I given Elon full credit for selling the vision - and there is no doubt in my mind there would be _NO_ Taycan with out Elon

I however welcome the entrance of serious players to the EV game so that I no longer have to rely on Elon's poor execution skills to fulfill his vision.

I'm counting the days until I can sell my Model S and get in my Taycan and hope that it's the beginning of an industry wide push to roll out an intelligent mix of cars that offer benefits for certain types of common usage.

I have _NO_ plans however to trade in my GT3 for Elon's roadster - regardless of how special the specs appear to be on paper - and I'm completely confident my GT3 will run circles around the roadster after the 1st or 2nd lap…and certainly by the midpoint of the day at thunderhill my GT3 will be able to run a full sessions in the afternoon and the next few days

 

Elon Musk/Tesla is building and selling thousands of cars and SUVs every week and has installed over 10,000 Superchargers worldwide - what more substance do you need?

 

Great experiment and summary. Definitely something that should be read by anyone involved in the EV industry.

I agree, you can't iron butt in an EV like an ICE vehicle. We take a 2,500 mile round trip each summer and since we have a diesel, it only requires two gas stops each way. While we do stop about every 4 hours, they are quick "refreshers" if it's not lunch or dinner. I.e. pee, grab a drink, throw away trash, stretch and get back in. Total time less than 10 minutes is usually more like 5.

So this would add significant time tonight trip. But we only do it once a year and have two vehicles. So we would not take the EV if we had one.

 

Not really sure the Australian market is relevant.

 

 

ROFL - I just realized my recent trip matched and validated my "comparing barrels of oil" post from many moons ago…

the big heavy Tesla Model X - 5,200 lbs + passengers + cargo - completed 1820 mile for a consumed energy cost of 668.9 kWh - which is less energy than one barrel of oil delivered to a oil fired generator puts on the grid (one barrel of oil = 732.6 kwh of power on the grid) - but same barrel of oil delivered to a refinery would've made 20 gallons of gasoline (+ kWh overhead to refine the gas) - for which the 28 mpg comparison point would allow it to drive 560 miles for the same barrel of oil...

the heavier car went 3.25 times further for the same barrel of oil - not theory - cause I just did it.

 

You noted the Model X was averaging "368 Wh/mile or 2.71 miles/kWh". I've noticed that my Model 3LR averages more like 200-233 Wh/mile (4.3-5 miles/kWh) on the highway - depending on how heavy my right foot is, but not "hypermiling" or doing anything too special. The difference in efficiency means that both the time and cost to Supercharge for the -3 is quite a bit lower than the X - and for that matter, the S, for a given road trip.

 

 

The -3 is an amazing car. I recently did a mini-road trip from the San Jose area to Sacramento and back. (Stopped into Parts Heaven in Hayward on the way to pick up a few 944 parts. ) Depending on the leg, I averaged a low of 198 and as high as 233 Wh/mile. Beats our Gen 2 Volt - which probably would have been in the 250-275 range for the EV portion of the same trip. The performance when one hits the 'go' pedal is just amazing. I traded in my DD, a 2006 MB with some AMG bits, for the -3 and do not miss anything about it.

 

 

[Truth. For a daily driver, I see no reason to ever return to an ICE car. My wife drives the Volt (98.5% EV miles per voltstats.net), and I drive the Model 3. I still have my old 944, which I've owned since 1987, for fun 'rowing the gears' - especially in the hills around here. But a couple of folks want to buy my 944. And the Model 3 is so good with its tight handling, instant acceleration, and regeneration, that I'm wavering there too.

Can't wait to see what Porsche comes up with in the Taycan. But they are going to have an uphill battle, performance wise, against the P3D. OTOH, there are getting to be so many Model 3s (and Teslas in general) on the road around Silicon Valley, that some may drift to the Porsche (and the i-Pace) just to be different. But then road trips will be a problem for non-Teslas. The CCS charging infrastructure is pretty poor for large numbers of long-distance travelers, and probably will be for the next several years.

 

Nice writeup! I recently did a 1200 mile drive mostly on smaller roads throughout eastern CA, OR and WA, it was effortless, fun and comfortable.

I hope Porsche does a performance model of the Taycan, I can't see replacing my Tesla with a slower EV.

 

Yes, but how much other product did that same barrel of oil yield when refined? Not apples to apples there.

 

Barrel of Oil can yield 20 gallons of gasoline + electricity consumed to refine it

or it can deliver about 732 kWh to the grid if delivered to a 40% efficient oil fired electrical plant (standard efficiencies for commercial oil fired power plants)

these are published numbers with data source and citation copies from another thread where I did the head to head apples to apple comparison of how many barrels of oil it takes to drive a Panamera vs. a Tesla Model S 13,500 miles a year - spoiler alert the Tesla takes way way fewer barrels of oil for the same distance even if the grid is 100% fossil fuel based (barrels of oil in this case).