macan. Porsche is demonstrating one way to bring back some of the off‑roading capability Americans are used to with AWD and adaptive suspension. But at the end of the day, Americans dreaming of an efficient EV will have to fall out of love with lifted SUVs. Porsche seems dead set on giving them something just as cool to love instead.