Porsche has made much of its hybrid drivetrain development efforts, pointing out that its founder helped create the world’s first hybrid drivetrain one hundred years ago. But thus far, the talk has centered on Porsche’s “rolling hybrid laboratory,” the 911 GT3R Hybrid, and the Hybrid Cayenne, with the plug-in 918 Hypercar lurking across the horizon. But, Porsche’s development chief Wolfgang Duerheimer tells Automotive News [sub]
In the future, we will have hybrid drive in every model line
First up will be a Panamera with the Cayenne’s hybrid V6 drivetrain, arriving sometime next year. Duerheimer won’t give a timeline for hybrid versions of the 911, Boxster and Cayman, but he does admit that hybrid drivetrains aren’t the only way for a sportscar firm to shave off the 41 grams of C02 per kilometer that Porsche needs gone by 2015.
If the CO2 guidelines require it, then our engines will become smaller and may have just four cylinders. The important thing is that the performance has to be right. The 911 must always be on the cutting edge.
After all, hybrid drivetrains are heavy, and weight requirements are already being pushed upwards by demand for more comfort and safety. Porsche’s law of generational weight management:
A constant weight is our minimum requirement in the change to a new generation, even with compliance with all the new safety and comfort requirements… You could hardly achieve much more than that with current technologies
But building downsized vehicles in order to average out fleet emissions isn’t the Porsche way. There will be no “Porsche Cygnet” because, as Duerheimer puts it
If you want to save on your heating costs, you don’t move into a smaller apartment
Smaller Porsches like the downsized “Cajun” SUV and a sub-Boxster roadster are about bringing in new customers, not bringing down C02 averages, he explains. In the short-term, hybrid options seem just the thing for Porsche’s profound skill at using option-lists to separate customers for cash. But how soon will every Porsche really be available with a gas-electric drivetrain? And when will there be a customer-ready, gas-electric drivetrain that’s actually based on a Porsche engine, rather than the Cayenne’s Audi V6-based unit? Porsche’s approach to Europe’s climbing emissions standards may seem more progressive than Aston Martin’s, but a number of questions remain unanswered.
I don’t want a hybrid sports car. There I said it.
Why this obsession for one type of drivetrain? Are car companies so eager to get a pat on the head from the Sierra Club? Hybrids are ridiculously overrated for the mileage gains they give. We had conventional Geo Metros that got better fuel economy 20 years ago.
The batteries and additional electric motor that are needed for a hybrid are incredibly heavy, and that compromises the performance of a sports car in handling and braking. The whole point of a sports car is performance. I honestly don’t care about fuel costs if I’m buying a $90,000 Porsche.
So what if I save $12 a month in gas?
This was a big issue around Washington DC and it raised a stink with some. They were letting single drivers use the HOV lanes if they were in a hybrid. But people in a luxury SUV hybrid or something like a Lexus LS600h get much lower gas mileage than a economy car. So the rich can avoid the traffic jam, but some average Joe using a lot less gas was stuck in traffic.
I assume a high performance hybrid will only get better mileage than the gas alternative. Most gas only cars will still use a lot less gas.
The biggest savings in hybrid cars is city driving. I kind of smile at people who live in suburbia, who commute to work on the highway in a Hybrid car.
The Toyota Matrix had a similar shape and much more internal space than a Prius for around $6,000 less. It takes about 10 years of highway driving to get your money back. But then you’ll probably need new hybrid batteries before 10 years (woops, no savings). Since most people don’t keep cars 10 years, the hybrid is a big money loser.
Then there was the Honda Accord V6 hybrid that got the same mileage as a gas 4 cylinder Accord and was $10,000 more. So why bother?
“The Toyota Matrix had a similar shape and much more internal space than a Prius for around $6,000 less. It takes about 10 years of highway driving to get your money back. But then you’ll probably need new hybrid batteries before 10 years (woops, no savings). Since most people don’t keep cars 10 years, the hybrid is a big money loser.”
1) The Matrix has 2 cu. ft less of cargo area, way less hip room, and less shoulder room in both the front and rear seats than a Prius. The prius does weigh 80lbs more.
2) The Prius II is less than $4000 more expensive comparably equipped to a Matrix 1.8 AT.
3) I’m willing to bet that a Prius has better residual values than a Matrix.
4) You seem to pick and choose the numbers that work best for your calculation… comparing highway to highway instead of mixed to mixed or city to city. My numbers show 5 years* for a payback without including any add’l residual that the Prius could maintain over the Matrix.
5) The Accord was marketed as a performance hybrid. It came with the V6, for goodness sake. Turns out no one wanted a performance hybrid (or maybe they just didn’t want a performance Accord…)
* 15,000 miles/year, $3/gallon, 28 combined for matrix, 50 combined for Prius, YMMV
How do you measure your cargo space? Look at a Matrix and Prius side by side.
The Matrix has a high square back like a station wagon or SUV and the Prius has a steep sloping back like a coupe. There is no way the Prius has more cargo space with or without the real seat down. What do they measure the floor? The roof on a Prius is too low and sloping to put anything large in it.
