Are you quoting prices in Kroner or USD? If the latter, you must have huge tariffs. It sounds like the price difference is that you have much better tax incentives for a pure electric car than for a plug-in hybrid.
The Model S 60 has a base price of $71k in the US, but it’s not comparable to the Panamera S e Hybrid. Closest in performance would be the base model Panamera, which has a base price of $78k. If you’re comparing similar cars, you need to pick the P85, and you have to add the Tech Package and the Smart Suspension to match what’s included as standard in the base price of the Panamera S e Hybrid. In which case you’re talking $100k for the P85 vs. $96k for the Panamera. If you include tax incentives, the prices become $93k for the P85 vs $91k.
You can boost the price of the Panamera ridiculously with a laundry list of options. Porsche is like that. I didn’t add many, the main ones I kinda-sorta wish I’d ordered were full leather interior and the radar-based Adaptive Cruise Control.
Ouch! way to dis a very nice vehicle! Gus has a hybrid PORSCHE(!) It will not be low tech, it will not be poor quality, it will not be cheap. Lolz. But maybe what you are finding is that the style is much like a traditional car (and i’ll get onto why in a second), rather than a space-age Jetsons flying car? In part this will be because the traditional Porsche buyer/owner knows what they like, and Porsche have successfully been giving them that for a good long while. As a performance-luxury car it is pretty clear this is less about the hybrid part and more about the Porsche.
Nissan are different to Porsche etc. However it is interesting seeing what the performance-luxury brands can do in relation to the growing interest in ‘green’ and economical driving (which is really the opposite of what these cars are about normally). Currently you have to set the Tesla at the top of the ‘green’ performance car table, as they offer an uncompromising ‘green’ pure electric vehicle. Which is not for everyone obviously.
As for Hybrids so far, i feel they are still too much a ‘petrol/gasoline’ car in general. I’d really like to see a more 50/50 split with these vehicles, better/larger batteries for more pure electric driving gains, and less the old stuff to keep that just for finishing off a long journey that the electric mode can’t do for you. Most hybrids have very weak, tiny pure electric capability currently, it’s like 25% electric and 75% regular polluting fuel.
Pounds always sounds heavy to me (tonnes or ‘stone’ being my normal frame of reference). It IS crazy how much more powerful it is than the Prius!
yeah, i’m a bit like that too (i blame that on my old mans ‘space-age’ citroens (safari in particular) that used to suffer computer faults quite often). I’m also worried the man might ‘hack’ my car and drive it off a cliff! ;)
The BMW i3 is about the only car that comes close to what you’d like to see. The Chevy Volt is another extended-range EV, but the pure-electric mode is really short, and the fuel efficiency poor once you’re using gas.
You’re right that most hybrids aren’t really meaningfully electric, the battery is just there to recapture braking energy and let you re-use it later. That’s obviously significant, since a typical hybrid is 60-70% more fuel efficient than a conventional car of the same size and weight.
I’m wondering what other benefits that plug-in hybrids get from larger batteries, aside from a meaningful pure-electric range. I’ve noticed that even when I’m driving with the battery depleted to 20%, the car tends to cycle between gas and electric. It’ll use the engine to drive the wheels and charge the battery, and then it’ll shut the engine off for several minutes.
My theory is that cruising, even cruising at 60 MPH, doesn’t use much energy, and that the passive losses from running the engine (friction losses, and energy required to pump air through the engine) are a signifcant amount of the load. If the car can shut the engine off entirely, those go away.
I really need to get a better handle on how efficient the car is at charging the battery with gas. My preliminary test, as I mentioned, seemed too high. But it may be one of those cases where energy out = (gas used - minimum cost) x efficiency, and while running the engine isn’t particularly efficient, adding a little more fuel and storing the excess energy isn’t so bad. If it really were 60%, it follows that it’s more efficient to run in pure electric, deplete it, run in charge mode, and then switch to pure electricity again, rather than just running in regular hybrid mode.
That doesn’t sound reasonable, does it? But consider my figures so far. It’s to 0.042 gallons to drive 1 mile + generate 0.256 kWh. It should take 29 miles to charge from 20% to 100%. So drive 29 miles + 16.7 miles on electric is 45.7 miles for 1.2 US gallons, or 38 MPG, which is slightly better than the hybrid 35 MPG.
Or it could be that my measurements are slightly off, and that the result would still be 35 MPG, because the hybrid mode is already doing this in short cycles.
If my charging figures aren’t screwy, if I’m on the highway and the battery is depleted and I anticipate city driving where I can’t charge, e-Charge mode is a good idea, because gas efficiency drops a lot more than electric efficiency in city driving.
Pure electric on a fully charged Volt is about 45 miles in the summer and about 35 miles in the winter. A full tank of gas and you can add ~ 300 miles at roughly 35mpg.
Looking over the competition, I think I may have been a bit unfair to the Volt. I had it stuck in my head that 50 MPG highway on gas was “typical” for hybrids, because it’s a figure I’ve seen quoted for the Prius and the Honda Accord. Yet when I went to look up the BMW i3, the other extended-range electric, it’s about 38 MPG on the range extender. Nor is it alone - if you exclude the Prius and the Accord, all the other plug-in hybrids are in the 35-40 MPG ballpark.
