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[[!meta title="Nico's Porsche Taycan Experience - driving"]]
## Introduction
This article is part of the series of
[Nico's Porsche Taycan Experience](/blog/nico-porsche-taycan-experience/).
## Driving the Porsche Taycan
So after all the hiccups, is it actually making sense to drive a
Porsche Taycan at all? Don't you pay a lot of money for not driving?
Let's have a look at this...
## The steering
So there is one thing, or maybe two, that are really, really good
about the Taycan. With really good I mean as good as not comparable to
most other cars.
The steering is one of them. It is so precise, I'd claim that you can
drive into a corner and steer exact with 2-3cm range. It is *so*
precise. It is a lot of fun. You can even try driving around small
stones on the road.
## The (lack of) weight
Now obviously if you are coming from a sports car direction, you HAVE
to ask about the weight (more than 2'000 kg!) of the car. It handles
surprisingly light. This is probably mostly due to ...
## The electric drive train
The drive train is amazing. The model I am driving is the Turbo S,
which has around 1000 nm of torque and a couple of hundred kW power.
The power provided by this, makes the weight almost completely
invisible to the driver, if there weren't...
## Corners
Corners. That one thing you like to drive when you drive a
Porsche. That's something I can confirm: a Porsche might be fast on
the straight, but it's real fun is driving corners. And the Taycan with
it's precise steering and impressive power train is no exception.
Corners are taken light and grip on the tyres is impressive - I still
hear a friend of mine saying that this lateral g force should not be
possible without flying out of the corner.
It comes however at a cost...
## Tyres
The tyres wear out. Fast. Really fast. Getting 10'000 km on one set of
summer tyres is not easy. Something like 5'000 to 7'000 km might be
more realistic if you are in a mountain region like me.
In the first year I needed 3 full sets of tyres, 2 times for summer, 1
time for winter. In the second year, due to me traveling outside of
the country it was only one set of summer tyres and one set of winter
tyres.
I hear from some people that they can manage 15'000 km or more on
their tyres, but I think that is the exception.
Matter of fact, when I talked to Pirelli about the lousy endurance,
they were surprised the tyres lasted more than 5'000km. It's the PZERO
for summer, in case you are wondering.
## Consumption
So from a tyre perspective, the Taycan is just "eating away" the
rubber. When it comes to required electricity, it is never as
efficient as other EVs. In my experience, the consumption ranges from
somewhere of 20-30kWh per 100km on moderate driving.
You can empty the whole battery within 98km, if you constantly drive
260km/h, resulting in around 80kWh/100km. Not great, is it?
However, let's put that in context, a gasoline sports car doing
similar speed, would also consume around 40 liters of gasoline per
100km, which would be significantly worse.
Staying at the ICE car comparison, driving around 1000km highway
(which I frequently do), used to cost me around 400 Euro. With the
Taycan, I spent around a third to a quarter, maybe 100-150 Euro for
the same distance.
So if you are somewhat conscious about the environment, *any* EV will
be better than it's ICE equivalent. If you want something that
compared to other EVs is very efficient, it's not the Taycan.
## Uphill
The Taycan I drive is a AWD car and electric. I live in the middle of
the Swiss mountains. Going uphill, is shockingly fast. So fast that
nobody else expects you to be. Motor bikers who are trying to overtake
in the inner corner on an uphill road are prone to almost hit you,
trying to get into your lane even though they are much slower, at
significantly lower weight.
## Recuperation
This is one of the topics that the Taycan is doing better than *any
other EV*. I know this is controversial, but as a technician, there is
no doubt.
Wait, what I am talking about here at all? Two steps back...
Normally EVs have recuperation on by default. Which means if you lift
the "gas pedal", the car slows down and uses the energy from the
electric motors to charge the battery.
Now, the Taycan does not do this by default. It can be enabled, but
there is a good reason not to: coasting is actually more efficient
than recuperating.
Let me rephrase this for some of you who are puzzled now: not taking
energy back is better? It is. Let's look at in detail.
### Case 1: recuperation on
So you accelerate your car to a certain speed, let's say 50km/h. And
then you lift your foot and you regain some energy back, but you slow
down. So if you are driving a fixed length distance, let's say 1 km
and the car slows down you have to accelerate again, you lose energy twice.
### Case 2: recuperation off - coasting
If on the other hand you accelerate to 50km/h and then coast downwards
from there without breaking, you don't lose any energy and thus you
are more efficient.
The coasting is similar to driving in neutral in an ICE car.
### Breaking = recuperation
Now the important thing is that when you actually hit the brake pedal,
the car first recuperates (around 270kW, iirc) and only after the
electric motors cannot slow you down further the brakes are being used.
This is highly efficient and also very intuitive.
I know that everyone who is loving 1 pedal drive might dislike this
part strongly, but for everyone who wants to have a relaxed foot
(lifting does not equal getting much slower), it is so much more convenient.
## Breaking
When it comes to breaking after recuperation, that is another very
strong feature of the Taycan. The brakes are amazing. The car I drive
comes with the ceramic brakes, but even the regular steel brakes are
quite impressive.
## Noise
EVs are silent and almost impossible to hear, right? Wrong. The Taycan
has active loud speakers to add sound on the road and into the
cabin. Even if it did not, the electric motors are very well audible
in the inside. First time driving a Taycan is like "is it supposed to
be that loud?".
That both *can* be seen as a feature, however there is more.
### Rattling, squeaking
In the car I am driving the doors often rattle, the head rests make
loud sounds, the middle display is randomly beeping (like once per
week), the windows are squeaking when you open or close them,
depending on the outside temperature.
### Other noise sources
I'll come back to this in another article in detail, but the fan can
be very loud, the wheels can "click-clack" while taking a corner (and
I am not referring to noise caused by [the Ackermann
effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ackermann_steering_geometry)).
Again more on this later, but don't expect the Taycan to be reliably
quiet.
## Summary
Overall, if the car is repaired and if the car is driving, the driving
is fun, albeit not quiet.
[[!tag porsche car]]

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@ -31,7 +31,12 @@ But then when the day came for the handover,
[I already had a rocky
start](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-1-handover). And
just 2 months later, the
[air suspension needed a 5 weeks repair](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-2-suspension-failure).
[air suspension needed a 5 weeks
repair](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-2-suspension-failure).
And it turns out that [replacing the battery in the key is somewhat
confusing](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-key-battery-replacement).
However is everything bad when it comes to the Porsche Taycan?
How [does it actually drive, if it drives?](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-3-driving)
More to come soon...
@ -40,8 +45,10 @@ More to come soon...
For easier access:
* [Part 1 - The handover](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-1-handover)
* [Part 2 - The suspension failure](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-2-suspension-failure)
* [The key battery replacementg](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-key-battery-replacement)
* [Part 2 - The suspension
failure](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-2-suspension-failure)
* [Part 3 - driving](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-part-3-driving)
* [The key battery replacement](/blog/nicos-porsche-taycan-experience-key-battery-replacement)