GTPNewsWire
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This is the discussion thread for a recent post on GTPlanet:
This article was published by Kyle Patrick (@SlipZtrEm) on September 4th, 2019 in the Automotive News category.
2020 Porsche Taycan Revealed: Up to 750hp for Stuttgart's Tesla Rival
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You know, I actually do like it. I like how it looks on the outside and inside. Well, except for the excess of touchscreens and them calling it a Turbo. I just think calling a non-turbocharged car a turbo is kinda dumb. I personally would just call it the Taycan and Taycan S, no Turbo needed. or maybe the e-Sport & e-Sport Plus, E & ES. I don't know, just anything, but Turbo.
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It feels awkward to badge a fully electric car a "Taycan Turbo S"
I guess we are back to the 80's again, when sun glasses had "turbo" on the side...
I guess we are back to the 80's again, when sun glasses had "turbo" on the side...
Jeepers. That's some mental image to keep in mind if I ever spot one of these in the wild. Looking up its dimensions, though, it is hardly a compact car either.
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- breeminator
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The video gives the lap time as 7:42. It's certainly not the cheapest car one can buy to do that sort of time, given that a Civic Type R can do 7:43.8:
https://www.gtplanet.net/hondas-civic-type-r-takes-on-the-nurburgring-and-wins/
https://www.gtplanet.net/hondas-civic-type-r-takes-on-the-nurburgring-and-wins/
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- cross_dmd
i like this car, I really do...
That being said, with all the comparisons to the Model S's I've seen around today, i do have to think that putting near enough 800 HP and almost 2x the price of the Model S, it seems like it's a bit farther along in obtainability. It seems they are trying to beat out the upcoming Tesla Roadster, rather than the Model S. Even then , with it having a 0.1-0.2 second quicker 0-60, and stop a bit shorter as well, seems too little performance gain to too much asking price.
But cool Porsche gonna cool porsche, so who am i to judge.
👍
That being said, with all the comparisons to the Model S's I've seen around today, i do have to think that putting near enough 800 HP and almost 2x the price of the Model S, it seems like it's a bit farther along in obtainability. It seems they are trying to beat out the upcoming Tesla Roadster, rather than the Model S. Even then , with it having a 0.1-0.2 second quicker 0-60, and stop a bit shorter as well, seems too little performance gain to too much asking price.
But cool Porsche gonna cool porsche, so who am i to judge.
👍
GTV0819
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Still enthusiasts would argue that doesn't make the Civic Type R more premium than the Taycan, I suppose.
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Did they do an 'i8' on this one or is the engine sound (at around 0:10) added in post?
edit: It seems like they did add sound, but in a semi-starwars kinda way...
I wonder if this is the real sound it makes:
It sounds like post in this video too though. Could still be the sound it makes.
edit: It seems like they did add sound, but in a semi-starwars kinda way...
I wonder if this is the real sound it makes:
It sounds like post in this video too though. Could still be the sound it makes.
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Danoff
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I moved this discussion to this thread since it seemed like the right place for it.
I think big weight numbers are going to be in our future for a while. I think it's a little bit of the performance SUV trend also showing up in passenger cars. Performance has gotten so good across the board, that customers are starting to want things crammed into one package which previously would have been impossible. Once you can make a car do 0-60 in under 3 seconds, handle well, and corner hard, are you going to make a lighter weight car and still be able to sell it?
Let's say that battery technology jumps forward and suddenly it takes up half the weight that it used to. For the Model S, that would be a savings of 600 lb. You think we're not just going to double the capacity? Or make it heavier because we want to be able to charge it faster? I think for the near future, as battery technology improves, the car weight stays the same, it just gets more features piled on.
It seems like average car weight has as much to do with the available performance as anything else. As performance capability increases, the public wants to gobble some of that up in weight so that they can have more features and comforts. Porsche has probably achieved the best balance they could here. My guess is that they wanted more range than it has too.
