Porsche Taycan WORLD EXCLUSIVE genuine first drive launch control testing 0-200kph Fully Charged

This is an airfield in Germany some hour and a half away from Stuttgart. That's the Black Forest right there. I'm here not to enjoy aeroplanes, I'm here to do some testing for Porsche. Porsche some five years ago brought out the Mission E, a concept to say we're going to build one of the best battery electric vehicles ever. It's going to be purely Porsche but it's going to be a BEV. They've already won Le Mans with hybrids, they've already got the outright Nurburgring record of all time with a hybrid. It's now time for me to drive this and I am going to be the very first non-Porsche employee, if you take Mark Webber out of the equation, to drive this car. 800 volts, 250 kilowatt fast charge ability, repeatable launch control. We'll soon see about that. My job here today is to prove Porsche's repeatability of high performance. In other words, can I do launch control to 200 kilometres just relentlessly? It's on, you might hear a little hum and that is its low speed mandatory noise. I'd love to show you the binnacle and the screen behind there and the haptic centre console, it's really nice but I can't. First of all Bernd, thank you for inviting me here. Great for having you. To this very large, open, old Canadian airbase. So I'll be taking this out on the track shortly to give some some shakedowns, 0 to 200 k's. So you had the 918 Spyder which everyone remembers was sort of a big tipping point in acceptance of an electrified, sexy, exotic and obviously one of the fastest cars. Has the DNA of that trickled down into this? Absolutely it has. The 918 Spyder as you said it was the first really performance hybrid in the world. With a plug? With a plug, right. And then it trickled down towards the other product lines such as Cayenne, Panamera and then obviously now Taycan. We started like the whole car on a white sheet. Yeah. But we started for this car with totally new power drains and almost every part in these power drains is completely new for the Taycan. Right, let's do our first launch control of the day. So when you do ludicrous or ludicrous plus mode in a P100D it tells you, it says are you sure you want to do it? Are you sure? Because it could damage the motors, it could reduce the battery packs longevity, blah blah blah. Although this car is not going to be able to launch as quickly as a Tesla in that mode, that's 2.6 seconds for a Tesla, this will consistently do 0 to 62 in just over three seconds. Foot on the brake, it says hold. Foot flat on the throttle, you can hear it changes noise, it says launch control activated. I'm now going to step off the brake. First launch control, crikey mikey. Okay, 160, 70, wow, 90, 200 and there we go 220 kilometres an hour. I've come off the throttle, gently on the brakes. Lost my sunglasses, how unprofessional. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's the first launch control I've ever done in a fully electric Porsche that's near as damn in production. Now that felt quick, that felt quick in fact. Okay, so I've got a, behind this camera here, I've got a V-Box which is telling me how many seconds it's taken me to get to 200 kilometres, which is 0 to 124 miles an hour. I'm going to stop talking, let's just do this again. Hold, foot flat on the throttle, launch control activated, are you ready, go. Whoa, can you hear it? I can feel the torque vectoring of the four-wheel drive system. I've got the throttle mashed, we're going to hit 220, 220, roll off. I'm going to rattle off what I think about the Taycan nice and quick. Forget this sticker here, this is all fake. In there is a vent and that vent is real, so it's like a gill in here. When you're driving it, you can only see the tops of the wings, it kind of feels like a 911 in that respect. It's a shallower front than a Panamera. At a glance it looks really similar to a Panamera, but it's not and when you take off that sticker and that sticker there, if I do that, that's its headlight, yeah? It's just like the Mission E original concept, but you've got this black plastic bit that comes down here with a lovely gill there and then you've got the black insert in there, which is like an eyelid, see that's actually, that's a little proper lip. Forget that, that's just a sticker to throw you off the scent. I can't show you how that opens, there's charge doors on each side of the front wing, really nifty. That there looks like a camera, but it's not. If I wipe my hand under it, amazing things happen. The door slides up, but I can't show you it yet, but it's on both sides, DC and AC on that side, I think just AC on this side. Right foot feels weird, put it flat on the throttle, you can hear the faint engine noise changes, launch control is activated, you step off and then you get, oh my gut doesn't like that, but man it grips and goes. 150 kilometers an hour already, 180, 190, 200, 210, 222 kilometers an hour, come off, mind the bird on our left, 225 kilometers an hour. So I'm only, I'm nearly going v-max in the car, I'm only 25 kilometers away from the v-max of the Taycan. I mean I know that the the figures have sort of a shade over three seconds, zero to 62 miles an hour, the reason why I'm here is to talk about the repeatability that you guys have really tried to hit home on, this is not just a high-performance electric car, it's a repeatable high-performance electric car. Is there a confirmed top speed yet or something that's, I mean, 250 is the confirmed top speed, 250 kilometers an hour, yes, yes, okay, and I have seen, there's actually three or two other Taycan pre-production cars testing today and I've noticed different wheel styles, yes, so in fact I've noticed three different wheel styles, 20s, so you've been busy looking around, well you know, I'm a nosy journalist, that's sort of what I do. Let's go, yeah, that that twin motor setup is just going and just gripping. Now let's talk drivetrain, under us is a lithium-ion pack, yes, it's on a bespoke chassis that was made specifically for EV, LG cells, 408 cells, 34 modules, 800 volts, 800 volts for sure, yes, you can tell me it's 800 volts, but everything else, you can't confirm, I can't confirm, yes, okay. I actually felt the jowls try and leave my face then, I didn't even know I was that jowly, clearly I am. Power-wise, what are we talking about? Two motors, smaller motor at the front, we are talking about over 600 horsepowers, over 600, yes, okay, and official