Ironically my two longest range vehicles are at opposite ends of the spectrum from each other: My old 944 - 30 mpg x 21 gallon tank, and my old Suburban - 15 mpg x 42 gallon tank. So both a bit over 600 highway miles. Over the years, I've driven both between Northern and Southern California without re-fueling numerous times. But I always stop for bio-breaks somewhere in between. (E.g., Harris Ranch or Kettleman on I-5.)

 

Quite true, and that is what we did. From my house to SLO was about 2.5 hours, SLO to Oxnard another 2. From Oxnard to Atascadero was 2.5 hours, then another 2 hours home. Actually made an additional 'bio-break' at Soledad on the return trip, but didn't do any charging there. (Really, no place to charge in Soledad even if we wanted to.)

 

I’m pretty sure that 918 is the right car for me ...

 

I get that efficiency is important, whether its EV, ICE, hybrid, or whatever. Heck, I even prefer efficient people.

But I am curious, and I don't mean to be argumentative as I am genuinely curious, as to why it is all about efficiency with EV's?

Given that electricity is largely available and renewable, why is efficiency the end-all-be-all for EVs? Wouldn't efficiency be more of a goal for ICE cars given that fossil fuels are of finite quantity and no renewable in the same way electricity is?

Yes, it would be fantastic if an EV was uber efficient, but that can't be what an EV is all about, can it?

 

Simple answer, Tesla crew is clinging onto that metric to claim they have the best cars as they do seems to have the longest rangeon paper atm. But as that YouTube video shows, they are not quite what is claimed. In real world driving conditions the Kia comes the closest to their claimed range, and is actually more efficient than a Model 3 in squeezing out the most out of a smaller battery pack.

 

From a driver’s perspective the efficiency of an ICE car is almost immaterial. Example: my GT3 is roughly 10x less efficient than my Tesla. Why would I care from behind wheel? It’s got a gas tank that contains 10x the energy of my Model 3’s batteries, yet the tank is ~10% of the battery weight and “recharges” in minutes. It also cost me 1/10th of one percent of the car’s purchase price to specify an extended range tank, a tank that increases the car’s practical range by 50% at a penalty of 1% curb weight (only when the tank’s full). All in all if one were to magically double the efficiency of the GT3’s engine a driver would be very hard pressed to notice any practical effect when not at a gas station.

Now consider magically doubling the efficiency of the Taycan. Over-simplifying: if one kept range fixed the smaller batteries would drop ~700 lbs from the car’s curb weight. This in turn could make the car dramatically lighter, smaller and faster. It would improve dynamically in every way, while efficiency gains would be multiplied due to the reduction in weight, drag and rolling resistance. Production cost for the car would come down substantially, with roughly a 10% of MSRP savings due to the smaller batteries alone (not to mention the smaller motors, brakes, tires, etc required for the same performance). Charge times would be halved on a minute per mile basis because each unit of energy would deliver twice the range- less time at charge stations for drivers, fewer charge stations needed in the network for manufactures, less load on the electricity grid. Battery costs and production rates, both major issues currently, would be half as important.

In short while efficiency has rarely been a priority from a driver’s perspective in ICE cars it absolutely is in EVs mainly because batteries are so damn big, heavy and expensive. Even if range remained fixed the Taycan would be a much better driver’s car if it could somehow hit Model 3 efficiency numbers and save battery weight/ charge time/ size/ cost. Efficiency very much is critical to the viability of EVs, and credit where due Tesla is further ahead in that area than some apparently appreciate. More on that front tomorrow...

 

Because a more efficient car lets you go farther with a given weight of battery. And the battery is a LOT of an electric car's weight... lighter's basically always better, of course.

This is also a different question then "why is it all about range with EV's?", which is also a reasonable question.

(Edit: didn't see the post above mine. It covers it better than mine, so ... uh, that)

 

Efficiency = range. Range = usability .

Let me put it this way. If your gas car had a 3 gallon tank, and 95% of the gas stations you knew of closed tomorrow, would you suddenly care a lot more about how efficient your car was? Now factor in that when you do find a gas station, it might not take your payment method, and you'll spend 20-40 minutes charging there. The good news is that if you live in a house with a garage, for $500 you can have a gas line installed with a never ending supply so you can refill the tank every night.

How you look at a car would suddenly change a lot, no? You'd realize that car was a lot less usable than you thought, and you'd have to think about cars with longer range, shorter refill times, etc. Three and four cars would become your norm. But what if you didn't have the money or room? The dynamic changes quickly. But that's the EV reality.

Wrong. 110% wrong. I get that a lot of west coast, in particular, Tesla owners propagate this stereotype. But I would be willing to bet a large sum of cash that the Tesla owners on THIS site could give two f*cks about bragging rights. Hell, I bet most of us don't really even like our Teslas all that much. What we do like is the EV driving experience, and to date, the Tesla is the only car that has given us the performance and the range to make it work in OUR use case.

