DAN EDMUNDS: Here it is at last--
the new Porsche Taycan.
We've been waiting for this for months,
and now we finally get to see what it looks
like without any camouflage.
Let's take a closer look.
So this is really cool.
It's a four door sports car.
It's a little bit smaller than a Panamera--
about an inch and 1/2 shorter, about 3 and 1/2 inches less
long, and over an inch wider--
so the proportions are really attractive and really pleasing.
And what's really neat about this car--
it's got two motors, one in the front and one in the rear.
And combined, the Taycan Turbo-- which
is what we're looking at here-- makes 616 horsepower.
The Taycan Turbo S, which we haven't seen yet--
it makes 750 horsepower.
So yeah, that's moving.
What that means on the track is this car
can go from zero to 60 in three seconds.
The Turbo S can do it in 2.6.
If I know Porsche, there'll be more variants to come.
You just know that, right?
You can laugh if you want about the use of the word turbo,
because you don't turbo charge an electric motor.
But we can go beyond that, because this thing has
the performance befitting the turbo badge.
So I'm not going to argue with them.
And how they do that is, the two electric motors--
they're set up to where the one in the rear
is about twice as powerful as the one in the front.
Not, quite but pretty close.
The front motor is a coaxial design,
which means the drive shaft that goes from left to right
goes through the motor itself, and that saves space.
It's also really cool.
In the back they don't do that because of other packaging
considerations.
But what's going on in the back is there's a two speed
transmission.
There isn't another electric car that does that right now.
What that allows is a really quick 0
to 60 time of 2.6 seconds in the case of the Turbo S,
but also a top speed of 162 miles an hour.
And also really good efficiency on the highway, because you can
be in more of a cruising gear.
And in fact, if you put this vehicle in its range mode--
which is its eco mode--
it actually drives with the rear in second gear all the time.
Now, you may think, wait a minute,
the two ends are in different gears?
Well, remember, this is an electric car.
There's no drive shaft between the front and the rear.
They can do anything they want and it won't matter.
All that matters is it generates turbo performance.
Of course, being an electric Car,
this has a huge battery underneath the floor--
in this case it's 93.4 kilowatt hours, which
is the electric equivalent of gallons.
And so what that means in terms of range we don't yet know,
but I'm thinking it's going to be between 250 and 300 miles.
But we'll have to wait and see.
The battery's position under the floor
gives this vehicle the lowest center
of gravity of any Porsche made.
And it's also really slippery because it doesn't need
a lot of radiator openings.
It's coefficient of drag is 0.22,
which is the best of any Porsche on the road today.
So what's really, really interesting
about this car is the battery, the electric motors,
the inverters, all that stuff.
It's built around an 800 volt standard, which
is about double what most other electric cars are built around.
And what that means is that the cabling doesn't
have to be as fat or heavy, and it also charges really quickly.
Porsche says that you can fill this battery using a DC
fast charger from 5% to 80% in 22 and 1/2 minutes.
And the charges required to do that-- they already exist.
Electrify America is starting to build out a network of chargers
from coast to coast.
They're not done yet, but I've been to a couple of them,
and some of them are rated at 350 kilowatts.
This car charges at 270 kilowatts, which is fantastic.
But what that means is the chargers, they're going in.
And you'll be able to drive from LA to New York in a year,
maybe less.
But at home you can charge it using 240 and, what's
really cool is there's a charge door on each side
of the car for that.
And it's got a 9.6 kilowatt onboard charger,
which means if you have a 240 volt charger at home,
you can fill it in 11 or 12 hours.
And that's fine, because really nobody starts from empty.
And if you're asleep, you'll be full in the morning.
So all good there.
I just can't wait to drive it, because this car has
all kinds of performance oriented options
that you'll find on any other Porsche.
It's got PDCC adaptive stabilizer bars,
PASM adaptive dampers, there's huge breaks with 10 piston
calipers, and you can get carbon ceramic disks as an option.
Not that you'll ever need those, because this
vehicle's regenerative braking capacity--
that's the magnetic braking that the electric motors can do--
is 0.39 g's maximum, which is double of the electric cars
we've measured at our test track.
And that's pretty amazing, because that means 90% to 95%
of the stops you'll ever make will be magnetic.
You'll push on the brake pedal, because Porsche
thinks that's the only way to apply breaks,
because this car's built for people who like to drive--
but still, you're going to get magnetic braking.
And the pads-- they say you have to change them at six years
just because they might corrode before they wear out.
This is my first time sitting in the new Taycan,
and I got to say, it looks modern and familiar
at the same time.
Familiar because it's got these horizontal lines
that a lot of Porsches have, a cockpit that goes door to door,
this prominent center console.
What's different is it's all screens.
The big curved screen in front of me
doesn't have any real instruments,
they're all virtual, and you can customize
them using the buttons on the steering wheel here.
The controls for the lights and the trash control
are touch panels out on the edges.
