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I'm going to use this misunderstanding as a launching pad… three… two… one...
Driving is the art of making the car do what you want by controlling weight transfer with steering, acceleration and braking. Shifting only becomes a factor with certain automotive designs. Every car must be capable of speeding up, slowing down, and changing direction. Period.
Where performance cars in general, and Porsches in particular, set themselves apart is in the degree of responsiveness and control they provide drivers in delivering these three things.
The subject being turbo's means we're talking acceleration. Power. Throttle control.
Now the first thing to understand is nothing in a car is absolute. Its all tradeoffs. For every situation where instantaneous snappy throttle is desired there's another where a slower response is preferred. Porsche explicitly confirms this with buttons that let us choose which way we want to go.
The buttons give each car a range, and then on top of that Porsche gives us a range of models. From Carrera to S to GT3 to Turbo S there's a range of performance, and not only in numbers but
responsiveness.
The Turbo S at the top of the range has the most performance, but is also clearly the most GT oriented model. So much so that a lot of guys would argue the GT3 is the most high performance model- and make a pretty compelling case of it too.
It all depends on what you want, on which aspects of performance you value most.
This freedom of choice, or more to the point this taking away of our freedom of choice is what has everyone so concerned. As well they should be. Because it is not just turbo's. As should by now be perfectly clear, they not only don't want us being free to choose our cars, they don't even want us being free to talk about choosing our cars. Its all about efficiency, so shut up.
All well and good … if you're in the market for a Prius. But I suspect an awful lot of Porsche owners have a somewhat different take on performance.
And not only Porsche owners. In the article people keep posting its Ferrari complaining about turbo's. Nobody it seems is dumb enough to even try and say this is competitively driven. (Wait, I take that back, one guy actually did say that above! Crikey!) But the one ideologue excepted, I trust the rest of us can see perfectly clearly that this has nothing to do with performance, everything to do with politics, and is for that reason alone a bad thing, regardless of how well Porsche will undoubtedly implement it.
You are trying to spin that politics are forcing car manufacturers to have turbo engines. Nothing is further from the truth. It's all about less weight and more power from a small displacement engine. Who wants to go back to the 60's and a 427 with 2 four barrel carbs.
In ten years expect to see a 500hp TT 4 cyl in a 2500lb 911 that will smoke the current models. As an added bonus, the car will do 60mpg on the hwy.
PS Some folks like you, will not like this and they will have the alternative to buy a push rod V8 Corvette from GM. They seem to like old tech.
"In a recent interview with Top Gear, Porsche R&D boss Wolfgang Hatz explained the move. “Emissions are important for us,” he said. “And we will reduce faster than the industry. You have to respect legal requirements [for lower CO2], so yes we’re thinking turbos for standard 911s. You can’t afford to keep an engine for 10 years any more.”
Did the EU and EPA establish emission and MPG goals or did they dictate that all manufacturers must use turbos to achieve those goals?
I do think HP and Torque numbers are important to most buyers and Porsche is trying to expand its market. Forum members are probably not a accurate cross section of future potential buyers that must be catered to by marketing departments. If Porsche enthusiasts pan the turbos, its all the better for me. I have the car I want, and all the more reason to hang on to it.
I love the look and feel of the 991.1 and I will not grow weary of it when the next model comes online what ever motor they decide to produce. We get to vote with our wallets.
Last edited by wanderfalke; 01-25-2015 at 01:21 AM.
They mandated laws which has forced manufacturers into turbos and hybrids. Either that, pedal bicycles, walking, or horseback.
Once again, the EU is the leading force behind this! Excuse my language? But it's a complete fu__up the way they test the cars! Sooooo far away from real life driving! Especially driving a 911! In a lot of cases cars use 25-50% more fuel in real life situation than stated during the EU driving cycle!
The EPA numbers are spot on with real world consumption!
The turbos solve two problems, more hp for marketing and better MPG for flawed tests. This maintains profits compared to making much lighter cars. When I am driving with limited gas in the tank I can get window sticker MPGs the rest of time the car is shoved around hard and the mileage is very poor.. That is the real world for me.
Once again, the EU is the leading force behind this! Excuse my language? But it's a complete fu__up the way they test the cars! Sooooo far away from real life driving! Especially driving a 911! In a lot of cases cars use 25-50% more fuel in real life situation than stated during the EU driving cycle!
The EPA numbers are spot on with real world consumption!
This is nonsense. Do you just make crap up?
My apples to apples comparison is the 07 X3 3.0 we traded for a 13 X3 3.5. The newer turbo has 15% more power, was larger, heavier and got 10% better MPG in real world situations. I also have have a BMS piggyback tuner on it, so it really has 30% more power. It actually beats its EPA ratings, while the 07 was spot on them.
The only lineup of turbo motors that are disappointing vs EPA ratings are Ford ecoboosts.
This is nonsense. Do you just make crap up? My apples to apples comparison is the 07 X3 3.0 we traded for a 13 X3 3.5. The newer turbo has 15% more power, was larger, heavier and got 10% better MPG in real world situations. I also have have a BMS piggyback tuner on it, so it really has 30% more power. It actually beats its EPA ratings, while the 07 was spot on them. The only lineup of turbo motors that are disappointing vs EPA ratings are Ford ecoboosts.
Posted all the testing done by auto motor sport in germany earlier in this post! Check out post 86.....