Edit:
Maybe we'll get to the point where we have a modular battery. But loading a 600 lb spare battery in your trunk is not going to be easy.
I think big weight numbers are going to be in our future for a while. I think it's a little bit of the performance SUV trend also showing up in passenger cars. Performance has gotten so good across the board, that customers are starting to want things crammed into one package which previously would have been impossible. Once you can make a car do 0-60 in under 3 seconds, handle well, and corner hard, are you going to make a lighter weight car and still be able to sell it?
Let's say that battery technology jumps forward and suddenly it takes up half the weight that it used to. For the Model S, that would be a savings of 600 lb. You think we're not just going to double the capacity? Or make it heavier because we want to be able to charge it faster? I think for the near future, as battery technology improves, the car weight stays the same, it just gets more features piled on.
It seems like average car weight has as much to do with the available performance as anything else. As performance capability increases, the public wants to gobble some of that up in weight so that they can have more features and comforts. Porsche has probably achieved the best balance they could here. My guess is that they wanted more range than it has too.
Edit:
Maybe we'll get to the point where we have a modular battery. But loading a 600 lb spare battery in your trunk is not going to be easy.
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I'm liking how it looks. Much more like a 4-door 911 than a slightly smaller Panamera. I'm a bit shocked at the price, but then again a Model S is still an expensive car over here and much more low-rent in fit and finish and interior quality then similarly priced cars, not to mention the fact that it's looking pretty old-fashioned now. So i guess that technology still comes at a price.
Customers who want more and more cool tech in their cars > Customers who want performance, luxury and prestige (or the general perception of) and the weight that brings > Customers who want genuinely great handling and performance and therefore a lighter weight.
Electric cars are the future whether we like that or not so weight is just something we will come to accept. Like you say, even if battery tech allows them to become smaller/lighter, manufacturers will just use that as a way of extending range, which at the moment i would imagine for most potential buyers, is the only real achilles heel in electric car ownership.
Didn't Tesla experiment commercially on a small scale with battery changing stations in California? - You drove up to a platform that would drop your nearly-spent battery out and replace it with a freshly charged one, then on your return journey you did the same and got your now charged original battery back?
I can see how that would work in countries like the US where long journeys are quite common, but in Europe at least i doubt it will be too long before battery technology allows a range that suits 99% of road users.
Customers who want more and more cool tech in their cars > Customers who want performance, luxury and prestige (or the general perception of) and the weight that brings > Customers who want genuinely great handling and performance and therefore a lighter weight.
Electric cars are the future whether we like that or not so weight is just something we will come to accept. Like you say, even if battery tech allows them to become smaller/lighter, manufacturers will just use that as a way of extending range, which at the moment i would imagine for most potential buyers, is the only real achilles heel in electric car ownership.
Didn't Tesla experiment commercially on a small scale with battery changing stations in California? - You drove up to a platform that would drop your nearly-spent battery out and replace it with a freshly charged one, then on your return journey you did the same and got your now charged original battery back?
I can see how that would work in countries like the US where long journeys are quite common, but in Europe at least i doubt it will be too long before battery technology allows a range that suits 99% of road users.
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I know I’m a Porsche shill but I like it much better than any Tesla - I don’t know, for whatever reason I feel very strong antipathy when I see a Tesla. I’m not an electric car fan but I do accept that the days of ICE are counted but it doesn’t make me like them. Now, the Taycan and the ID R look pretty good, not that I would have money to buy anything similar (I know the ID R is just a showcase )
Once BMW or Audi bring out something that actually looks like a car (no i3 or SUV), color me interested.
)Once BMW or Audi bring out something that actually looks like a car (no i3 or SUV), color me interested.
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I understand the motivation for them doing it, but I reserve the right not to like it
There's been quite a paradigm shift in the decade or so I've been writing about the industry. EVs were a bit weird and new when I started and now they're bordering on mainstream - basically every manufacturer makes one.