According the EPA, of course. Real world numbers are different. While I tend to assume EPA gas mileage to be overstated, I think their testing may sometimes underestimate hybrids. As I found out, my real MPGe is about 20% higher than the EPA figure, and highway gas mileage was also 20% higher.
What do you mean the Telsa does has not storage space. I’m in the middle of various house remodels and my current handyman doesn’t have truck. So I have turned my Tesla into a virtual pickup truck, dry wall, kitchen sink, (literally), sheets of plywood. Just last night I brought home 44 boxes of floor tiles 50 square meters worth. The hardware guy thought it weigh about 700KG total, It wasn’t till I’ll hauled them up the super steep hill and got out the bathroom scale and found out each box weigh 25KG (my back), I then calculated the Tesla hauled up more than 1100KG of building supplies.
The Tesla really is more like a rocket ship than a car. The over the cell network updates are just great. So for instance just in the last couple of months, that added Wifi connectivity to the Tesla, which will make it even easier for them to put out even more extensive upgrades.
Yeah, the tesla actually has quite a lot of storage. It has a trunk and a frunk. Less storage than a SUV or pickup truck, of course, but more than any other sedan.
I was trying to figure out how the heck the Tesla S’s trunk is so big, and then I realized: it’s the lack of a gas tank. The external dimensions are similar to my car, but my car has a 20 gallon gas tank (about 3 cubic feet) and the lithium ion battery back there (volume unknown, probably 5 cubic feet). The Tesla’s battery is distributed along the entire underside of the car, which may be part of why it’s about 1" taller than the Panamera. When I look at photos of the Tesla’s trunk, it appears deeper than mine.
When I bought my car, I thought “this has a LOT of cargo space,” since it does with the seats down. However, I had to start thinking about the space with the seats up since we’re driving my wife’s parents to New York in September. I managed to fit 2 large and one extra large suitcases back there, but I don’t think it’ll fit 4. My wife and I may need to pack a little light for this trip. Her parents will have thier normal luggage since they’re flying here and travelling for a couple of weeks after we take them to NY.
I don’t think this would remotely be a problem with the Tesla S. The Frunk looks very similar to the Cayman’s frunk, and that will take a large suitcase by itself. Add the larger trunk and I’m sure you could take 5-6 suitcases total plus 4 adults. I can’t think of any other sedan that can do that.
Yeah, I’ve read a lot of negative reactions to the roofline. I don’t really get why, personally. Apparently it’s a form-follows-function thing, it has 38" of headroom in the back seats, same as the front. No one complains about the Tesla’s appearance, despite similar dimensions. I believe it’s the sloping roof, which makes for 35" of headroom for the rear seats.
The Rapide has a beautiful profile that looks definitively Aston Martin. The B-pillar is hidden behind the side windows which looks fantastic. The window shape is especially well done that’s angled on the door at the C-pillar to preserve the look of other Aston Martins. The door handles are also kept subtle giving it a sleek coupe-like appearance.
The hunchback roofline of the Panamera is the biggest downfall of the Panamera’s design. It’s reported that Porsche’s ex-CEO, Wendelin Wiedeking, wanted enough headroom to fit his six-foot-two body but when combined with a low aerodynamic profile of the Panamera, the hunchback roof is what you’re left with.
Really? A steeper slope in back is all it takes to go from “beautiful profile” to “hunchback?” Ah, well, this isn’t about electric cars either.
Uh, the Aston Martin Rapide is ugly too. Looks like a DB9 blueprint after a trip through a wonky fax machine. Not quite as ugly as the Panamera (which by all accounts is quite the better car of the two), but still.
I’m with Gus on this, i have no issue with the way the Panamera looks, if anything it reminds me of the great classic sports cars of yester-year, and i have no issue with ‘retro’ anything.
Many electric cars tend to have styling I consider unfortunate.
BMW i3:
Chevy Spark:
Fiat 500e:
Mitsubishi i-MiEV:
Some designers seem to feel a need to make their electric cars look really cheap, and I don’t know why. The Prius is a little funny looking, but not excessively so. Some now look pretty much like any other comparable car, like the Cadillac ELR, Chevy Volt, Ford Energi, Ford Focus Electric, Accord plug-in hybrid, and Nissan Leaf.
The Tesla model S is a little sleeker than the usual sedan, but still says sedan to me. I know some people really like the looks.
I did a longer experimental drive today to check the efficiency of the e-Charge mode. I drove south on i-95, generally running between 60 and 70 MPH.
Driving out, the car once again dropped out of e-Power mode at 20% charge on the battery, this time after 17 miles. It took 39.6 miles to recharge to 100%, at a displayed MPG of 23.8. I burned 1.66 gallons, 0.53 gallons more than I’d expect at 35 MPG, for an efficiency of about 42%. That’s closer to what I’d expected, though still not bad.
Driving back, I managed 21 miles on battery power before reaching 20% again, which was rather higher than I expected. That’s a MPGe of 95 at highway speeds. Interestingly enough, my overall displayed MPG for the 60.6 mile segment was 34.5 MPG. That means that while e-Charge mode is much less efficient than plugging the car into the wall, it’s not something to avoid. It’s equivalent to the regular hybrid mode, since the extra gas I’m burning is stored efficiently in the battery.
