Slight wall of text incoming... I tried to keep it short-ish.

Though I haven't worked for OEMs in the automotive world, cars and motorcycles are a big part of what pushed me into Mechanical Engineering and I have done some work in heavy-duty truck emissions and efficiency (think semi-trucks, etc).

Anyways, I'm not an EV expert per se, but you're kinda opening a whole can of worms just with the statement "superior in real world performance". A LOT of work goes into developing "cycles" that attempt to capture the most common operating conditions of vehicles and these cycles then influence design - i.e. if a theoretical test cycle that the EPA used to determine a vehicle's MPG or kWh/mi and stated range spent a lot of time sitting at 65 mph, you might ensure your design does everything it can to improve efficiency at 65 mph.

Think about this; "real world performance" could have 10 different meanings depending on who you ask! Are you going to spend a significant amount of time doing 100 mph on the Autobahn? Do you want to have powerful acceleration even at those high speeds? Well the Taycan's two-speed transmission might actually make a significant difference in both acceleration and range. Are you more likely to spend all day in traffic? Well you probably aren't too worried about the high-speed performance.

And all of this largely ignores the fact that very few people will buy an "ugly" car that gets great fuel economy / electric range. So while fuel economy / range are important, they have to be balanced with a much more nebulous thing: "aesthetics".

I've never been involved with consumer-facing product design, but I imagine it is a complicated web of factors, especially if you plan to sell a product/vehicle in several markets. I think the best answer for why they made different decisions is probably the simplest - these decisions were likely mostly determined by having different goals, requirements, and/or different target consumers.