But one think I quite liked about the ones knocking around when I started was that most of the concepts took a holistic view of making a car more efficient - not just powering it with a battery, but generally making it smaller and lighter too (at the very least, to try and offset the weight of the battery pack itself) and cutting aero massively (rather than the incremental gains we're seeing currently).
What we've instead ended up with are absolutely enormous vehicles to try and cram in a battery pack of the size people think they need for suitable range, and technology used to mitigate this size and weight rather than approaching the problem from a smarter angle.
Ranting aside though, I do like the Taycan. And I'm sure it'll be among the first EVs that are genuinely fun to drive, rather than just being good in a straight line, which is a positive step.
Danoff
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You liked the ones that weren't selling! And now you lament that the ones that are popular aren't more like the ones that weren't. I do understand where you're coming from, but that's not what buyers want. Buyers don't necessarily care about engineering purity. I guess that leaves purists exercising their right not to like it. I can sympathize, i do that too sometimes.
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To clarify it was the general vibe I liked more than the cars themselves. Some of those early EVs were weird, or simply crap. But it seemed like engineering a way around a particular set of problems, rather than just throwing an enormous battery at a car and calling it a day. 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.
You liked the ones that weren't selling! And now you lament that the ones that are popular aren't more like the ones that weren't. I do understand where you're coming from, but that's not what buyers want. Buyers don't necessarily care about engineering purity. I guess that leaves purists exercising their right not to like it. I can sympathize, i do that too sometimes.
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.
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Im very suprised too with the Turbo thing. It's like Audi with the Formula E ad.
It's pretty ridiculous seeing the manufacturers trying to sell the "this is cooler than combustion engines" or trying to appear that the ICE is not dying.
It's like they feel deeply insecure with the electric car as an icon in contrast with the ICE.
It's pretty ridiculous seeing the manufacturers trying to sell the "this is cooler than combustion engines" or trying to appear that the ICE is not dying.
It's like they feel deeply insecure with the electric car as an icon in contrast with the ICE.
It seems kind of absurd to me to just brush off the fact that BEVs can have an entire Caterham's worth of hot battery bulk made of uncommon materials under the floor, when there are alternatives to look into for providing juice to electric motors. Using electric motors over an ICE makes a lot of sense, absolutely. Drawing energy from battery packs like this and Tesla's, not so much, IMHO.
Fundamentally, it's an idea as old as the internal combustion engine -- without a comparable investment in R&D, to be fair -- and in this guise it strikes me as short-sighted, and perhaps cynical, for an allegedly forward-looking solution. Fair enough in the interim, though.
Personally, I would geek out a lot more over a nuclear EV powered by a compact LFTR. I don't know the likelihood of developing one that can fit into a car or having it total up to less than two tons (or how scalable the idea could be), but if it could at least turn out similarly to a Tesla or Taycan it would be way more compelling. I'm not interested in running charging cables out to our driveway, or even dumber, across the sidewalk to my personal tree-shaded parking spot on the street.
As for what customers want, (some) manufacturers still care about shaving weight even if few drivers do. Every extra pound/kilogram adds to the cost to other parts, of course.
Fundamentally, it's an idea as old as the internal combustion engine -- without a comparable investment in R&D, to be fair -- and in this guise it strikes me as short-sighted, and perhaps cynical, for an allegedly forward-looking solution. Fair enough in the interim, though.
Personally, I would geek out a lot more over a nuclear EV powered by a compact LFTR. I don't know the likelihood of developing one that can fit into a car or having it total up to less than two tons (or how scalable the idea could be), but if it could at least turn out similarly to a Tesla or Taycan it would be way more compelling. I'm not interested in running charging cables out to our driveway, or even dumber, across the sidewalk to my personal tree-shaded parking spot on the street.
As for what customers want, (some) manufacturers still care about shaving weight even if few drivers do. Every extra pound/kilogram adds to the cost to other parts, of course.
