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  Porschephiles will see the subtly different bumper on this Panamera sedan and identify it as a 2021 model, fresh from a midlife facelift. [credit: Jonathan Gitlin ]

It takes a lot of time and money to design and then produce a new vehicle, so the longer the car stays on sale, the more time there is to recoup that investment. Eight years is about the lifespan of a new model, which unfortunately is long enough for customers to get bored.

Enter the midlife refresh. The idea is as simple as it sounds—halfway through a model's lifespan, it gets treated to a makeover. There are always things that can be tweaked to make production easier, to satisfy customers, or to take advantage of some new gadget or gizmo that showed up in the meantime.

Such is the case for Porsche's Panamera sedan, which emerges fresh from the styling department with a sharper new face, a subtle tweak to the taillights, and of most interest to our audience, a 27 percent bump in battery size for the plug-in hybrids in the model lineup.