It follows that if the battery is down to 20%, and I’ve got a long stretch of freeway driving ahead, and some city driving after that, it’s efficient to put enough of a charge on the battery to handle the city driving, since battery power is much better for that than gas. The target should be to get down to 20% just when I get to a plug again.
FWIW, the second picture looks “bulbous” to me. The first looks sleek. (That being said, I’ve never been a fan of any of Porsche’s looks. I don’t find their signature coupe appealing visually. So it may just be an “in line” design decision which doesn’t work or me.)
I haven’t been following closely, but did you consider the Tesla S, and if so what made you go Porsche? (I had assumed pricing was better on the Porsche, but that was clearly not the case.)
Pricing’s pretty similar between the Panamera S e Hybrid and the Tesla Model S P85.
#1 reason was reliability. Edmunds has a model S they lend out between the editors, and it’s had the drive unit replaced twice in 20,000 miles, and the battery replaced once. Once I would have marked up to bad luck. Twice with the same car strikes me as an indication of a real problem.
Tesla wants $600 a year to service the car. At one point this service was required or you’d lose your warranty. They’ve backed off on that, but they really want you to do it. They say that they’re breaking even on this, because they practically take the car apart during service. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but I think they want to do this because they’re still working out the kinks in the car. You’d think that the electric power train would be a lot less complicated, require less maintenance than an internal combustion drivetrain. Of course there’s a lot of other moving parts, but most cars don’t need this kind of attention.
Porsche is notorious for overpriced service, but their recommended service interval is now 10,000 miles between oil changes. My reaction when they were going over the car was “O Rly?” and they assured me they meant it.
#2 was performance. The Tesla has the straight line acceleration, as long as you’re only looking at 0-60. But that’s about it. It’s doesn’t have nearly the cornering ability of the Panamera. To be fair, few sedans in this class do; the Panamera’s skidpad numbers aren’t far off a 911. There’s an interesting video comparing a Panamera Turbo and an Audio RS7 - the difference between the two on a track is dramatic. Essentially, the Audio exhibits visible body roll in turns, and the Panamera stays flat.
One article on Jalopnik about taking the model S around the Nürburgring describes how the car went into “limp mode” due to overheating over 3 minutes. Essentially the author treats the model S like a dancing bear - he’s full of praise because the car exists at all, so he forgives stuff that he’d criticize harshly if it were a normal performance car.
Now, realistically, I’m not going to be driving around a track, and I mostly got the extreme driving stuff out of my system in my 30’s, when I discovered I could exceed the limits of my Supra Turbo. Still, I find that the further away those limits are, the more enjoyable I find driving within them. I can feel the difference driving a Cayman, for example.
#3 was range. The Tesla is better than any other electric in this regard, but the limit’s still there. I’ve taken road trips that would put me outside the Supercharger network in years past. Charging outside it is major deal. Reading about the experiences of Tesla owners, using a regular charger means parking a couple of miles away from your hotel, since you need to leave it there overnight.
#4 was purely aesthetic. I wanted something that said “sports car” to me more strongly than the Tesla. I do wish the Panamera were sleeker. If the BMW i8 1) were actually available and 2) weren’t $135k+ it would be my first choice. Maybe if it were 2020 and I could get a good price on a used i8 with low mileage.
Yeah, you just hit the number one reason i just can’t ‘want’ that car, I wonder if that kind of ‘futuristic’ look is more on Janster expectation curve than your Panamera? I also thought the Nissan Leaf was slightly odd looking (frog-faced?), but it’s grown on me. The Zoe is pretty much an EV version of the Clio (slightly less good looking maybe?), although the range of colours is pretty disappointing.
He was pretty clear that he was talking about the interior, the LCD dash, and the Star-Trek blue outlines around the buttons.
Basically:
vs.
I have to say, the Nissan’s LCD dash is pretty futuristic looking. It’s worth noting that 3 of the displays are LCD versions of the gauges he disparaged. The ironic thing there is that he complained about “hard to read speedometers,” and the Panamera’s gauges are marginally easier to read, since they have numeric markings and the Leaf digital gauges force you to count bars if you want the number. Now, honestly, I don’t think it’s a legitimate criticism of the Leaf’s display, since you don’t need the numbers for those displays, the general sense is really enough, but it says something about what’s objectively going on with the two dashes.
I do like that the Leaf’s digital speedometer is in an additional bay, right below the windshield. It’s the #2 thing you’re checking after the tach, and the #1 thing in a pure electric car. The position of the speedometer in the Panamera at the bottom of the tach is less than ideal.
Would the Panamera look better with a more Leaf-style dash? I don’t know. The Leaf’s dash isn’t displaying anywhere near as much information, particularly when you take into account the number of modes for the multi-function display (trip stats, navigation, electric power flow, music, phone, temperature gauges). I expect it’d look a bit crowded. Certainly it couldn’t afford the screen real estate the Leaf devotes to those two big gauges on the left and right.