No, what disappoints us is that Porsche has now built a very expensive, very limited car. In my case, I'd probably have to charge the Taycan to near full for about 50% of my work days. And I'd suffer staggering depreciation for such an expensive car given the miles that I've driven. Plus, we want to see it succeed beyond the 20-30k run that Porsche has envisioned. We don't want it's high price and low range to cause it to harm the reputation of Porsche.

Please remember, almost all of us in this discussion own at least one Porsche, and recognize that we are on a Porsche forum. We all bought in and drank the Porsche kool-aid. We're not here to troll and trump pro-Tesla. Many of us, myself included, would be happy to get out of ours. But we want a comparable EV. Being the (way) better car simply doesn't fit the use case for many of us. Come on, you're an intelligent guy for sure. Can you please, give us the benefit of the doubt and take off the "they have something positive to say about Tesla, they must be Tesla fanbois" sentiment when reading some of the posts?

 

efficiency is a virtuous cycle, like weight on a race car - the virtous cycle of reducing weight affects EVERYTHING on a race car's performance - it's a huge domino effect (I realized this viscerally when I moved from a 2011 911 GT3 into a 2010 GT3 Cupcar - wow what a difference weight makes!)

EV efficiency affects the entire ownership experience of the vehicle - it's not only a competitive metric (car a vs. car b) - it's an indication of the car's overall abilities as an EV. To date EV's have been zero-emissions at the tailpipe and 3x more efficient that ICE vehicles - if you stop caring about EV efficiency it appears to be pretty easy to build an EV that from an overall resource consumption point of view is no better than a gasoline car in terms of consumption. So at that point in time, what does it matter?

Bascially for anything with a battery and limited power (cell phone, laptop, home energy storage, transporation) efficiency matters (ask Intel if efficiency matters as they are losing the chip market to more efficient competitors cause all their CPU's are power hogs) - the battery is a "fixed" resource and the speed with which you deplete it matters - if you can improve your consumption rate to be less it's a big win, the inverse is small consumptions also matter because the only way to "fix" a consumption problem is to increase weight/volume/cost or reduce consumption somewhere else in the system.

The dramatic efficiency of EV drive trains are their triumph card in the great ICE vs. EV drive train battle - nothing can compete with a well designed EV for efficiency - so now enter the Taycan - great car - but not that competitive as a demonstration of EV efficiency from a company known for it's engineering chops - and it's 68% worse on the one metric in which EV's shine…it's disappointing at a minimum. And as @Needsdecaf stated I'm a big Porsche fan but was expecting better…I was really hoping we could show the Teslafia what a real car company is capable of. Apparently they are capable of being fast at speed above the legal limit, picking better leather for their interiors, doing a ring time close to a cayman, charging 3x as much $$$, and taking an EV motor which is by all accounts nearly 94% efficient and developing a vehicle than is only slightly more efficient than a toyota prius but 68% worse than a side project from a major American automaker and a company that builds cars in a tent in a parking lot and who's CEO lies to the SEC…but yeah it's a better car that drive 200'ish miles a good day downhill with the wind behind it's back.

As it stands the Taycan as a EV demonstration platform shows that Porsche can only make high-performance low efficiency vehicles (just like their ICE products) and I don't see that as a long term strategy that is going to work for them - but I'll admit that's my speculation - only time will actually tell.

Basically the Taycan isn't much better than the most efficient gasoline cars…and it's range is so limited it's going to be more of a pain in the as to deal with as an EV than the industry standard…so the only place it's any better is in fit and finish…and I still want to know Porsche - where are all the electrons going? Why is the Taycan 68% worse at driving 100 miles than a Chevy Bolt? And are you happy with that? Is this the best the german's can do with an EV platform?

68% is a LOT - and not minor differences - it's a major screw up - how is Porsche using 68% more wh/mile with an EV motor and nearly 100 kWh of power on-tap? EV motors are 90% or more efficient - so the "waste/consumption" is somewhere else in the system - where is it? No one would care if it was 30% or less - but nearly 70% worse efficiency than other EV's is a stupid amount of consumption per-mile…is it the tires? is it really that easy to fix? What is it porsche? How are you using 68% more power than nearly every other EV on the market (Tesla, Chevy, Kia, Nissan) - and you can't blame the weight - the Model S and X weigh equal/more than the Taycan - so where are you wasting 200 wh/mile? Is it the leather? Does leather consume 200 wh/mile?

