[gleglegle]

It's a little surprising that even with a two-speed Gearbox the Taycan has neither better range nor low range 0-60 acceleration than the Tesla P100D (which has the same size battery). Obviously spec comparisons aren't the whole story and the handling and high-range acceleration may be better on the Taycan. Looking forward to seeing more comparisons and already glad to see more EV models in this category.

Edited incorrect comment about top speed.

[dragontamer]

> It's a little surprising that even with a two-speed Gearbox the Taycan has neither better range nor low range 0-60 acceleration than the Tesla P100D (which has the same size battery).

0-60 times probably don't matter on the track. Its probably more important to optimize the 60 to 120mph time, which is where the torque of a (single gear) electric motor begins to taper off. I bet that Taycan has superior 60-to-120mph times than any gearbox-free design, which would lead to superior track performance. Especially on a track as big as Nurburgring.

Even on highway driving, 0-60 times kind of don't matter as much as 30-60 times. (Aka: merging into a highway). The only reason to push 0-60 times is for drag-racing really.

[clouddrover]

> 0-60 times probably don't matter on the track.

Yes, in the Taycan's Nürburgring-Nordschleife run, for example, the speed was mostly above 100kph: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m31EgQkswg

[tomatocracy]

On a track, the lateral G force the car can maintain traction at and the deceleration time matter a lot too.

[newnewpdro]

> The only reason to push 0-60 times is for drag-racing really.

Wat? Most people care about accelerating from a standstill to the average legal speed limits.

0-60 captures that perfectly. It's incredibly relevant to the general public's driving patterns.

[NeedMoreTea]

When, years ago, I had a performance car 0-60 was only useful for obtaining shock from first time passengers. Though 20-50 was far more reliable in getting surprised involuntary curses from the passenger seat, as was invoking wheelspin at 70. :) The fact it had a ludicrous 0-60 had plenty of kids revving engines trying to encourage a traffic light drag race. Usually this would have me driving off like an ageing vicar.

What was useful in real world driving was 40+ top gear roll on acceleration, or 70+ on the track, as was the enormous amount of engine braking. 0-60 really didn't matter other than as indirect indicator of capability. The fun, and performance was elsewhere.

[Ididntdothis]

People rarely do a full power 0-60 with a car that can do it under 5 seconds. More likely they go from 30-60 or similar.

[esotericn]

I do it quite often, but it really depends on location I think.

In more rural locations you'll commonly have a 90 degree turn onto a 60-70mph road.

I probably wouldn't if it were 3s 0-60 though.

[Ididntdothis]

The tire wear for repeated 3s 0-60 must be enormous.

[esotericn]

At 4s it's not too bad. I mean, I don't have anything to compare to, but we're still talking tens of thousands of miles per replacement.

Obviously that's not like, a full throttle acceleration and slowdown constantly, just merges.

[TylerE]

With modern traction control and AWD not really

[solotronics]

I drive a supercharged sports car that does 0-60 in 2.9 and do it every couple of days on a rural road near me, adrenaline is great! This is definitely an outlier though.. I get the impression from reading the forum for my car that most people don't push it near its limit regularly.

[chasd00]

the car, tell me.

[newnewpdro]

When a car does it silently without being overtly antisocial they do it far more often.

[dragontamer]

Leaving all the other cars next to you in the dust is quite antisocial behavior actually.

For the most part, I want to accelerate with everyone else when that green light goes off (except for Trucks: I wanna leave Trucks in the dust and get away from them ASAP). The 30mph to 60mph acceleration of off-ramp into freeway cruising speed however, is pretty important. A lot of things are going on when I merge onto a freeway, so I'd like to make sure I can accelerate in an adequate amount of time: to the point where I've (occasionally) downshift to 2nd, even in standard traffic, to get to 60mph asap.

[Zanni]

Serious question: how is this antisocial behavior? I understand wanting to stick with the flow of traffic when you're part of the pack, but if you're in front of the pack, what's the advantage (to anyone) of hanging back?

[pixelbash]

> Leaving all the other cars next to you in the dust is quite antisocial behavior actually.

As a motorcycle rider I disagree, it's the safest option for us.

I get that not everyone is pleased about it, though.

[Diederich]

> Leaving all the other cars next to you in the dust is quite antisocial behavior actually

Honest question: can you expand on that? Assuming it's a safe thing to do, why is it antisocial?