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I hate to introduce sensitive political issues into GTPlanet, so I'll tread lightly here. For one, the planet is heating up - I'm not saying why! - but it is. The mere possibility of carbon emissions contributing has given me a real change of heart toward EVs. Five years ago you couldn't pry my ICEs out of my cold dead hands! My wife and I have V8s in our daily drivers. my wife has a Northstar and I use my crew-cab Chevy pickup to haul my Jeep CJ-7 with a swapped 360 c.i. V8 to off road areas. If anyone is undergoing a serious identity crisis, it's me.
Furthermore, I live in the American Midwest. Small cars just don't appeal to most people here. Living about an hour and a half from Detroit, I see an EV about once every three months. I travel to Detroit often and always see a handful when in that area, but outside of metropolitan areas here in the old American automobile heartland, EVs are still kind of passed over as an option for new vehicle purchases. And size in general? For the most part, the bigger the better. My son's sixth grade school parking lot is littered with crew-cab pickups, Chevy Suburbans, Ford Expeditions, and crossovers like the Traverse and Explorer. Every family vacation road trip has me commenting on how our highways are bumper to bumper full size vehicles. My long-winded point: Many Americans just don't see value in owning a more environmentally friendly vehicle.
I think these full sized EVs are partially designed to bridge the gap between what the American market has grown accustomed to, and what's in store for the future. Outside of the US, I'm just not that knowledgeable about the current market trends. But frankly, I personally just couldn't imagine having to drive for more than twenty minutes in a seat that didn't feel comparable to my Lay-Z-Boy chair in my family room. Again, I'm suffering an identity crisis because I think a major cultural change needs to happen, even if I'm not comfortable with it.
Now, the death of the private automobile (in the US at least)? I think that's a stretch. I've been a huge proponent of public transportation in America for many years, and you'd be amazed at the number of proposals our government has stuck down. Why? The big 3 auto manufacturers, the airlines, and oil companies have their lobbyists insuring we need our cars for traveling long distances. Unless it's point to point within one of America's big cities, we need to jump on our vastly growing circuit of highways. I would love the opportunity to travel by train for a trip that takes an hour or more. Japan's bullet trains, Italy's Italotreno, Eurostar trains, etc. all make me envious. I'd love to just kick back and relax while traveling twice the speed of vehicles on highways. Fortunately, there are a couple small high speed rail projects in the works - privately funded of course. Hopefully it plants a seed.
As far as the Porsche Taycan, it's hands down my favorite electric vehicle I've ever seen. The first one I'd consider myself fortunate to be able to own. I've always liked Teslas, but not loved. This car... I love. I'd be proud to call myself an "environmentalist" in one of these.
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I know the feeling. My job involves a lot of a) driving very fast, very resource-intensive cars, and b) getting on a lot of flights. Yet I still consider myself an environmentalist. I save energy and recycle where I can, I'm trying to cut down on meat, and I avoid driving whenever possible. Among the many things that stress me out is my confliction over what I do and what I think I should do, so I definitely get it!
I get that certain places have preferences for certain cars too. I don't doubt that a lot of the recent EVs are heavily aimed at the US, because that's among the biggest EV markets, and I suppose an Audi e-tron or Model S seems less enormous and heavy there than it does here.
Again though, I'm not sure I really like it. A decade ago when I started writing I kinda figured things would be fine if you just slowly replaced all conventional vehicles with EVs. Now I'd lean towards simply weaning people off driving altogether, where possible (and I realise that's not everywhere). Ultimately while an EV might be better than an ICE car, no car at all is even better than that. Though if there's a happy compromise, I'd still lean towards smaller, lighter cars, that haven't required 2.5 tons of stuff to be extracted from the ground simply to assemble...
Keef
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I don't know why they'd be worried by a vehicle which is objectively worse in most ways and also $50k more expensive. And doesn't have semi-auto driving capabilities. And doesn't have a fast-charging network.
The Taycan will certainly be of high quality and great fun to drive but this is 2019 and that's not good enough. At least it has a drunk unlike what Audi and Jag could manage.
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