2020 Porsche Taycan Revealed: Up to 750hp for Stuttgart's Tesla Rival

3847__534__198.jpg
Sounds legit.
 
Considering they've had a turbocharged roadcar since 1976 or so, I think they know full well.
 
Mockery over the word's use here relies on one ignoring common colloquial usage. Its definition goes beyond the literal.

20190906_174212.png


Having said that...I do find it a little cheesy.
 
Does this car really ruffle Tesla's feathers that much that they're actually serious about stealing the (warning: more manufacturer-wang swinging) Nurburgring record from Porsche? If there's one thing I've never seen associated with Teslas, it's hot-lapping. I've read some owners have done it, but that the cars clearly aren't built with it in mind, so things like the tires or brakes, sometimes the battery, deplete fairly quickly. I'd be shock a lot if Tesla could put down a time faster than 7:42. According to Wiki, the fastest Tesla is a Model S P85D that set 8:50 in 2015 & a Model 3 Performance did 9:00 flat this year, both from the same source (BTG). Making up a full minute and then some is a helluva feat b/c 8:50 is slower than this.
2009_chevrolet_hhr_wagon_ss_fq_oem_2_500.jpg
 
Does this car really ruffle Tesla's feathers that much that they're actually serious about stealing the (warning: more manufacturer-wang swinging) Nurburgring record from Porsche?
The weird thing is, if Lord Elon's original goal is correct Tesla isn't really designed to compete against anybody or anything - the whole motivation of the company's existence was to kick-start the industry into making electric cars, which it has done.

I think unfortunately Elon's gone beyond that point where he wants to make a good product and is now more interested in doing things to please his army of minions, which in turn has inflated his ego and leads him to do even bigger things to please the minion army.

Tesla doesn't care about Porsche. Porsche doesn't care about Tesla (and has said so). But because the Teslarati think Teslas are better than any other car on the planet, Elon must demonstrate it with something that doesn't actually have any relevance to anyone, like a Nurburgring lap time.

The absolute worst thing about Tesla doing a lap time is that Elon will insist his engineers chip away at it until they beat Porsche, they'll eventually do it somehow, and Tesla fans will become even more insufferable than they are already because their wheeled iPhone beat one of the legacy automakers on a metric they never cared about or understood in the first place, because the extent of their interest in Teslas involves sleeping behind the wheel on the freeway.
 
The latter is honestly no different from the industry as a whole right now - all improvements in power and fuel economy are really doing are offsetting the fact that cars are getting bigger and heavier. EVs are becoming an extension of that.

Think I've said it elsewhere, but when we look back on this era in half a century's time, I wonder how we'll interpret it? My suspicion is that, on reflection, we'll wonder why on the eve of the private automobile's existence the thing everybody seemed hell-bent on buying were 2-ton breezeblocks that got to 60mph in three seconds.

In the drive to improve emissions and efficiency, it seems like we've become more wasteful. Cars have more complexity, bigger brakes, and bigger wheels driving the cost of maintenance up. And then this leads to cars being more disposable once those maintenance costs build up. All that stuff that needs to be maintained on luxury cars, you can have it in your Civic too. :D

I'm not the biggest fan of the general trend in the industry.
 
I'm not so sure about that.
Throw more power at it, put it on sticky tyres etc. Doesn't have to be repeatable, reliable or available to satisfy the Tesla nerds, it just needs to set the time so they can claim the Porsche isn't as good as a Model S.
 
Why doesn't he use the new Roadster to beat the time of the Taycan?
Why would anyone care a 2-seater roadster beat a 4-door saloon though? They're not really competitors in the market except for being electric.
 
Why would anyone care a 2-seater roadster beat a 4-door saloon though? They're not really competitors in the market except for being electric.
Because he probably won't succeed when using the Model S and I think Musk doesn't want to lose.
 
Because he probably won't succeed when using the Model S and I think Musk doesn't want to lose.
Possibly, but that would still appear rather sad on Elon's part to use another car the Taycan isn't looking to compete against.

It would be like Porsche using a GT3 RS in response to Jaguar's SV8 taking the 4-door production record because they both have flared fenders and big spoilers. Wouldn't really bother Jag.
 
It's definitely more 911 from certain angles than it is a junior Panamera. More than I would've thought initially after seeing the Mission E and the prototype in action.

I'm liking the Taycan more every time I see it.
 
Last edited:

Latest Posts

Back