Our test car was equipped with the optional 83.7-kWh Performance Battery Plus

See also:

Models with the larger battery—Porsche labels this pack 93.4 kWh, but only 83.7 kWh are useable

So this base RWD (IIRC) with the smallest wheels and this upgraded battery is the one with the most range. And that range gets you less than 200 miles between charges on a road-trip (the 70% range).

Your friend is not seeing 300 real-world highway miles:

At the conclusion of our 100 miles, the Tesla was sitting at a 55 percent state of charge, and the Porsche was just behind at 52 percent. We then used the rate of battery depletion and range reduction—which, given our idealized test conditions, was extremely stable—to extrapolate out to a predicted total range figure.

The results were far closer than we expected: 209 miles for the Taycan, and 222 for the Model S.

Keep in mind that’s a worse result for the 4S than the one I posted at only 146 miles between charges for the 70% range.

I’m not knocking the Taycan specifically. It generally performs close-ish to its rated range. But no one drives till empty, or only fills their gas tank up to 80% in an ICE either. BEVs are just different. And very few BEVs hit even close to 300 real world miles on the highway even ignoring the 70% rule of thumb.

Realistically, when you’re road-tripping in a BEV you’re not skipping chargers anyway typically. You pick a bottom SoC you’re comfortable with (for me that’s 30+ miles of remaining range to leave range to get to a hotel with charging if necessary or something), and then you charge enough at each stop to maintain that buffer. So that could well be 10 to 65% for a Taycan 4S since Electrify America generally aims for locations about 120 miles apart.

Your friend is claiming almost twice the real world range tested by Car&Driver. With pretty sedate driving, within town (so you’re not following the 70% guideline) sure, that might be possible with lower average speed city miles.

But then again, that doesn’t matter since no one has range anxiety in the city unless your car is only rated for ~150 miles or less.