[WhitneyLand]

The word anti-social has a serious clinical psychological definition I'm not sure if that's what you intended mean.

I understand it has a casual use like the word "theory" does, but this one used casually seems more unfortunate given the nasty nature of the clinical definition.

Sometimes engineers are referred to as a geek, while the next moment referred to also as "anti-social" (remember before billionaires not as many people thought it was acceptable?). Who knows, as a group quirky maybe? but it seems unsubstantiated to suggest murderers are overrepresented in the population.

[olyjohn]

That's ridiculous. The more cars you drive near, the more likely there is to be a collision. I take off from lights to get away from the pack, and I drive away from the packs on the highway. If there's nobody near you, you can't hit them.

[natch]

John Carmack among others agrees with you about Tesla acceleration not being antisocial. Here he is talking about it (timestamp in link takes you to the right part of the video):

https://youtu.be/Ua-ikbZVofc?t=674

[9935c101ab17a66]

I'd wager the vast majority of driver's have never really floored it, and especially from standstill. People care about getting from point A to point B safely and conveniently, and flooring it to get from 0-60 as fast as possible is ridiculously unsafe, has no utility (except very rarely when merging), and is terrible for both your car, your tires, and your fuel economy.

This is not a car for the general public, it is an incredibly niche, specially designed machine should conform to the public's driving patterns. On top of that, it STILL has an insanely fast 0-60 time.

Granted, I could be missing the point you're making. Apologies if that's the case.

[mrtksn]

I believe they just didn’t give the option to wreck your car by overclocking.

Their selling point is repeatability, so overloading the systems is not part of the Taycan experience.

Probably it’s possible to push the car to higher performance and risk performance degradation later on as with Tesla. Would be fun when people start playing around with these cars’ systems.

[19870213]

Porche appears to be claiming that one of the features of the Taycan is repeated launch control 0-60s without overheating or other problems that Telsa is warning people about when you use ludicrous mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP9kokeyxGU

[InTheArena]

That was a issue with the Model S, not with the P3D. I suspect that when they switch over the S to the new style batteries, it goes away.

[kenhwang]

But by switching over to the Model 3 powertrain, Tesla will lose their 0-60 crown. The 3 might have better cooling motors, batteries, and efficiency, but the S launches faster despite being much heavier.

So Tesla gets to pick whether they want a Model S that doesn't overheat, or a Model S that's slower to 60 than a Taycan.

[clouddrover]

Some things Porsche has done with the Taycan which contrast with Teslas are:

- Launch repeatability: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TP9kokeyxGU

- A 7:42 lap time at the Nürburgring: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m31EgQkswg

- Travelling 2,129 miles in 24 hours: https://insideevs.com/news/365827/porsche-taycan-24-hours-en...

[Mikeb85]

Porsches have never really been about straightline speed. Always about overall performance and a sports-car feeling.

I'm guessing they optimized things like power, gearing and weight placement to offer good acceleration through a range of speeds with amazing handling and decent range at speed.

[rconti]

True, and the Taycan may well be a better car in many ways. But a discussion of the gearbox has nothing to do with handling or sports car feeling.

I'm wondering what we're missing here. 5% efficiency improvement at high speeds isn't anything to write home about today. The transmission is a known quantity -- it's just gears, it won't get more efficient as they develop it. The efficiency of the whole system (battery/drivetrain/regen/motor/aero/etc) can be optimized quite a bit going forward, but if the 2-speed transmission will only ever get us a 5% increase, I'm not sure it's worth the added weight and complexity.

Obviously Porsche knows what they're doing, and it may be about thermal management on the Autobahn more than about outright efficiency, but I'm skeptical.

If this were 2010 I'd say "yeah, obviously Porsche knows something about building a real sedan that you can take on a real highway trip, Tesla has no idea what they're doing".

But, having produced actual sedans that actually work, and Porsche going with a more complicated system for 5%.. I don't know what I'm missing.

[elihu]

A 5% efficiency gain might be a big deal when it comes to motor heat. Electric motors tend to be around 85-90% efficient or so, and if you can get the motor from, say, 85% efficient to 90% efficient, that might translate to a one-third reduction in waste heat.

