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The Porsche Taycan's Two-Speed Gearbox

wired.com

151–160 of 219 posts

Re: The Porsche Taycan's Two-Speed Gearbox

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I (lol)ed because "turbo" and "turbo-s" are a naming convention from their conventional cars that is fairly non-sensical on an electric car given that they don't have turbochargers. Eg. Macan Of course, the two non-turbo Macan models above both turbochargers so the moniker really just means "the fastest model" in Porsche speak.

> that is fairly non-sensical on an electric car given that they don't have turbochargers Lots of things have had "turbo" terminology over the years. - PCs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo_button or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Turbo_Boost - Video games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighter_II_Turbo%3A_Hyp... - Folk music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbo-folk

In areas where it didn't already mean a very specific feature. If I bought a sound card and it had "turbo boost" I would laugh pretty hard too! And if Intel started selling 'turbo' processors that couldn't turbo, that might even be bad enough to get lawsuits...

Re: The Porsche Taycan's Two-Speed Gearbox

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do it quite often, but it really depends on location I think. In more rural locations you'll commonly have a 90 degree turn onto a 60-70mph road. I probably wouldn't if it were 3s 0-60 though.

The tire wear for repeated 3s 0-60 must be enormous.

With modern traction control and AWD not really

Re: The Porsche Taycan's Two-Speed Gearbox

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only reason to push 0-60 times is for drag-racing really. Wat? Most people care about accelerating from a standstill to the average legal speed limits. 0-60 captures that perfectly. It's incredibly relevant to the general public's driving patterns.

People rarely do a full power 0-60 with a car that can do it under 5 seconds. More likely they go from 30-60 or similar.

I drive a supercharged sports car that does 0-60 in 2.9 and do it every couple of days on a rural road near me, adrenaline is great! This is definitely an outlier though.. I get the impression from reading the forum for my car that most people don't push it near its limit regularly.

Re: The Porsche Taycan's Two-Speed Gearbox

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a car does it silently without being overtly antisocial they do it far more often.

Leaving all the other cars next to you in the dust is quite antisocial behavior actually. For the most part, I want to accelerate with everyone else when that green light goes off (except for Trucks: I wanna leave Trucks in the dust and get away from them ASAP). The 30mph to 60mph acceleration of off-ramp into freeway cruising speed however, is pretty important. A lot of things are going on when I merge onto a freewa…

The word anti-social has a serious clinical psychological definition I'm not sure if that's what you intended mean.

I understand it has a casual use like the word "theory" does, but this one used casually seems more unfortunate given the nasty nature of the clinical definition.

Sometimes engineers are referred to as a geek, while the next moment referred to also as "anti-social" (remember before billionaires not as many people thought it was acceptable?). Who knows, as a group quirky maybe? but it seems unsubstantiated to suggest murderers are overrepresented in the population.

Re: The Porsche Taycan's Two-Speed Gearbox

#155
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I (lol)ed because "turbo" and "turbo-s" are a naming convention from their conventional cars that is fairly non-sensical on an electric car given that they don't have turbochargers. Eg. Macan Of course, the two non-turbo Macan models above both turbochargers so the moniker really just means "the fastest model" in Porsche speak.

The combustion non-turbo 911s also have turbochargers, so yes, long time marketing label, not feature description.

That’s more a marketing thing and emissions driving them to use small turbo 4 cylinders. Up until 2-3 years ago the bae 911 was naturally aspirated

Re: The Porsche Taycan's Two-Speed Gearbox

#156

Currently there is no reason to put transmissions into EV's. More money should be put into the improvement of electric motors and battery tech. People care about range and reliability. While acceleration is awesome, Tesla can already achieve sub 2.5s 0-60 which is more than most anyone can handle. Adding a transmission to an EV just adds one more thing to fail and replace fluid every few years.

Are saying that Porsche--which is spending billions of dollars on the Taycan and its transmission--is doing this for no good reason? "People care about range and reliability."--Certainly some, perhaps most people, do. And Tesla serves that market very well. But that isn't Porsche's market. Porsche's target market cares a lot about handling, and performance in track-like conditions.

> Are saying that Porsche--which is spending billions of dollars on the Taycan and its transmission--is doing this for no good reason?

Yes, they are. They are saying that "better on a track" is a bad reason, and "it makes more money" is a bad reason.

That is not a claim that Porsche is incorrectly engineering to reach their goal, or doing anything unprofitable.

It's an opinion.

Re: The Porsche Taycan's Two-Speed Gearbox

#157
What a load of bullshit. The article is making a merit out of a clutch to cover for their failing. I had to stop reading after ridiculous statements like “that 5 percent range improvement can save significant money as battery capacity” - riiiight it can save ... 5%. I’d rather pay more for the battery and save of the maintenance down the road. Serious Wired, how much did they pay you for this?

Re: The Porsche Taycan's Two-Speed Gearbox

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Since when is the priority to not offend the drivers around you? Caring about others is pretty much rule #1 about living in a polite society. People who don't care about others are called sociopaths, literally anti-social behavior. Prioritizing safety on the streets, making sure you send clear signals with your actions, etc. etc. Its all part of driving and being a good citizen on the road. Part of that is absolute…

if you accelerate quickly to the legal limit and others take it as an invitation to drive recklessly, that sounds an awful lot like their own problem. I agree with your other comments about driving in traffic. avoiding large speed differentials when you are surrounded by other cars is very much your responsibility.

> avoiding large speed differentials

That would be (or should be) the entire point of a posted speed limit, go with the flow. There should also be a lower speed limit.

On roads I would bet many crashes occur due to the difference in speed between vehicles. Speeding motorcycles, slow trucks, fast sports cars, all of which would be around vehicles of moderate speed.

The reaction time for the faster vehicle driver is different than the the drivers other slow vehicles. Also consider not all drivers have the same experience. Those differences are dangerous.

Re: The Porsche Taycan's Two-Speed Gearbox

#159
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I'll just hop in here and lay out the spoiler. There is a major performance difference in the Taycan, it's endurance, and it's highly likely this transmission is a key element to achieving it. For those that don't know, Tesla's cars can not keep their maximum performance up for a very long time. The battery gets hot and lowers power output until it cools back down. The Taycan, while not having as impressive max s…

Another reason the Taycan can output near maximum power for a much extended time period is it operates at 800v vs 650v as compared to the Tesla.

Higher voltage alone does not magically give you longer sustained maximum power.

Re: The Porsche Taycan's Two-Speed Gearbox

#160
post #136

The level of hubris here is pretty high. "No reason"? "No performance benefit"? Porsche is spending billions of dollars to bring a very high performance track-focused sports-sedan to the market. Hundreds of extremely good engineers are getting paid millions of dollars to figure this problem out. I'm sure the transmission is a giant set of engineering tradeoffs (what project isn't), and maybe it won't work out and wil…

So, I'll just hop in here and lay out the spoiler. There is a major performance difference in the Taycan, it's endurance, and it's highly likely this transmission is a key element to achieving it. For those that don't know, Tesla's cars can not keep their maximum performance up for a very long time. The battery gets hot and lowers power output until it cools back down. The Taycan, while not having as impressive max s…

This is more of a function of battery chemistry on the S/X - the Model 3 does not have the same power restriction under load.
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