Test drive - 911 and Taycan

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Ian.g
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Post by Ian.g »

Having been wondering about a 911 I recently took one for a test drive. Having heard good things about the Taycan and possible tax breaks with an EV I arranged to drive one of these as well. My 19 year old son insisted on coming along.

The 911 Carerra 4S was up first and it is fair to say my son had already made up his mind that I needed one and there probably wasn't much point in driving the Taycan. So we were shown round the car and off we went. It was awesome! Fantastic car. A bit bumpy over any defects in the road, but nothing like a Cayman. A bit noisy when accelerating but again, nothing intrusive or annoying like the Cayman. Sharp handling, good power delivery. All in all, a great drive. My son was absolutely sold on it and so was I - my thinking was that the Taycan would have to be pretty amazing to better it.

Having returned the 911 we then went out in a Taycan 4S. After a few minutes getting lost around a housing estate we found an open road. Oh my goodness! The power delivery is something else. I knew what was meant by instant torque, but had never experienced it like this before. After 10 minutes my son asked me what I thought. Smoother, quite, comfortable, refined but goes like a rocket when you want it to. Yes he said. It's better than the 911. You have to get one of these. Although that was my thinking, I didn't really expect him to be won over quite so quickly. We took it home and I think that my wife even liked it.

A few things that aren't quite ideal I suppose - it is a huge car. Very wide and probably not easy to find large enough spaces in the UK. Some slightly strange things like having to go into the PCM to change the direction of the air coming out of the vents. Anyway, it is quite clearly an amazing car - so an order has been placed. Hopefully it will appear by the end of the year.

Obviously they are very different cars and the question for me was which one I might want to live with on a daily basis. The 911 would probably be better for track days, but I don't do that and as long as the whole "electric thing" works out OK then I think the Taycan is probably a better day to day road car - at least for what I want.

My Macan SD will therefore be up for sale. I will post on the Sales site nearer the time. But if anyone is interested it will probably have just under 40k miles by then, serviced in March with no issues and extended warranty until March 2022.

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Nuclear Nick
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Post by Nuclear Nick »

I test drove the Taycan 4S Cross Turismo over 24 hrs a few weeks ago. I agree, fantastic car and loved it. I'd have one like a shot, but wife wasn't persuaded as she says too similar to our 911.

What wasn't great was our experience of trying to get it topped with juice while we were out. As others have said, the charging network has many years to go yet before it gets anywhere near acceptable. And as more electric cars hit the road it's going to get worse. Expect long waits for chargers, ultra slow charging rates, charger rage and broken chargers. You may be able to get away with 90% of your usage charging at home but when away on longer trips there will be frustration and anxiety for some time to come. I would still need to have the 911 for the long trips.
Nick

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Deleted User 4436

Post by Deleted User 4436 »

This is a very interesting topic. I have test driven a couple of electric cars (Tesla Model 3 perfomrance; Audi Q4 Etron). The Tesla is insanely fast. I used to have an 4.7L V8 Aston Martin Vantage, and the Tesla made it feel like a milk float (no pun intended). The Audi was just terrible. Felt really cheap and was stunningly slow.

After about 6 months of research on electric cars I finally put down a deposit on a Macan S. I genuinely feel the UK isn't ready for electric cars yet no matter how good they are. The infrastructure just doesn't exist. And as more and more people buy them that is only going to get worse. When a car company tells you you can recharge to 80% in an hour, that really doesn't help if the only charging station in miles has 3 people waiting in front of you. Then your re-charge takes 4 hrs. The infrastructure will take years, possibly decades, to catch up.

There was an interesting story about a couple from Kent that bought a Taycan and drove something like 130 miles and it took them 9 hrs due to charging woes (chargers being broken, or full or just not available). It even made it on to the NBC news in the US. It should be on Google somewhere.

UPDATE:
Found the story I was referring to:
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2020/ ... ng-network

Then there are all the youtube video where the vloggers try to convince you that electric in every day use is fine, but end up convincing you that you need to have a degree in maths to work out the route you need to take to find charges, the speed you need to drive to maintain charge, the optimum temperature the car needs to be at etc etc.

There is no doubt non-ICE cars are coming and will eventually dominate but at the moment I think its to big a risk for an every-day driver. If the Taycan is a weekend car then absolutely go for it.

I have one more, slightly strange, issue with electric cars. Every one I have driven has given me motion sickness! No idea why, I haven't got car sick since I was a small boy, but electric cars make me feel sick within a few miles.