[outworlder]

> that might translate to a one-third reduction in waste heat.

Is that a big deal, though, compared to battery heat? Or is it in the context of a race scenario?

[amluto]

Speculation, since I’m not an expert:

The battery is big, so it has high thermal mass and lots of area for cooling. The motor is small. Motors can also easily be thermally limited. A permanent magnet motor that overheats will demagnetize and be destroyed. Induction motors and other non-permanent-magnet motors are less sensitive, but resistance goes up and metals and glues soften at higher temperature.

[elihu]

My understanding is that getting rid of waste heat is one of the main factors that limits how much power you can get out of an electric motor for any length of time. Less heat means you can get up a long steep hill without overheating (or causing the electronics to back off on the motor amperage to avoid damage).

[kenhwang]

Mazda dumped a bunch of R&D and complexity into their transmission for "only" a 4-7% (AT)¹ and 1% (MT)² efficiency improvement. I guess in the automotive world, you're fighting for every last %.

¹ https://www.mazda.com/en/innovation/technology/skyactiv/skya...

² https://www.mazda.com/en/innovation/technology/skyactiv/skya...

[gonehome]

I think the early versions of the original Tesla roadster had gearboxes with multiple speeds, but Elon eventually got rid of it and settled on just having one for later versions of the roadster (and all subsequent Tesla cars).

I think they found it didn't give much of an advantage when it did work and that they generally just didn't work very well.

[fgonzag]

And anybody who has driven a Porsche knows what an immaculate steering and transmission feels like. I seriously doubt Porsche would release something that was not up to the standard of the regular vehicles.

[wkearney99]

Agreed. Daily driving in my 958 GTS is great. Long highway stretches are fantastic. But it's not until weekend autocrossing that I really get to feel how well tuned a 2-ton SUV can be. Turning in times in the middle of the same pack as the coupes is fun.

People that haven't driven a modern Porsche just do not grasp how precise the driving experience can be. It's astounding how well-tuned their vehicles are.

[gonehome]

I had the recent boxster and was a fan (though it was stick).

I have driven the older “tip-tronic” (I think that was the name) paddle shifters though and they weren’t very good at the time. Supposedly they’ve improved since then though (that was probably 2009 or so).

[fgonzag]

Tesla tried to use a two speed transmission back in its Roadster days. They scraped it due to reliability issues. So even Tesla thinks (or thought) that two speed transmissions had technical advantages.

[elonismycopilot]

>True, and the Taycan may well be a better car in many ways. But a discussion of the gearbox has nothing to do with handling or sports car feeling.

There isn't a single published metric in which the Performance Model S doesn't trounce the Taycan.

[adrr]

Nurburgring Ring times. P100D has terrible thermal management and goes into limp mode before completing the course. If people really cared about 0 to 60 times, we see a lot more Dodge Demons on the road instead of 911s and Corvettes.

If Porsche can get price point for a regular Taycan below $100k, i'll gladly trade in my Porsche and Tesla for one because it does everything i want. I can drive canyon roads and never have to fill up.

[rconti]

Sure, and it's an ancient car, by EV standards. I'd hope that a Porsche that nobody has taken delivery of yet and costs way more is better.

Last time I was at the track (in my BMW M car, mind you) we had a couple of Model 3 Performance cars, and a couple of Model S.

I could pass the Model S with ease. I couldn't get close to the Model 3 Performance.

[adrr]

Model 3 performance needs ceramic brakes for the ring. Car is too heavy for the Brembos and it is at the limit for brake size.

[Cshelton]

Which seems pretty reasonable...large family sedan vs a sports sedan.

Besides, when the new Tesla roadster rolls out in 2020/2021, it is game over for everyone else anyway. At a price point of ~$200k, it'll kind of make the Porsche Taycan a joke. Unless you are a Porsche only individual. Which, to their credit, is a fairly sizable market.

[eldenbishop]

From road and track: """At launch, Porsche will offer two versions of the Taycan—the Turbo and Turbo S. The Turbo will carry an MSRP of $153,510 at launch, while the Turbo S will cost $187,610. Both of those numbers are minus destination charge."""

I suppose that leaves room for a non-turbo (lol) Taycan closer to your prices sometime in the future.

[theluketaylor]

There are a number of lower trims coming. Plain taycan will be single motor, I believe they mentioned a 4S that will be the lowest dual motor option and a GTS, all below the turbo.

