The behind
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=porsche+boxter+concept&atb=v256-1__&iax=images&ia=images
New 914 EV maybe
I like this rendering. I never really liked the 914. I wonder if this new 914 EV is going to be produced and hopefully it will look like the rendering above.
I don't think we've needed proof since the first Boxster came out. Especially since the 991, the 911 is basically a high-luxury robotic supercar. It does everything very well, but it does it whether the driver knows how to do it or not. Contrast that with something like a GT-R which was and still is somehow both supercar capable but also sports car playful when you want it to be, or if you don't know what you're doing.
What, that the Cayman has always been a better sports car than the 911? Or that the GT-R, despite not having a manual, is also a better sports car than it's competitor 911 Turbo?
This was pre-Covid, so it seems like Covid has added a 2 year delay to their plans among other factors.
Fingers crossed that Porsche are already aware of that and are employing some engineering wizardry to make it like the ICEs. I'm sure it'll be fine.Pretty much confirmed (though not publicly) that the next generation 718 will be electric only, and be based on the Mission R concept.
While I'm not against electric cars, I am sad that we are losing the entry level mid-engined Porsche. The 911 gets all the attention, but the midship cars are some of the sweetest driving cars ever made, motorsports heritage or not. With the way electric car powertrains are arranged, the character of "mid engine" likely won't translate.
Good point.Pretty much confirmed (though not publicly) that the next generation 718 will be electric only, and be based on the Mission R concept.
While I'm not against electric cars, I am sad that we are losing the entry level mid-engined Porsche. The 911 gets all the attention, but the midship cars are some of the sweetest driving cars ever made, motorsports heritage or not. With the way electric car powertrains are arranged, the character of "mid engine" likely won't translate.
It's less the delivery of the power and more the physical arrangement of the battery and motors. With a typical twin motor setup with the battery pack in the center of the car, the weight distribution is largely uniform. As @Keef notes, this makes for a low CG and tidy handling, but somewhat anodyne dynamics. And unless somebody does something deliberately obtuse, there isn't much of a reason to change the basic formula. You COULD make the car technically worse by putting the battery at the ass end of the car to simulate a RR platform, but it would just be dumb at that point. The skateboard platform is the way forward - totally brilliant for passenger cars, vans, and commercial vehicles, but rather uninteresting for sports cars. I have a feeling Porsche is developing synthetic fuels purely in an effort to preserve sports cars.
I'm not so sure i'd agree. If you think about it the arrangement of a mid engine car along with a driver (and passenger), kind of gives that same COG/weight distribution as the typical BEV arrangement. I drive my partners MR-S (poor man's Porsche) from time to time, and i always get the feel of the weight being quite centred. It's probably not exactly the same as a BEV platform arrangement, but i imagine it's not too far off.With the way electric car powertrains are arranged, the character of "mid engine" likely won't translate.
I feel these two parts of your comment, may age badly, as it's kind of a short-sighted take. The smaller and more energy dense battery packs become with time, (we could see real breakthroughs in solid-state battery tech, for instance), the greater potential to get unnecessary weight down, hopefully resulting in a great handling sports car, what with the loss of the extra seats and bodywork/accommodating rooflines etc, no longer being needed.
This was the point of my post, not the total weight. The sameness will be the problem. And I don't think some lines of code are going to solve the problem. ICE cars with various engine arrangements are all at the mercy of physics and simply will never handle alike. It's impossible. No amount of engineering or code will ever make it happen. But in the EV world, they all come packaged exactly the same from a physical standpoint and manufacturers will have to engineer them to be different? I suppose they could but that seems pretty artificial and pathetic. Why would an enthusiast want to own a sports car that is fake by definition?
That's not necessarily true that they'll all end up being packaged exactly the same though. And as for artificially engineering handling code, aren't we already there when it comes to some manufacturers sports cars, like what with torque vectoring, launch and stability controls etc? Also there's the possibility of some sports cars having different wheelbase lengths, and not necessarily focusing all the battery packs weight towards dead centre, (depending on how well battery advancement increases).
I went, I saw, and I'm not an engineer but I do know sports cars would look weird with the passenger compartment raised 6+ inches above the actual floor. I'm also curious about the idea of favoring lowering the butts of 180/200 pound passengers when the battery itself has a non-variable weight and will probably weight 600-1000 pounds even in a small sports car application. The heaviest and least variable weights should always be the lowest and most centralized for best dynamics. Lotus's 2+2 battery concept appears to have a tin slab and a small hump underneath the rear seats, combining the two ideas. Keep in mind that the "mid engine" handling dynamics we're familiar with are only the best because we have to put the engine somewhere. I suppose some EV experimentation will prove what weight distributions are actually the best for dynamics.
From an article I found:
