Gus_Smedstad

I'm waiting a Panamera S E Hybrid, and as part of my therapy for the waiting stress I've been following news about the car. So it was rather surprising to see two diametrically opposed reviews appear in the UK Telegraph in a couple of days.

First, there's the "motoring" section review by Andrew English that pans it. Distinctly unjustly, IMHO. He faults it for "bad braking," which was not my experience in a test drive, or any other reviewer's, being too heavy, not delivering the unrealistic MPG of the NEDC test, and costing too much money.

What really gets me is the second to last line, where arbitrarily decides that owners will buy a plug-in hybrid and then not plug it in, and faults it for that. It's an obviously stupid statement, since if you aren't fascinated by the idea of driving around on electrical power, you can buy an S and get better overall performance for less money. Well, and I guess Ace's wife, who wants HOV lane access, but mostly it's those of us interested in the tech. This unfair slam was the clearest signal that he never planned on giving the car a fair review in the first place. Some people just don't like hybrids.

OK, some people are like that. What's interesting is that the same paper published a wildly positive review by Michael Harvey 6 days later. It's not quite a puff piece, since he addresses some of my concerns about the car ("how much of a Porsche is it?"), but it's still about as far removed from the first article as I can imagine.

ace10

Thanks for posting the links. I hadn't read either of those pieces.

I agree that the first writer seemed to have a beef with the notion of a luxury plug-in hybrid. His driving yielded 35mpg, which seems pretty damn good to me. His comments about the brake pedal don't synch with my experience test driving two different units. The pedal feel was good and progression was also good... much better than the E400 hybrid I drove a week or two ago.

The second piece was a bit pointless.

Nothing I read in the Telegraph would have enticed, soured or otherwise altered my purchase decision. I know it's a decent vehicle that will fit our needs. I have a deal agreed-upon, I'm just waiting on the Buyers Order so I can get a deposit processed. It's a fresh unit that was just unloaded at the port in RI. I should have it within two weeks if all goes according to plan.

Gus_Smedstad

One thing about UK articles is that you need to remember that the UK gallon is 20% larger than the US gallon, so MPG figures are proportionately higher. Robert Llewellyn claimed he got 39 MPG on his 230 mile test drive, which sound great until you figure out it's actually 33 MPG US. Which is still awfully high compared to most cars in this class, of course.

An interesting thing is that the fuel efficiency combined with the large gas tank (21 gallons) yields a 600 mile range. I do a trip to Vienna every Christmas, and the Panamera should be able to do that one-way without refueling.

What I really want is a review that talks about the car's performance, rather than its gas mileage. There are a ton of reviews of the Panamera Turbo, none of which spend a word on the car's 15 city / 23 highway MPG. I'd love to see someone skilled push one around a track.

The issue for me is that I've been driving a performance coupe for 16 years, and there are times when I feel I want a little reassurance that the Panamera S E Hybrid will deliver a similar driving experience, despite being bigger and 35% heavier. I've got 2 months to wait before delivery, and my two test drives were 2 months ago, and not exactly fresh in my mind. I remember thinking that the car didn't feel slow despite the extra weight.

Congratulations on finding an in-transit car that suits your needs. If I'd just done that, or taken delivery from dealer stock, I'd be driving the damned thing instead of wondering if I'll really like it when it arrives, and I'd know.

The funny thing is that I have no such doubts about my wife's coming car, which is a Cayman S. It's clearly a superior car to Supra Turbo in every respect except cargo space.

ace10

I understand where you're coming from. I've always had a "fun" car. No matter where on the spectrum it might sit. Obviously, I'm not viewing the purchase of the PSeH as anything more than an appliance, which leaves it with only upside.

There's no possible way it can touch the performance of my E63S. Few cars in the world can. But of course it does drink fuel at about 17mpg when I'm driving it. And I have a dedicated small track car that I can beat the snot out of when I have that urge. So I don't need much out of this new car. Keep my wife safe. Be reliable. Return decent economy numbers. And save 5-10 minutes each way on her commute.

The PSeH is quite an enigma in the traditional car world. There's no getting around the curb weight, yet it still puts up good economy numbers and a low 5 second scoot to sixty is very respectable. I think it felt reasonable small when driving it. Smaller than my E. But parking was a bit of a gut wrencher. I'm not trusting of these parking aides just yet. No matter the vehicle.

I've never ordered a car... I don't have the patience, nor the interest in sweating over the options.

If you saw some PSeH's tooling around bean town, would that assuage your misgivings?

What are the factors or attributes that caused YOU to order the car?

You mentioned range... which is a big deal for me. If we can squeeze 700-800 per tank (augmented by daily charging) then this will be gravy. The Boss has a thing about driving cars until the fuel tank is dry, then moving on to the next one in the driveway. Never mentioning it to me. Rinse and repeat. Until I have to spend an hour or two shuttling cars to the station for fillups.

We bought her E320cdi for its fuel economy and range. She regularly gets 600-700 miles between fills. The PSeH is replacing the utility provided by that car.

Gus_Smedstad

The parking aids are definitely going to take some familiarization. I went with the Surround View, which includes top-down cameras in the mirrors, front, and back. The view from the split screen really does look like you're looking down from above the car, though when you get close to something recognizable like a car it's terribly distorted and cartoonish, which lends to the video-game feel of the view.

I tried parallel parking with the system, and I ended up a mile away from the curb. Stuff's a lot more distant than it looks in the overhead view. So yeah, despite how intuitive it seems, I think it's going to take a while before I'm comfortable with it.

I'm not sure I have the patience for ordering a car, either. I thought I did, but the waiting means the car is occupying a lot of my mindspace, far, far more than if I'd just purchased one off the lot. I've never spent this much time thinking about a car before, and I don't think it's the car, I think it's the waiting.

On the other hand, Porsche's laundry list of options would have forced me to order a car even if color wasn't such an issue. Almost every car out there with the options I do want has another $10k-$15k in options I don't want. It's very rare to see one with a sticker price as low as the $105.5k I specified. Most of the options are overpriced - I can get a set of black Victor Lemans 20" wheels for $1500, probably net $700 if I sold the original rims, versus the $3000-$5,500 that Porsche wants. Voice control of the navigation system costs twice as much as an entire Garmin navigation system.

No, seeing other PSeH's on the road wouldn't make a whit of difference. I'm primarily concerned about how it's going to feel as a daily driver. I worry that it's going to feel like a step down, even though I remember feeling that it wasn't back in April.

The thing that prompted me to look at it originally was the pure-electric driving mode. I recently purchased a 6.7kW solar array for my house, which has been pumping out 150+ more kWh per month than I use. It wasn't a "green" decision, it was purely an investment that should return about 14% overall, and which has so far exceeded expectations. I thought it would be incredibly cool if my routine driving, the boring short-range, low-speed stuff, could effectively run off that.

However, I wasn't willing to compromise all that much on the other aspects of my daily driver. Even when I'm doing driving that doesn't get above 40-45 MPH, there's a significant difference in the feel of an econobox and a performance car. The only cars that were remotely acceptable in that regard were the Tesla and the Panamera. I'm sure you're familiar with that - your wife could use the HOV with a BMW i3, but she doesn't want to drive one, and neither do I.

There are other things that are pure gravy on top of that, like the much-expanded cargo space, and that science fiction surround view camera. The cargo space in particular is going to be a big help on that annual road trip, and the times I have to transport something bulky like a bicycle or snow blower.

The Tesla's actually a better match in a lot of ways, since it does the vroom-vroom thing without using gas, but the range / charging issue, the high maintenance costs and limited service facilities, and anecdotal evidence of serious reliability issues all combined to rule it out for me. We need at least one car that can do long road trips with significant cargo, my wife's coming Cayman S isn't it, and the Tesla wouldn't be either.