Porsche has been saying all along the base taycan will be right around the base panamara price, around 90K. Makes sense since taycan shares rear suspension and interior parts with panamara, and unlike other ICE cars where BEV raises costs, the cost of motor + battery is likely to be around the price of a porsche engine. Panamara turbo is 150K just like taycan turbo as well.

[lutorm]

What's the turbo doing?

[elonismycopilot]

Nurburing will be put to the test next week. To compare a 2014 model S or even p85 is pointless. Until then it is just another attempt at hand waving and cherry picking from Porsche.

[AndrewBissell]

Lots of jeering on Twitter right now as Nürburgring is saying that Tesla does not have a lap reservation for them next week as Musk had claimed. https://twitter.com/RoadandTrack/status/1170044182808977408

> Porsche has tons of experience setting fast Nürburgring lap times, and a huge asset in the form of factory racer Lars Kern. The Model S Performance is a quick car, but Tesla has no prior experience attempting to lap the Nürburgring. It's hard to imagine the automaker could go out and beat Porsche on its first visit to the track.

Maybe they're hoping Autopilot will set the track record? LOL

[dragontamer]

> Nurburing will be put to the test next week.

Unlikely. The track is fully booked for a while. I know that Musk wants to get an apples-to-apples comparison between the two cars, but Musk needed to start working on this (starting with a Nurburing reservation) months ago.

I'm sure they'll get a test-run in within a few months, but there's no way they'll get the info within a week.

[gburdell3]

Does the Taycan overheat and go into limp mode if you take it to the track?

[kenhwang]

The old Model S had a hard time keeping up with a Nissan Leaf on the track.

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/07/16/how-did-a-nissan-leaf-b...

[rasz]

Does it pop glued coolant lines making you pay for track cleaning like the rest of track oriented Porsches? https://rennlist.com/forums/997-gt2-gt3-forum/592328-catastr...

[leetcrew]

if you're looking for the best car on paper, Porsche is probably not for you.

[elonismycopilot]

Well in terms of looks, charging network, city driving, autopilot, price and drag racing I'll take the Tesla. So far we've just seen a bunch of hand waving about how Taycan is better on the track... looks like there is a Model S being sent to Nurburgring to lay that to rest.

[steelframe]

> looks like there is a Model S being sent to Nurburgring to lay that to rest.

It looks like that Model S might just be sitting next to the Nurburgring for a while once it gets there.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a28942079/tesla-mod...

[davewritescode]

There’s almost no chance Tesla is going to get anywhere near the Taycan. There’s been a few professional drivers who’ve given it a shot and breaking 9 minutes has been a challenge. For context, that’s the same lap time as a Mazda MX-5.

There’s almost zero chance Elon is going to find another 1:20 with the existing Model S. Just not going to happen.

https://youtu.be/Dphw4km60m4

[clouddrover]

> charging network

The charging network available to the Taycan is the combination of different CCS charging network providers. They've been doing roaming deals with each other to simplify charging for their users. For example, Electrify America has roaming agreements with EVgo and ChargePoint:

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/evgo-electrify-america-ch...

Road trips don't seem to be a problem in the Taycan. 408 miles, one 24 minute stop for charging:

https://www.carscoops.com/2019/09/porsche-taycan-makes-408-m...

[leetcrew]

sounds like you're the target audience for tesla. nothing wrong with that, but everyone has their own taste. for the money, I'd much rather have the new GT4, but that's neither here nor there.

[Neil44]

How about 0-60 or 1/4 mile where you haven’t spent 10 minutes warming the batteries first?

[userbinator]

Comparing Porsche and Tesla shows that the perception of performance applies to EVs too: European performance is more about the handling, while American performance is more about straightline acceleration. The reason for this difference becomes obvious if you compare what the roads are typically like between the two regions.

[fluffything]

Live in Germany, and I care about handling, breaking power, and acceleration at rarely >50km/h, and often at >100-130km/h. Acceleration at 0-100km/h makes no sense for any meaningful use of a car here.

When I'm driving at >250km/h on the highway and one truck tries to overtake another at 80-90km/h, people driving 130 on the middle lane end up switching to the fast lane, so I have to break down to 100-130 km/h, and re-accelerate back up to >250km/h afterwards. The faster that happens, the less my average speed falls.

