Like a Bolt
The Taycan is setting new standards for electrically powered sports cars: innovative, state-of-the-art technology, trimmed for the everyday needs of drivers. One particular highlight is the range management functions developed by Porsche Engineering.
With the Taycan, Porsche is ushering in a new, all-electric era. And how! A touch of the accelerator pedal uncorks the astonishing power of two electric motors on the axles. An overboost output of up to 560 kW (761 hp) propels the Taycan Turbo S as if it were shot like an arrow. With only minimal sound, it goes from 0 to 100 kilometers per hour in just 2.8 seconds and hits 200 kilometers per hour in 9.8 seconds before finally topping out at 260 kilometers per hour. No question: both the Taycan Turbo S and the up to 500 kW (680 hp) strong Taycan Turbo are thoroughbred Porsche sports cars, with all the virtues that have been associated with their combustion engine relatives for decades. Yet the four-door and four-seat coupé is also decidedly different from all other Porsche models. The vehicle is designed from the ground up as an all-electric sports car; its engineers took advantage of every freedom to extract the maximum technical potential from the vehicle concept.
The integrated chassis control analyzes and synchronizes all chassis systems in real time, from the air suspension to the electromechanical anti-roll stabilization. When the car brakes, it’s usually by way of the two electric motors and without activating the wheel brakes — a feat made possible by the high recuperation capacity of up to 265 kilowatts.
Best aerodynamics of any Porsche model
The just five-meter-long and two-meter-wide Taycan owes its outstanding handling not least to the battery, which packs 93.4 kilowatt-hours of energy and weighs in at roughly 630 kilograms, including frame and cooling. The skateboard, as it is known, features indentations in the back-seat floor — “foot garages” for the passengers in the rear. This allows them to ride in comfort in spite of the Taycan’s typical Porsche silhouette with a sloping rear roofline. The aerodynamic design contributes to the Taycan’s cd value of 0.22, the best figure posted by any current Porsche model — which lowers the fuel consumption and increases the range.
For many drivers, these are the decisive criteria when buying an electric car. Measured with the WLTP method, the Taycan Turbo has a range of up to 450 kilometers, and the Turbo S up to 412 kilometers. The two cars are the first series vehicles to use a system voltage of 800 volts rather than the usual 400 volts. That significantly reduces charging times: at the maximum charging capacity at a DC fast charging station, the batteries can be charged from five percent to up to 80 percent within 22.5 minutes; just about five minutes of charging time is good for roughly 100 kilometers of driving. Connected to an AC wall box with eleven kilowatts at home, the 80% charge takes around six hours.
The range is highly impacted by the individual driving style of the driver and the selection of one of the four driving modes of the Taycan. They provide special settings to make optimal use of the capabilities of the powertrain. For an especially agile and dynamic drive, Sport or even Sport Plus are the right choice. For those seeking maximum range, the Normal or Range settings are preferable.
All this extends the trip, but even here the battery is eventually spent. And it’s like in motor racing: a welltimed pit stop is key, and no one wants to run out of juice mid-race. To ensure that doesn’t happen, Porsche introduced three clever functions with the Taycan that will make long-distance drives with an electric vehicle considerably more convenient. One is the range calculation, which has been in development at Porsche Engineering since 2012.
“As soon as the driver enters a destination, an intelligent algorithm precisely calculates the range based on knowledge of the route ahead, the current traffic situation, and other environmental factors,” — Holger Meister, Development Engineer at Porsche Engineering.
The system learns kilometer by kilometer
The range calculation also analyzes data from the vehicle. What is the preferred driving speed? What’s the setting of the air-conditioning system? The system keeps learning with each additional kilometer and estimates the range — in real time: a traffic jam changes the estimated arrival time, as does a swift trip in the passing lane. This approach is also used by the Charging Planner, the second new function in the Taycan. As part of the navigation function, the software plans charging stops to ensure that the Taycan still has an adequate minimum range at the destination.
To keep the charging stops as short as possible, the Charging Planner prefers High Performance Chargers (HPC), which offer a charging capacity of 350 kilowatts. To charge there with maximum performance, the battery is pre-conditioned to the optimal temperature.
The functional scope of the Charging Planner can be augmented with the optional Porsche Intelligent
Range Manager (PIRM), the third new Taycan function. Through the optimal selection of system parameters, the travel time in drive mode Range can be substantially shortened compared to the route in other driving modes. To achieve this, the charging stops, the speed profile, and air-conditioning settings are optimized. Porsche Engineering has been developing the range management functions with the aid of a virtual Taycan since 2015.
The engineers at Porsche Engineering are meanwhile already at work on a new generation of range management. “We will pay very close attention when we get some initial feedback from the Taycan customers and optimize accordingly,” says Meister. And because the range calculation function developed by Porsche will be used throughout the entire VW Group across all drive types, the team will be bringing its expertise to future Porsche and VW Group models as well. To borrow an old notion: the better is the enemy of the good.
This article was first published in Issue 2/2019 of the Porsche Engineering Magazine. Written by Hans Oberländer, Contributors: Holger Meister, Dr.-Ing. Bernd Propfe, Volker Watteroth.
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