I agree with you on the rest of the electric cars but somehow the BMW looks decent to me in that picture. It looks longer than the three stubby looking cars you list below it. Its ugly enough to be endearing in a way.
That picture flatters the i3 by quite a bit. It’s even more “endearing” in person.
True, it doesn’t catch the nose, which is the most “endearing” part of the i3.
All perfectly reasonable reasons.
I’m still a bit agog at all the sporty/performance characteristics you care about and then getting a hybrid, though. Why spend the extra money?
Mind you, I think we’re coming from totally different worlds. Mine is: A car is a utility vehicle that gets me from point A to B reliably. As far as acceleration goes, I want it to be able to get me out of the way of something. For cornering, I want it to not tip over if I have to get out of the way of something and also to get me out of the way of something. Other than that I want all wheel drive, because the hill before my house is a pain in the ass in the first/last snow of winter season when there’s 6 inches of snow and it’s all slush.
Glad you’re enjoying it, though! :)
The decision tree there is reversed. I started exploring the idea of driving an electric car, and the Panamera S e Hybrid was the electric car that was most acceptable to me. I could say that I wasn’t spending a lot of extra money, since the price difference between a Panamera S and a Panamera S e Hybrid is 3%, but I didn’t arrive here by looking at Panameras. I arrived here by looking for the nicest car that had a pure-electric driving mode.
Truth be told, I prefer driving my wife’s Cayman S. However, my car gives me 90% of that experience while consuming 1/3rd the irreplaceable fossil fuel. It’s not so much about the cost of running the car, which isn’t a big part of my budget, it’s about feeling better about how much fuel I’m using while still driving a car I find an acceptable driving experience. I’d like the car better if it were a sports coupe like the Cayman, but there are only two of those out there - the BMW i8 and the Porsche 918. The i8 isn’t for sale yet and is significantly more expensive, and the 918 is an $800k car.
Still, there are advantages to having a larger car that can haul people and things, and for much of my everyday driving, electric’s enough. When I’m stuck behind other cars or driving on residential side streets, I can’t really use more acceleration than I get from electric power, and I like that I’m driving on electrons when that’s the case.
Besides, it’s cool to drive something that’s completely silent.
Heh, and i’m just here for the pure electric options (which come with compromises, but also big upsides (stupidly cheap to run etc)). In an ideal fantasy world i can quickly conjure, what i want is a perfectly ‘green’ setup, a house that runs of all it’s own energy it creates, a car that also runs of that created energy but somehow has the range of a regular dirty fuel car. That’s the ‘dream’ i’m building towards/waiting for.
I’d even go full on things like shoes that generate energy by my walking that then could be fed into various other things (like watch/phone etc). The tech is nearly here for a fully zero carbon emissions life, that might just be part of the answer to ensuring the world remains habitable for our descendents.
I’ve got a trip to New York next weekend, so I thought I’d look into public chargers. They all want $0.49 / kWh. Which is highway robbery. It’s much cheaper for me to run on gas, it’s the equivalent of paying $5.60 a gallon.
Well any trip in a hybrid is mostly going to be on gas for sure, but yeah that sounds expensive if you were a pure electric car user in the usa. In the uk it is currently free (a few private owned points do charge) for the major charging network, you just need to sign up for three or four (depending where you live and how many different networks are around etc) companies charging schemes and they will send you the card you need to use to activate the charge points.
With a pro-fracking right wing government in power i’m not sure how long this ‘free’ charging option will last (it is basically a subsidy to get EV’s going). In the future the plan was always to charge for these services, but we have not had a clear indication on pricing yet. I would imagine that if they charged too much (keeping in mind most EV owners that have charging at home will know exactly how much it costs them to do a full charge (about 2-5pence overnight)) they will simply go out of business very quickly!
There are a fair number of free charging stations in the US as well. The charging stations available in the subway and commuter rail parking garages in Boston are free with parking. I was in a commercial parking garage in downtown Boston last weekend, 75 State Street, and it had two spots that were marked as free EV charging, but they had cones blocking them off. I suspect that was to keep the gasoline vehicles from parking there, but going back to get an attendant seemed impractical at the time.
