- Hey everybody it's Sean, and I'm in beautiful
Niagara Falls, because Porsche is about to unveil its first
electric car.
Let's go check it out.
Four years after first teasing that it was going to get into
electric cars, Porsche has finally unveiled its first
production E.V. And I'm standing in front of it right now.
It's the Porsche Taycan.
Taycan will be Porsche's first all electric car
when it hits the road later this year.
And Porsche actually announced two versions of the car
today, the Taycan Turbo and the Taycan Turbo S.
Now, make no mistake, these are not going to be
electric cars for the masses.
They start at $150,000
and the Taycan Turbo S, will cost $185,000.
What that means in terms of the actual product itself is,
you have a very high-end Porsche
that just happens to be electric.
One that has all the performance that you come to expect
from a Porsche product.
And something that has all the nice luxury touches
that the automaker is really known for.
On the performance side the Porsche Taycan
is going to be able to compete with most cars on the road,
and it will even hang with some supercars.
And it's just about as fast as some of Tesla's
most expensive models.
Taycan Turbo will go from 0-60 in 3 seconds flat,
and the Taycan Turbo S will go from 0-60 in 2.6 seconds
flat.
Both versions of the car will have about 616 horsepower
on offer it, pretty much anytime,
but in launch control mode the Taycan Turbo will have
670 horsepower available.
While the Taycan Turbo S will have 750 horsepower available.
They are drawing all of this energy from a
93 kilowatt hour battery that weighs about 1300 pounds.
The car itself, weighs about 5100 pounds overall.
So it is a very heavy car.
Almost as heavy as Tesla's Model X.
Now that battery pack will give both cars a range
of about 450 kilometers, or about 280 miles.
This is based off the European WLTP standard though,
and Porsche didn't release an EPA estimated range
for the car yet.
On the interior, the car is full of touch screens.
There is a curved, boomerang-style screen
behind the steering wheel that has touch sensitive panels
on both little edges of the boomerang shape.
There is a touch screen panel in the middle of the car
where you would normally expect to see one,
that helps to control all the media settings,
some of the battery settings.
There is another optional touch screen panel
in the passenger seat that you can get if you want
to pay a little bit more money.
Ah making that 3 screens across the dashboard.
And then there is a touch sensitive panel
in the center console.
Which is pretty similar to what you would find
in something like the Porsche Panamera.
Uh, its a little bit more modernized,
there aren't as many physical buttons.
There is also another optional touch sensitive panel
in the back seat, if you want to allow rear seat passengers
to control their climate settings.
So, all told, we are talking 5 different touch sensitive
panels or screens in this car.
It's a pretty futuristic look for something like Porsche.
We knew a lot about the Taycan coming in to this event.
But what's exciting to me about the Taycan
is it's kind of a sign that we're exiting
that initial era of electric cars where,
automakers are trying really hard to make you know
that its electric and throwing, blue accents on everything
and making the cars look like something out of the Jetsons.
This just looks like any other Porsche,
like kinda like a Panamera, kinda like Carrera.
This is just the start of what Porsche
trying to do with electric cars.
It's definitely going to get better from here.
Hopefully get more affordable.
And, hopefully for the rest of us,
what Porsche learns on the Taycan becomes information
and learnings that wind up showing up on other Volkswagen
cars, that are more affordable.
Volkswagen is going to be putting out dozens and dozens
of cars. They've invested billions of dollars into
electric vehicles in the coming years.
And so, it may take awhile,
but one day you may be able
to buy something that doesn't cost $150,000.
That has a taste of what the Taycan Turbo
and the Taycan Turbo S are going to start offering
consumers pretty soon.