There's some real controls for the windows
and for the mirrors, which is nice
because burying those in a touch screen is a real bad idea.
But what we've got here is a infotainment screen,
but there's also another one for the passenger.
This is an option, but the passenger
can be a true co-pilot.
They can actually adjust the navigation or the music,
and then once they've made a decision
they can port it over to the main screen.
And you can set it up to where the map completely
dominates this display right in front of the driver.
So this is a really useful cockpit.
These are not just gadgets.
And then here, this is where you control the climate.
You can set your temperature, and your modes,
and all of that.
But also there's a touch pad here
that allows you to make screen selections up here.
But also, if you notice these vents--
they don't have any grills that move.
That all happens deep in the dashboard,
and you can use mode here to select
dispersed or concentrated, or you can drag your finger around
to aim them right at your face if you like that, or your hands
if you like that.
So this is a really useful use of touch screens,
and they're kind of spread around the cabin
for a whole bunch of different purposes.
And at the end of the day though, this
is also very driver focused.
None of this takes a lot of attention
away from the task of driving.
The things you need to do as a driver
are right here at the outside edges of the steering wheel.
And what you need to look at is straight ahead.
So yeah, this is a driver focused electric car.
The first impression I have of the Taycan
is this looks, and feels, and even smells like a Porsche.
There is a quality to the way it's put together--
a cohesiveness to the design, a familiarity about it
in terms of the main themes.
But the details in the screens and the way the menus are
set up are pure modern EV.
So it's a really nice blending of the two.
You don't feel like they stumbled onto something.
They really thought about what it
is to be a Porsche in the terms of an electric car,
and they've really nailed it.
Remember, I'm 6 foot 2 and, I fit pretty well back here.
Part of the reason is this is a glass roof.
All US versions of the Taycan will have this glass roof.
There's not even a bar across the middle
here between the door pillars, because the structure
is strong enough to withstand all the side impacts
and pass all those tests without a bar connecting the left
and right across the top.
So this is really open.
The Taycan on has a 911 styled roof.
It's got this really nice, fastback shape,
and the way they do that is really interesting.
You remember, there's a battery pack under the floor,
but what they've done is they've omitted cells
right here where your feet go.
And they call that the foot garage.
So this is actually the floor of the car
that's close to the ground--
most of the batteries are at this level.
And so they've omitted batteries right there so
that they can put the rear seat passengers down low,
give them the nice sports car feel,
and allow for the nice fastback roof that
defines a Porsche shape.
And adding glass and getting rid of the little headliner
thickness helps, too.
So there's actually decent headroom back here.
They say that this particular glass is treated
so that 100% of UV is blocked.
Obviously we're indoors right now,
I don't know how that's going to play out.
But that sounds really good.
One of the things about this interior
is we've got leather seats in this particular model,
but you can get a leather free option if you want.
And that's independent of any kind of trim level.
That's a stand alone option depending
on how you want your interior to be built,
so that's really neat.
Back here there's more of these vents
that have the same type of grills
that you adjust electronically.
And if you get the quad zone air conditioning,
there's another screen back here-- this is the fifth one--
that allows the rear seat passengers to make adjustments.
This car technically seats five.
You can see there's another seat belt right here,
but there's also kind of a prominent hump here.
So I don't know who would want to sit here--
probably a small child.
Maybe you could use this buckle to install a child seat.
But certainly you can install child seats
on the outside really easily.
And this rear seat-- they also fall down
to expand the trunk volume.
And they fold pretty flat with the surface in the back.
We don't know the actual volume of this trunk
in numerical fashion, but it's actually a good size.
And it's really easy to open.
This is a low lift over, and it goes way back in there.
And of course, you can fold the seats down if you need to.
Around front we have another trunk.
And it's not very big, but you could put a suitcase in here.
Just one, probably, but certainly there's
room in the front for some more stuff.
Cool thing about the Taycan's charging
is you can do it from either side.
Here on the driver's side you just wipe your finger
underneath there--
this is the European charge port--
but this is how you'd plug-in at home.
When you're done just do that and it closes up again.
And then we go to the other side--
we have the DC fast charge.
You can charge normally here, but if you're
going to do fast charging you want to set up on this side.
Just wipe here, it opens up.
There's an icebreaker function in case
that's iced over in the winter.
And then, of course the DC fast pins
are underneath this little flap.
So that's it.
This is the new Porsche Taycan.
And I can't tell you, this thing really
lived up to my expectations.
It really looks the part.
And I'll let you in on a little secret--
a couple of weeks ago I got to ride in a prototype on a closed
course.
And let me tell you, this is not just
about going fast in a straight line.
This is a Porsche.
It can corner, it can break, it can thrill you
in four dimensions-- the fourth dimension being time.
This powertrain doesn't get hot.
It will launch over and over again.
It'll do lap after lap.
This is not just a parlor trick, this is a Porsche.