The Porsche Taycan has a lot of expectation on it. First
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MotorTranscript
00:00 (engine revving)
00:02 Hey, Chris Walton with Motor Trend,
00:09 here today with the 2020 Porsche Taycan Turbo S.
00:13 It's vying to be the top dog electric vehicle on the planet.
00:18 We're gonna do some tests on it today,
00:19 then we'll hand it over to Kim
00:20 and he'll take it over to the figure eight
00:22 and see what kind of numbers he can generate over there.
00:24 So, let's check it out.
00:26 (engine revving)
00:29 (upbeat music)
00:31 The reason the Taycan is so important,
00:41 Porsche's been working on it for years
00:43 and they've made some decisions about how it operates
00:45 versus the obvious comparison, the Tesla Model S.
00:49 It launched unlike any other car I've ever driven.
00:52 It leaps off the line,
00:53 it feels like it's about to do a burnout
00:55 all the way through 40 miles an hour.
00:58 It's very violent.
00:59 Then it hits 60 miles an hour,
01:05 you can feel that second gear kick in
01:07 and then it just starts all over again.
01:08 It just pulls and pulls and pulls
01:10 all the way to the end of the quarter mile,
01:11 which was over 130 miles an hour in the quarter mile.
01:14 It's thrilling, it's absolutely thrilling.
01:23 The brake pedal feel is different from a Porsche.
01:27 There's a lot more travel to it,
01:30 but the neat thing about it is,
01:31 the switch from regenerative braking to friction braking
01:35 is absolutely seamless.
01:36 And you can't tell when one system is working
01:39 and the other one's not.
01:40 It's always the same brake pedal feel.
01:42 So, it's really neat in that way.
01:44 So, here we are in the Taycan.
01:51 The car feels very heavy,
01:53 so I'm braking a little bit early.
01:54 It's also going very fast.
01:56 And then the corner is fundamentally understeering,
01:58 but you can definitely power out of them,
02:00 which I'll do now.
02:01 So, something that an electric car like this can do,
02:11 it has dual motors, one on the front and one on the rear.
02:14 In this kind of performance driving,
02:16 they're both active the entire time.
02:18 But what they can do is synchronize
02:22 and interact with each other.
02:23 So, the amount of power going to each axle
02:26 can be modulated very, very carefully and accurately.
02:31 So, it's very much under control.
02:32 So, there's a lot of software going on here.
02:34 It's not one motor sending power to all four corners.
02:38 There's two motors,
02:39 and they need to be talking to each other
02:41 and understanding each other the entire time.
02:43 It's also something that was happening
02:46 in terms of a wheel slip on the drag strip,
02:49 as well as here, exiting these corners,
02:51 to have just the right amount.
02:53 So, you want a little bit of wheel slip
02:55 to get maximum grip,
02:56 but an electric car, electric motor,
02:57 can react so fast that it can modulate that
03:00 and get it exactly right,
03:02 which is something that's very hard
03:03 for an internal combustion motor to react quick enough.
03:06 There's so much inertia and all that in the drive train,
03:09 where here, the electricity can just go on and off
03:12 and just do it brilliantly.
03:14 So, the ability to control a car with software
03:17 and the lightning speed of electric motors
03:19 is simply unmatched.
03:21 (upbeat music)
03:23 So, there it is.
03:31 You got your 750 horsepower Porsche Taycan Turbo S.
03:35 We can't wait to put it up against the latest version
03:37 of the Model S, which is said to have 735 horsepower.
03:41 We'll just have to wait and see.
03:43 (upbeat music)
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