Anyway, I think this could spark some very interesting responses.
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Ian.g
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Post by Ian.g »

Worrying posts... but the wife still has a Land Rover. So if driving >100 miles is too much trouble, we will just have to take the tractor. I think there will need to be a degree of planning and adjustment, but I hope the range is sufficient for me that it won't be too much of a problem. If I was driving long distances every week then obviously it would not be feasible. But for my driving and the places I am likely to go, I think it will work out OK. I accept it is a bit of a gamble - if it doesn't work out then maybe I will have to change it until the charging structure improves. I doubt the early depreciation will be bad as there is a bit of a wait for them. And buying through a company reduces the costs. Fingers crossed.
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Post by Deleted User 4436 »

i think you’ve hit the nail on the head there, it completely depends on how much you drive. if you don’t often drive far or have an alternative for when you do then the range thing isn’t an issue, and its a fantastic looking car inside and out.
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Ian.g
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Post by Ian.g »

I saw the story in the Guardian before and it is a concern. However I am hoping there will be enough fast chargers for the relatively infrequent longer trips that I take. I think the infrastructure is going to improve quite quickly however as you say, this benefit will be offset by increased take up of EVs (like me!) I suspect that most of the time it will be fine and that 95% of the time I will be able to charge from home. I suspect that I will end up with the odd nightmare, but I hopefully not too bad or too often.
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Post by Deleted User 4436 »

i have seen far more stories about how people have moved to electric and love it than i have those who have moved and hate it. For me though the time isn’t quite right, and I need a new car by the end of the year. I would have bought a Tesla ( and its still a possibility if Porsche can’t get me a car this year ) if it weren’t for the build quality issues and the lack of chargers. The long range Tesla has a sensible range (360 miles claimed, about 250 in the real world ) and is faster than most Porsche’s ( with the added boost option, a software upgrade, it does 0-60 in 3.7 seconds ) but feels a bit like sitting in a Californian hippy retreat which isn’t really me. They are also pig-ugly from the front.
Tracky
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Post by Tracky »

Too early for full electric unless tesla with their charging network

I was happy to have a £30k electric car (twice!) on the basis it wasn’t going to be my only car but I couldn’t bear spending £100k+ on a car that I couldn’t take on a tour across Europe !
On order

GT4 RS

Current

2019 992 S
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neilj007
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Post by neilj007 »

I'm waiting for my Taycan 4 CT to arrive - hopefully late August.
Re charging, I think we all look for confirmation bias.
So, consequently, all I see is the rapid rollout of chargers - Rugby services with 12 high speed with 50 more motorway service stations to follow; Braintree's first all electric forecourt; Gridserve updating all the Motorway Ecotricity chargers over this summer; Porsche developing their destination network and dealership high speed chargers

The 280 range is perfectly adequate for my every day needs, with my home charger. My two regular long journeys to York and Kent...well, I could get one way and use a three pin to charge for the couple of days we're there if it was a necessity

However, not sure how I'd feel about a round trip to Scotland....I need a few thousand miles under my belt to get confident...
Macan
Taycan Turbo
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Post by Deleted User 4436 »

neilj007 wrote: Wed Jul 21, 2021 2:42 pm I'm waiting for my Taycan 4 CT to arrive - hopefully late August.
Re charging, I think we all look for confirmation bias.
So, consequently, all I see is the rapid rollout of chargers - Rugby services with 12 high speed with 50 more motorway service stations to follow; Braintree's first all electric forecourt; Gridserve updating all the Motorway Ecotricity chargers over this summer; Porsche developing their destination network and dealership high speed chargers

The 280 range is perfectly adequate for my every day needs, with my home charger. My two regular long journeys to York and Kent...well, I could get one way and use a three pin to charge for the couple of days we're there if it was a necessity

However, not sure how I'd feel about a round trip to Scotland....I need a few thousand miles under my belt to get confident...
Is 280 the published range? If so it will likely be around 200-210 in the real world and about 15-20% less than that in the winter (electric cars don't like cold weather). The other issue is definitely the chargers. I live in West Sussex, so pretty heavily populated. I can find a petrol station in minutes. There are very few charging points around here and an increasing number of electric cars. So even if you find one that may not be the end of your problems. You need to find an empty one, or you could be waiting several hours before you can use it. You also need to find one that some numpty in a white van hasn't parked in front of.

I have looked into this long and hard, and had definitely decided to go electric....... before I put the deposit on the Macan S. I was very much ready to go electric, but there are just too many hurdles for me (as it would be my only car). I have absolutely no doubt ICE is on its last legs (certainly in the UK and Europe, not so sure in the US) but electric needs to mature a bit more before I'll make the move. I wont consider anything with a real world range of less than 300-350 miles, and that excludes everything other than Tesla, and their systems are too intrusive, they don't know how to screw cars together and they feel like a California hippy commune inside.

Hopefully Porsche will do well developing their clean bi-fuel petrol replacement and we can all keep our ICE cars and not get moaned at to much by the environmentalists.
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