Messing around with Chargepoint’s site, it’s actually quite hard to find a place in Boston that charges. Just about everywhere it’s free. One or two places are charging the same $0.49 / kWh they want in New York.
It really doesn’t make sense to charge for charging stations. I company that I’m familiar with Volta has a good business model. The put in charging stations at malls. Mall owners find that customer spend $100-$150/hour so giving away a $2 worth of electricity is good business. Volta makes money by selling ad space on the charging stations.
That’s a fair point. I don’t particularly feel that charging stations should be free, but at the current relatively slow charging rates, from a business standpoint free often makes sense. For retail stores, it’s a low cost way to entice customers. For a paid parking structure, it’s a relatively cheap way to compete with other parking garages. The reasoning behind the free charging stations in MBTA garages is that it makes park-and-ride much more attractive.
Conversely, rates where you’re actually making a profit on running a charging station are very unattractive to potential customers, and there aren’t very many of them at present. Only people running a pure electric vehicle who must charge will use them, and only if there’s no other choice.
Tesla had a big press conference where they announced a 600+ HP, four wheel drive version of the P85, dubbed the P85D. This adds a second electric motor for the front wheels, and adds about $20k to the price. Claimed 0-60 is 3.2 seconds, which is supercar territory.
That gave me an “oh man” moment, until I tried out Sports+ on my car again. Moderate throttle from a standing start just about gave me whiplash the acceleration was so fierce. The electric boost really makes a difference from a dead stop, my Supra Turbo had a similar power-weight ratio, and it never felt like that. The car has more than enough power for me, it just needs a better user interface, one which gives me that kind of power while being more willing to drop into electric drive when I’ve reached cruising speed.
I took a ~350 mile trip last week in the car, one which was well outside Tesla’s Supercharger network, so it’s not something I could have done if I’d bought a Tesla. Basically, my father in law’s health problems cut short their New England tour, and my mother in law wanted to spend the day “leaf peeping,” looking at the fall colors as we drove to Vermont and back.
I diddled around a bit with using e-Charge while doing highway cruising for later low-speed battery power, and the car returned 35 MPG for the entire trip. I never managed better than 25 in my Supra, and this car weighs 50% more. That’s kind of spooky - the Supra wasn’t exactly an inefficient brute force machine like the American muscle cars of the 70’s.
Back to the Tesla announcement, they demonstrated some self-driving features. Which I don’t really want, as presented. Self-driving tech is cool, but this was much more limited, and felt like things I’d turn off. The car reads speed limit signs and adjusts - by driving exactly the speed limit, which no one does in the US except little old ladies. 5 MPH over is the custom, and considered the “real” speed limit.
It also shifts lanes by itself when you turn on the turn signal. I don’t want that. Lots of the time, I’m not actually ready to shift when I signal, I’m announcing my intention, because traffic doesn’t permit a shift yet.
The automatic stopping when the car detects an obstacle is cool, but that’s existing tech. I could have ordered it with my car, and I kinda-sorta wish I had.
Only American muscles cars are designed to chew fuel like there is no tomorrow (because…HA…there might not be now! thanks Big Oil!), and even a high end Japanese super street car does not come from the same philosophical background. The Supra (by euro standards) is hardly an ‘economical’ car, it’s a pure sports car.
In my quest for an EV news, i’ve put of getting a Zoe for now. The models from September this year fix one of the main issues it has, that of a terribly reflective dashboard projected into the windscreen (people have been cutting and fitting dark carpet/plastic cover to solve the issue themselves!). However it still seems to have huge issues in relation to it’s advanced Chameleon charger, maybe a third of the current fast chargers in the Uk (and i guess across europe?) can cause a number of the ‘impossible to charge’ errors, that from stories i’ve been reading can see you loose the car for maybe months at a time with Renault never (or rarely) getting to the bottom of the problem.