In Germany at least, one never lands into the highway merging lane at lestt than 60-70km/h, and the normal thing is to be at 50km/h and slowly move towards 80km/h for merging once you are on the merging lane and merge carefully. By the time you finish merging you are already at 120km/h in the slow lane.

If you are driving curvy roads, you want good handling so that you don't have to break down to less than 50-60km/h most of the time, and then you want good acceleration from 50-60 up to 100 km/h, and good breaking. You can't drive curvy roads here faster than 100km/h anyways.

Nurburgring is a mixture between highway and track-curvy roads (realistic curvy roads in germany are not like that), where a skilled driver with a car with good handling rarely drops below 130km/h in the curves, and is at about 250 km/h on all straight segments except for the very last one. Being able to reach 300km/h in the last segment is nice, but it only makes a dent in the overall lap time and doesn't really help if your car has bad handling. Also, its the last segment of the lap, so if your EV is overheating you'll fail miserably there.

The only situation I can imagine in which 0-60 matters is if you are drag racing, and for that, I have a 9.000 EUR BMW S1000R that beats pretty much every single car. Why would anyone pay >80.000 EUR for a drag racing car escapes my comprehension. Why would anyone care about Nurburgring times escapes my comprehension as well. I was once there with the bike, and I almost shit my pants. There is a huge difference between smoothly cruising at 250 km/h in a Germany highway, and driving at 250km/h on Nurburgring. People driving there are insane.

[_ea1k]

I think this is a benefit only at higher speeds, tbh. The Tesla single speed setup seems to be really tuned towards low end acceleration, which admittedly is a logical thing to tune for in a premium family sedan.

We've already seen some pretty good hints that the next Tesla Roadster may have at least a two speed gearbox, probably for similar reasons.

[lazyjones]

> The Tesla single speed setup seems to be really tuned towards low end acceleration, which admittedly is a logical thing to tune for in a premium family sedan.

It's probably actually tuned for range/consumption. The Taycan gets roughly 2/3 the range of a Model S despite better aerodynamics and almost the same battery size.

We'll see what EV drivers value more, track performance or range.

[mtw]

Porsche are experts in transmissions and gearboxes, but are starting (almost) from scratch for batteries. Give them a few years, they'll catch on.

[theluketaylor]

They have built the 918 hybrid hypercar and a number of phev versions of their production cars that are faster than the pure ICE versions. The hybrid 919 le mans winner is also a triumph.

I think porsche has been developing electric expertise better than just about any other established brand, but they are focused on charging speed and consistent performance rather than straight range.

[m463]

I suspect it might be motors too.

Why do they even need gears? I can see why we need differentials (until we have one motor per wheel), but can't gears be done in some electronic way with clever arrangements of motor

For example, the tesla has ~10:1 reduction ratio gearing, but I wonder if there's a clever way of rearranging the poles/coils of the motor, maybe like a crankshaft, so you get the best torque matched to the rpm?

[leetcrew]

> Why do they even need gears?

electric motors don't actually have flat torque curves. they make peak torque at zero rpm and then gradually decrease. the curve is much smoother than an ICE, but it's still possible to increase the performance of the engine by keeping it in an optimal rpm range provided you don't add too much weight and/or power loss through the transmission.

[threeseed]

Porsche is joining Formula E next season so I imagine they will get up to speed pretty quickly.

[milkytron]

According to the article:

> It’s programmed to shift between its two speeds at 43 mph, though the computer can be programmed to make the change at different points based on the route, topography, or the distance the driver hopes to cover before plugging in.

I wonder if that shift point has anything to do with the slower acceleration. I'd imagine it would make a small difference.

As for the top speed, I believe Tesla is limited to 155mph and the Taycan is reported to be limited at 161mph. So the Taycan is actually faster, but I'm not sure how much it matters since both are limited by the software.

[minhazm]

Model S top speed is 163 mph.

[jason46]

I've not done a whole lot of research but Tesla has it figured it out, compare a Tesla in power and range with the BMW i8. Maybe Porsche can make a better showing than their German counterpart.

[zby]

Porsche is German too.

[trhway]

>has neither better range

any additional gear is an additional loss of efficiency. One gear engagement results in up to 10% of loss.