If your wife's commute is 40 miles or less one way, and you charge every night, you should easily get 800 miles between fills. The main worry is that your wife's hesitance to fill the tank might carry over to plugging the car in - that may end up being your responsibility, the way you currently do the gas runs.

You mentioned earlier that she felt these cars (the Tesla and Panamera) lacked acceleration. I'm sure either one has significantly more pickup than the E320cdi - so I'm guessing she's not driving it that much, due to her grabbing your car fairly often?

ace10

If there was public funding of private solar arrays down here in VA, I'd likely do the biz case, but there isn't so it's pointless. Last year we put in a 20kwh automatic generator to fill the gaps when we lose power, which is quite often unfortunately. If we didn't have that, then the Tesla wouldn't have even been on the consideration list. On average, the two of us consume less than 1400kw per month. Which is basically nothing.

The notion of ordering a car and then waiting for it really hurts my brain. Sounds like you don't let things fall out of thought until they're closed-out. Me too. Can be brutal at times.

For me, I'd like to see a few of these PSeH on the road. That would tell me that the dealers are selling them and (more importantly) servicing them. I was told that the Tysons dealer has two techs trained on the 2014 hybrid system.

On my E63S, it has the ability to park itself. Which I've never used. It also has the 360 deg camera. Which is nice for tight spots. More gee wiz that "gotta have it" though. It also has, as the next level of tech, the ability to basically drive itself on the highway. Steer, brake, accelerate... Now I've tried that quite a few times, and it is spooky. But cool. But spooky. The future is coming.

Regarding the i3. Eesh. They couldn't have made a less appealing design if they tried. Non starter. :blarf:

Yeah, she's been taking my E63S to work when the weather is good. I don't think she understands that a car with nearly 600hp is a rare beast. It would walk a PTT from a dig. So a car like the PSeH is going to be a big step down in performance. But it's a commute, so who friggin cares? Her other car is a G550, which is a monster as far as suvs go. Her perspective really is all messed up. LOL The E320 is the slowest car own. And yet, to me, the wave of torque is still intoxicating.

ace10

And the unit I'm close to grabbing... it has some really stupid options on it... among them Soft close doors and CD changer! But the color combo was a really nice one... Carbon over full leather Cognac/Cedar. Stickered right at $118.

I'm having them pull the black interior trim and install a Tineo kit. Should be a pretty car.

Gus_Smedstad

Yeah, that's it exactly. That's why I wanted to get my car sold ASAP even though I wasn't taking delivery of the Panamera until July / August. I wanted it resolved, not hanging over my head. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do similarly resolve the new car.

It's true I wouldn't have purchased the solar array without substantial incentives. Some of those are federal, and apply to anyone - that paid for 30% of the array. However, there's an ongoing incentive per kWh generated here in Massachusetts, above and beyond the elimination of our electrical bill. Without that the return is like 6%, which wouldn't have been good enough.

I've got a grid-tie solar array, which means that if public power goes out, I lose power even if I'm generating plenty. If you have reliable grid power, grid-tie makes a lot of sense because you can treat the public grid like a huge, highly efficient battery. If you can't count on the grid and need local power storage, it's both substantially more expensive and less efficient, because there are charging losses for batteries.

It does mean that in the event of the zombie apocalypse, I'm still SOL despite local power generation. Which is OK, I've always figured that realistically, I'd be eaten in the first few hours.

I'm just kind of assuming that the local dealership knows how to service the PSeH. It's not really that different. In service terms, it adds an electrical motor, a battery, and some computer stuff. It's really dead simple, since the electrical motor just sits at the front of the transmission, and the ZF 8HP transmission is a standard part manufactured by ZF Friedrichshafen that's in a million cars foreign and domestic now.



A CD changer in this day and age.. it's almost on par with putting an 8 track in. I've got my entire music collection on a thumb drive that barely registers as a wart when it's in the radio's USB port.