 

I really want the accounting - if we take the best production EV efficiency and say that is state of the art - it's the Model 3 AWD LR on the EPA test at 280 wh/mile vs. the Taycan EPA test at 490 wh/mile - that gives us a 210 wh/mile deficit between the two cars to the go the same distance at the exact same speeds (EPA test procedure).

so how is Porsche spending 210 wh/mile more than the Tesla

50 wh/mile greater weight?
40 wh/mile sticky tires?
15 wh/mile on lower tire pressure (greater rolling resistance)?
15 wh/mile for the gear box?
15 wh/mile for lack of one pedal regeneration - an EPA test penalty - so this may not show up in real world?
15 wh/mile for using industry standard supply chain 12 volt components not optimized for wh efficiency?
10 wh/mile for longer high volatage DC wire runs in the car?
25 wh/mile for the bigger/heavier brakes that are required for Porsche performance metrics but in reality never used on the street due to regen (so I'm carrying that performance penalty with me for the entire life of the car, when the actual performance they offer will be less than 1% of the car's utilization)

hypothetically that's 185 wh of the deficit (if it were all true) and then the Taycan would be both a great car & a great EV - heck if they could even improve things by 100 wh/mile that would change them from a 201 mile car to a 240 mile car and NO ONE would be having this conversation

where is the Taycan "spending" 210 wh for each mile driven when we know you can move a vehicle at speed for far less power than that? What is Porsche doing differently that leads to that increased consumption? Again I ask - is it the leather? Is it the leather consuming that power? Well then it's all worth it.

Porsche's "tax" on their EV design is almost 2x the cost to move a Model 3 the same distance - that's a significant difference and so far I don't see where it's all going? I can only see the result, but not all the "costs" in the Porsche design that leads to that result…if we knew what the "costs" were we could discuss the pros/cons and the trade offs Porsche made - at the moment all we know is the Taycan takes 490 wh/mile and the model 3 takes 290 wh/mile for the same mile…that's a hefty tax for the Porsche logo.

Is their DC/AC converter the culprit - I saw a video years ago that indicated Elon "stole" space-X technology for their DC/AC electronics to gain a significant advantage over "off the shelf" electronics - and he claims that was a major Tesla advantage that other people would have a tough time duplicating...where is the 210 wh/mile being spent? And can porsche close the gap - even by 120 wh/mile for a significant increase in their efficiency? If I don't care about tracking my Taycan will simply changing the tires give me 20% more range?

 

The difference isn't that great.

Tesla Bjorn drove 310 miles with the Telsa Model 3 awd. at 55mph => 74000Wh/310mi = 239Wh/mi
AMCI testing; 275mi in city/hwy combo, unknown avg speed, normal mode. Based on this and it's a bit of wild guess, at a constant 55mph, and in range mode Taycan should do 240mi. 83700/240 = 349Wh/mi
That is about 46% higher. The difference in rolling resistance is 36% at this speed.

If we believe the 490Wh/280Wh = 1.75 difference from the EPA rating, the Tacan would do 239*1.75 = 418Wh/mi at 55mph (range of 83700/418 = 200mi). I believe it is better than that.

///EDIT: well I compared constant speed consumption, EPA has acceleration as well which is affected by the weight as you mentioned.

Road trip worthiness needs: efficiency, good charging characteristics and good charger network. Most of the trips mentioned here are easily doable in the Taycan.

 

your statement is patently false - the data is clear

Taycan is 490 wh/mile
Model 3 is 280 wh/mile

you then launch into comparisons of apple and orange test results and speculation.

On the EPA test the difference is _IN FACT_ that great - unless you are disputing the EPA numbers - until we have other comparitive results (same test different vehnicles) the difference is in fact that great.

 

I am disputing the EPA numbers, yes.

 

let's try this a different way - and agree that 201 miles is "enough"

at Taycan's current level of efficiency that requires the 93 kWh battery which weight 1389 lbs

if the Taycan needed to keep the same range - because 201 is "enough" and that fits Porsche's target market (which is the basic argument being presented here) greater efficiency would allow them to drop the battery weight (as Pete mentioned)

at the Model 3 level of a efficiency 201 miles requires 201 miles / 280 wh/mile = 71.7 (72 kWh)

93 - 72 = 22 kWh savings in battery capacity

22 / 93 = 23% - let's call it 25% for simplicity

1389 lbs * .75 = 1041 lbs battery

Taycan weights 5100 lbs
5100 lbs - 1389 lbs = 3711 for the car without the battery
add back i the new "smaller" battery @ 1041 lbs

3711 + 1041 lbs = 4752 lbs vs. 5100 lbs

now the Taycan is pretty impressive 4 door sedan, picture how much more impressive it would be 4752 lbs _IF_ 201 miles is enough range. That's only 500 lbs more weight than a Panamera 4S and 200 hp more…the performance would be outstanding.

so a 201 mile Taycan @ Model 3 efficiencys would be nearly 400 lbs lighter and carry with it all the benefits of what 400 lbs of less weight carries.

 

Leaving other competitors out and using only Porsche's own progress, from their first car with battery to now,

The 918's battery weights 298lbs with a 6.8kWh capacity, for a density of 22.82Wh per lb.

5 years later with the Taycan, it's 1,389lbs with a 93.4kWh capacity, for a density of 67.24 Wh per lb.

That's a 3x improvement in 5 years.

Don't have the Tesla's number handy but they are denser still, but if we project that kind of improvement forward, we all will be in for a treat for the efficiency of future EV.