Yeah it does depend how you equip them, to determine how much the price is difference is. The base MSRP difference was about $5200. The Prius tops out at over $34,000, the Matrix $23,000.
Right, the Accord V6 hybrid was sold as a performance hybrid. You seem to have fallen for the marketing hype. If that was the story Honda needed to spin to sell the car, it shows it was a loser from day one.
Same story with the new Honda CR-Z. A “sports” hybrid in looks only.
The Matrix has a very high floor in the trunk and the wheel-wells narrow the cargo area. Both compromise cargo volume considerably.
I remember looking a Matrix when I bought my Saab 9-3, and again when I bought a Honda Fit. Seats-up it really doesn’t have as much cargo space as you’d think.
Thanks for the better comparison than mine.
The Honda Fit is actually a better example than my Matrix/Prius example. The Fit has better room than an Insight, and when you consider the difference in price, it is a better choice (same for a Prius).
My point has been whether a hybrid is worth the premium price for the gas savings; and we are getting bogged down in comparing cargo space. So how many people actually bought a Prius or Insight solely because they were so impressed with the cargo space??
In the end, the Prius, Insight, Matrix and Fit are not all that different. So is the huge price difference for a hybrid really worth it, especially for non city dwellers??
It seems to me, a mostly non city driver will never save money driving a Prius or Insight over a Matrix or Fit.
And buying for $5,000 a low mileage 10 year old car with a dependable history, will leave you $20,000 for gas, regardless of the gas mileage of the used car. That is how you save money, not paying huge sums for a new hybrid.
Whether you want hybrid drive trains or not, Porsche is between a rock and a hard place in Europe and the US WRT mileage requirements/emissions requirements. If you have the means for a 100kilobuck car, you’ll need to hope that enough other people buy the hybrid drivetrain so you can have the unadulterated one. They already have stop-start in the Panamera – if you are in stop and start commuting, that’s good for upwards of 15%. The hybrid V6 drive train would probably be just fine for most US lux sedan drivers – lots of torque.
Porsche may still be an automotive engineering company. It will be interesting to see how they rise to the challenge facing them. BTW, the GT3 hybrid has a flywheel storage system – gives a lot of people the willies to consider a mass whirling in a vacuum at 100k RPM or so. Things could get interesting if you lose the seals and bearings…..
Didn’t know that about the flywheel — it seems like a promising technology, particularly for large vehicles, so long as it doesn’t throw a piece through the gas tank. High RPMs don’t worry passengers on a 737 all that much, but of course those engines cost a lot more and get more maintenance.
BTW, the GT3 hybrid has a flywheel storage system – gives a lot of people the willies to consider a mass whirling in a vacuum at 100k RPM or so. Things could get interesting if you lose the seals and bearings…
I think they still make those toy cars, u spin the heavy internal wheel until it screams then put her on the floor and she goes like hell.
Is fun for a toy car, but it can be unnerving when u have to pony up for the repair, oh solly most owner wont keep their car so long, but then they pay for the bath, from 90k to 30k or even less.
The make a smaller engine with more power, ya where’s the power coming from? Then dont worry there got to be a vay for the haves to play, drive fast too. Since they influence the law greatly, perhaps pay a hefty fine and get away with it. Its MBenz, Porsche et al are paying some high emission fees to Uncle Sam inorder to sell them here? Something most buyers dont hear about it.
What are the penalties for not meeting the standard? Current penalties are $55 per MPG under the standard. So even if your car misses the mark by 20 MPG you are only out $1100.
IMO, that’s the way to deal with these new ridiculous carbon requirements, pay the fines and move on. Otherwise the standards will only continue to get more absurd if automakers keep jumping through hoops Get good lobbyists to lower the fines and make it manageable, especially for a low volume maker like Porsche. Keep building what your customers actually want to buy, not what Al Gore tells you is going to save the planet.
A hybrid drivetrain will probably add $15,000 minimum to the price of a Porsche, not to mention all sorts of added complexity that could make a car disposable as a result of maintenance. They’ve done calculations on the Lexus RX400 hybrid, and Consumer Reports tallied that it takes 10 years to break even for the price premium. Most customers would rather just pay the tax and move on rather than having a $15,000 chrome emblem that says “Hybrid” on it.
The other day, I found myself following a hybrid Nissan Altima that looked to me like the battery had run down. Normal driving speed on level or downhills of the road and as soon as we went to an uphill stretch, the car slowed down to obstruction speeds. The driver should have pulled over whenever he got to an uphill to let the line of traffic behind him pass before attempting the hill.
I’m not sold on hybrids.
I don’t think the gt3r hybrid uses the flywheel storage sytem. i believe it has a dedicated electric motor for each front wheel that provides bursts of power from each (40hp?) motor. Supposedly the temporary burst of power to the front wheels makes the car catapult ou of corners.
Please bring us a TDI porsche.
Sadly, the first diesel Porsche (if one comes to these shores) will probably be an SUV. I’d love a diesel Porsche sports car.