Unfortanately your x3 3.5 is not on the list, probably because 95% of the x3,x5s are diesels in Europe. But if you look at those two cars the x3 2.0d/2.8d EU NEDC diesel consumption nr is 5.2l/100km and real world consumption is 48% higher.........and the x5 3.0d/3.5d the nr is 45% higher.....
For a gasoline powered car like the 535i the EU official gas cusumption is 8l/100km and real world consumption is 10.7l/100km. So only 34% more................
And if you look at the sheet you see that EPA numbers are all within 1% of real world consumption.....
Starting to get the picture.....
The more articles come up like this, the more I see 997s and 991s appreciating. All of a sudden, even the 996 sounds like a good idea, because nobody wants those.
I found thus article via Facebook. In my opinion it does bring up a very important question: Is an all-turbo 911 lineup truly progress? https://grrc.goodwood.com/road/news/porsche-911-turbo The more articles come up like this, the more I see 997s and 991s appreciating. All of a sudden, even the 996 sounds like a good idea, because nobody wants those.
Thanks for sharing!
I never thought of the 4 wheel drive variable. Great point.
Interesting quote ...
"I have no doubt it will be faster, more efficient and more comfortable – all of which fall under the heading of ‘progress’. But that just makes me think we might need to alter the criteria for judging what progress actually is.
I’m open-minded on all-turbo 911s for now, but have a lurking sense of unease."
There is more than a kernel of truth, but the article is misleading in a number of areas. I say this as a supporter of normally aspirated engines who agrees with some of the articles conclusions.
My biggest issue is with the suggestion that Turbo engines are not more efficient in street cars. The fact is that for a given performance level in normal usage they are, and by quite a bit. Real world mileage for something like an E9X M3 to the BMW 1M or F8X M3, cars with comparable or better performance, is up ~20%+. There is a simple reason for this: turbo engines are efficient across a wider performance range.
It's absolutely true that turbo engines are no more efficient normally aspirated engines at peak- they are in fact slightly worse. The most efficient engine on the road, found in the Pruis, maxes out at 38% peak, meaning it converts 38% of the energy in its fuel into mechanical work. And it's normally aspirated. However even using a CVT and hyrid to control load, most of the time the engine is operating at a much lower efficiency- it'd be very lucky to average 30%.
30% is still spectacular when compared to a regular sports car, however, which would be lucky to average 10%. Why so low? Because unless you're on the autobahn, you're generally "puttering along". The chart below shows the engine efficiency of a little 1.9L Saturn, a good economy engine:
The red bit is where it's most efficient, around 33%. The curves going through the red bit show horsepower- it's only that efficient at low revs and between 30 and 60 hp, everywhere else it's less efficient. Not too bad in a 1.9 liter Saturn, because you need about 50 hp to cruise down the freeway.
The problem is that you need the same 50 hp to cruise down the freeway in your Carrera GTS, but it has 430 hp meaning its engine is effectively more than 3x bigger than this. So when you're cruising down the freeway in that you've fallen out of the efficient area down to the bottom of the chart, where you'd be lucky to get to 15%. Suddenly you're using twice the fuel to do the same thing, which is why mileage in car with big motors, from Vipers to Veryrons, sucks.
The turbo gets around this by making the efficiency islands bigger- effectively you can use a smaller engine to do the same job. When you're flat-out it doesn't matter- Porsche's turbo 2.0L V4 was clearly slower than Toyota's normally aspirated V8 at LeMans last year while using the same amount of fuel. But in real world driving in a big engined sports car you're rarely flat-out outside the autobahn.
So if turbo motors are more efficient, why not use them everywhere? Because I agree they are not as good for a sports car.
For a given power output they are generally heavier, contrary to what you'd expect. Less responsive, don't sound as good, less reliable. All of which will be overcome to some extent, but not right away and perhaps not entirely.
More complex and more expensive, sure, but don't expect Porsche to actually pass that on: they've been "value-based" pricing for years and making up to 75% margin according to some, so there is very little relationship between what you pay and what things cost any more.
Obviously high end sports cars are not built or sold in enough volume to move the needle, regardless whether you think the needle needs to be moved or not. If you do there are many better places to spend the money. Looking at some of the large solar projects going in now, one single project will eliminate more CO2 than every Porsche sold this year will make.
Arguments I see for requiring these changes:
A. To push technology to improve efficiency- Tesla P85D, 918, etc prove that our can get all the performance you'd ever need efficiently, and that will trickle down. These cars will bring a 2x or 3x improvement in efficiency, faster response, etc, far more than simple turbos. In the long run as costs are driven down many will look back and decide this wasn't a bad thing, much like the switch from carbs to EFI.
B. Why should we be exempt? "Not in my backyard" leads to not in anyone's yard, leads to nothing.
Porsche looks set to keep normal aspiration in their GT cars, which if it holds is I think a reasonable compromise. Most people who buy a Carrera will likely be better off with the turbo in any case- it will be faster, it will be more efficient, torquier, and if we're honest most will simply be happy with the latest and greatest. For those that aren't, let's hope they are able to keep the GT cars turbo free for some time.
There is a difference between discussing "what" and ascribing motive to "why". You can disagree with what, and the global warming/ C02 reasons behind it, but when you start proclaiming motive, ie "an unelected unelected and unaccountable global ruling class", that's when we drop to OT P&C. I'll have no part in it.
01-24-2015, 09:25 PM