They (Renault) also have a growing reputation of being pretty unpleasant to deal with as an EV owner, and as someone with a very short patience threshold when given the ‘run around’, i figure i’d save me leaving my burning Zoe on the lawn of the Manager of Renault UK! So in short until a Zoe Mk II comes around (with many of the issues getting flagged by current owners fixed, and not just swept under the carpet), i’ll be looking at other EV’s, hoping they get into the Zoe’s territory for clever energy efficient tech (and range) etc.
Here is a youtube of that Scottish Vicar (i think), Alloam doing 128 miles on one charge with his Zoe:
Toyota Mirai, a hydrogen powered car (this is getting Back to the Futureish isn’t it? What next, a wind powered Delorean!):
The Supra TT (I’m assuming Mk IV?) had 315 lb-ft of torque in the highest output Jap only version - likely mapped and running on 99 RON. Caranddriver tested the american version, 0-60 was 4.6s and 1/4mile was 13.1s
Your Panamera has 435 lb-ft, 0-60 in 5.2s and 1/4mile in 13.8s. Those numbers are likely helped by AWD, Porsche’s excellent gearbox and probably launch control (though I’m aware it’s an option via Sports Chrono).
Tesla P85D is the fastest accelerating saloon in the world. 685 lb-ft of torque, 0-60 in 3.2 seconds, 1/4 mile in 11.8 seconds
I love the Panamera. It’s brutishness reminds me of all the german saloons I grew up with. I love how it seems to defy the laws of physics with how fast it can accelerate and how much speed it can carry around the corners. The Tesla really is on a different planet though.
Yeah, I had a US-spec MKIV Supra TT, completely stock. That last is important, since Supras that have been modified to 500+ HP are commonplace.
The Panamera S e Hybrid doesn’t have AWD or launch control. Yes, the GTS and Turbo versions come standard with AWD, but the Hybrid is rear wheel only, no doubt to save weight, which is already considerable. While I do have the Sport Chrono option, I don’t have Launch Control because the car is the only Panamera with an automatic transmission, required by the combined gas-electric drive train. Launch Control requires a PDK transmission, which despite the controls, is functionally a manual transmission, albeit a complicated one with computer controls and two gear sets and two gear sets.
I’m aware it’s probably slower overall than my Supra if you’re looking at 0-60 or 1/4 mile times, but I was relating how the car felt from a dead stop. Which is about torque, and specifically torque at low RPM. Not only does the S e Hybrid develop a lot of torque, it does so immediately due to the electric motor. The torque curve is nearly flat.
Since modified Supras are common, and almost everyone who posts a dyno chart for a Supra does so for bragging rights, I couldn’t find an example torque graph for a stock car. But it was a turbocharged car, and hence peak torque was fairly far up there at 4000 RPM. Here’s a graph showing almost stock numbers, which is useful for visualizing the difference in power delivery.
The upshot is that in those first few seconds, the Panamera is delivering over twice the torque, and I was feeling that.
The all-electric Tesla has that in spades, particularly the P85D, which has ridiculous power. There is an issue, in that electric motors suffer at high RPM. You can see that on the Hybrid graph. For the P85 (not D, P85D graphs aren’t available yet) it’s like this:
With the single gear ratio in the Model S, that translates directly to speed.
This is of course completely irrelevant to me, since I’m not going to take either car above 80 MPH, and that the top speed of the Panamera is 167 vs. 130-ish for the model S is not something I care about.
That depends on what you’re drinking.
“Saloon” is definitely a weird word for a car. Apparently the progression was Saloon (drinking hall) -> Saloon train car (luxury car outfitted like a saloon) -> Saloon automobile (luxury automobile).
I didn’t even bother to check that it was AWD, I assumed it would be given almost all Panameras are!
The Supra dyno is well off, looks like the took the second turbo and installed a much, MUCH bigger one that takes over later than the original - the near-flatlining is the smaller sequential turbo starting to run out of steam.
I only meant to illustrate what you already know - torque is fun, but torque is an illusion. All things being equal, I’d take a slower car with more torque. Less dangerous and less likely to lose my license. A few members of the car club I’m in have had E60 535d (280hp 430lb-ft) before graduating onto an M5. All three of them went back to the 535d.
I remember the first time i rode a horse, the sense of speed and acceleration was incredible (I was just 5 at the time mind you) :)