figure is under three and a half seconds, zero two hundred, yes, under three and a half, it's gonna be well under three and a half, maybe, but again it's the repeatability, it's repeatability, as I said we wanted, we set up with the goal to build a Porsche and not have the driver feel the derating of the car in any situation. Oh you frigger, 150 kilometers, 180, 190, 200, 210, 221, bang off the throttle, coast for a while, digest your thoughts, allow my scrotum to come back out, wow. There is a two-speed gearbox in there somewhere, it's pretty critical to getting that repeatability of performance and sustained top speed, one of the lead engineers of this actually went to work for Pininfarina, go, what's interesting to me about the Taycan is that it uses synchronous motors, yes, that you guys build in-house, we have a partner, we developed it together in Suffenhausen, as you said we use permanent synchronous motors and that's a little bit different to the usually used asynchronous motors. In terms of cooling the battery pack and the motors, liquid cooling on both? Yes, we have a liquid cooling system and also the cooling system is one of our key factors to achieve this repeatability we have of our performance. Shall we race it? Let's race it, ready? I'm racing an aeroplane that's just landed, some kind of Learjet thing, 225, 228, that's the fastest I've been. It's made out of a combination of aluminium and carbon fibre and a little bit of high tensile steel but it still weighs about two tons so it'll probably be lighter than a P100D Model S but it's still going to be about the two ton mark but when I drove it, it honestly doesn't feel like a heavy car, that's the critical thing, obviously this is four-wheel drive so there's a motor there of about 200 horsepower, there's a motor there of about 400 horsepower. That combined energy and grip, that's where you get that amazing response, that's where you get the amazing turn-in and that feel and the body control. It's got air suspension as well by the way. Launch control being 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, I didn't put my head back, on the headrest, 150 kilometres an hour, 170, 180, 190, 200, 225, again under 10 seconds on the V-Box. And I know that it's this four-seater and you class this as a coupe? Yes. So four-seat coupe, kind of executive coupe thing, two motors? Two motors. Okay, for now? For now. Will there be a one-motor rear-wheel drive, I've read that there will be a rear-wheel drive derivative? Well obviously we're thinking of a lot of derivatives that are possible, for now we're starting with a four-wheel drive. So this goes on sale in 2020? End of this year actually, yes. Okay, there's people that have already paid and put deposits down on these, they've had a special certificate, they're very proud of that. Over 20,000 people already, well over 20,000 people already interested in the car, yes. And they've paid two and a half thousand euros? 2,500 euros already, yes. Real money? I guess they can't wait for the car either, it will be mass-produced and it's not going to be a one-off car now. Yeah, wait for launch control, it's activated, it's ready, we're just going to go. It doesn't get boring, it doesn't get boring, it doesn't get boring, my voice does. 180, 190, 200, 210, 222. This is the flagship car, when this Taycan comes out, there will be lower ranking cars that come over the next 18 months, which will be cheaper and which will be lower powered. So price-wise, I'm going to say this car is going to start at about 120 grand. Action then, but it quickly righted itself, 180 kilometers, 90, 200, 210, 220, 225. This is just one model of the Taycan, there's going to be a whole raft of Taycans, there'll be an entry-level rear-wheel drive one, there could be a lighter weight one, you know, a GT3 style one, there'll be cheaper ones than this, there'll be rear-wheel drive biased ones, there'll be more drifty ones. I mean seriously, think about that. Because this car sits between Cayenne and Panamera, and if you take the Cayenne turbo price and the Panamera price, it's around about between £110,000 and £130,000, £40,000. So expect this car in time to start around £65,000, which will probably be for a 300-something horsepower rear-wheel drive, so single motor car. That's all just educated speculation, not confirmed by Porsche. Right foot acceleration, launch control, let's go. I'm fighting it with my neck, fighting it with my neck, 150, 60, 175, 82, 200 k's. At the back here, that button there, I press that and the boot goes up. I can't show you inside the boot, but take my word for it. Let's just do it. It's got active aero here as well, which you can adjust. If you press the range button in the car, it apparently adds about 10% of range, which means it will shut the flaps down and make the car as aerodynamic as possible, and it'll probably dull back the air conditioning and the throttle responses and stuff like that. But you're talking 320 mile range car that can charge at 150 kilowatts in about 40 minutes, but zero to 80%. People say I don't like electric cars, they're boring. People say I'm not going to buy an electric car because they can't do the range I want them to do. People say I don't want an electric car because it takes too long to charge and it'll bore me. People don't buy electric cars because they say they look rubbish. I might have found a solution. I'm just saying there might be a solution out there. It has elements of all the existing Porsche range, bits of 911, bits of Panamera, and yet it's going to stand on its own. And I think the fact that they've invited us out today and they've actively encouraged us to abuse the car really by repeating that zero to 124 miles now. We've done 30 hard launches. The car can still drive home if it wanted to. It can recharge really quickly. The build quality is clear. The driving charisma is clear, which is essential to a Porsche. This is going to be such a valuable asset to the Porsche group, the Volkswagen group. And talking of Volkswagens, there's a diesel van that's about to throw me off this airfield, so I'm going to say thank you very much for watching Fully Charged. As usual, Patreons, thank you for supporting us. We couldn't do this stuff without you. Thank you to Porsche, who have let us have this world exclusive. I'm the first non-Porsche employee to drive this car, and I am feeling very smug, I have to say. Smug mode, as Robert might say. Thanks for watching. Goodbye.