Porsche's Taycan EV has pulled in more than 20k deposits
engadget.com
engadget.com
They're basically refundable deposits with no obligations on either side, so 20.000 wealthy people either misunderstood the terms or paid to receive newsletters.
Maybe they just really want the car and can afford a deposit.
I saw both sides of this, placing a reservation and then ultimately waiting for a version that didn’t require one. I did get a chance to order before it opened up to the general public, but I didn’t take advantage.
In which case, there is some signal to be extracted from people's willingness to give Porche an interest-free loan on the deposit money.
Of course this was in 2017 and things could've changed now, but with my 2 years in the S, I'm sold on Tesla. Only rule being get a Tesla 1 year after the model is introduced so they iron out all the production issues.
Touch screens are really bad to use on uneven roads too, where bumps will make you accidentally press whatever and now all my fans are at 100% and I don't know how to fix it...
Despite early detractors, touch interfaces are now dominant in mobile devices for this reason, their flexibility.
On the other hand, cost or not, tactile interfaces let human drivers keep their eyes on the road. I suspect that when cars are fully autonomous, nobody will care about that any moore.
I'm in the market for a new flagship phone (mostly for a highly portable connected camera), and if I could get one with a physical keyboard I'd buy it in a heartbeat instead of debating and delaying trying to decide.
Especially in a car, reconfigurability is an advantage for the manufacturer more than it is for the user. Like you hint at in your last paragraph, touchscreens completely deny the use of, ironically, our sense of touch.
for proof, go see a 1999-2006 carrera 911/996.
Looking back a decade to try and descredit a notion about cars they build today does what exactly?
Company goals, priorities and quality change over time.
I'll take buttons I can operate without taking my eyes from the road every single time over clean lines that I only see with eyes off the road. I'm very much not a fan of more and more touch making its way into every car make.
(VW group owns both Audi and Porsche. Porsche interiors, despite coming in more expensive vehicles, still play second fiddle to Audi's and are generally a little more austere.)
But at 6 feet tall, I couldn't imagine sitting in either car regularly. So maybe I'm not a Porsche kind of guy.
So, all things being equal, that experience lowered my Taycan interest, and kept Audi e-tron interest pretty high.
And I don't know enough about their roll-out plans yet, but I do wonder about the Audi charging network availability.
Unlike some other brands, the Porsche Macan can be configured exactly the way you want it. Options are a la carte. There are some option bundles, but you aren't forced into them. A Macan without a sunroof has lots of headroom, both front and back. I'm 5'11" and my head doesn't come close to the roof.
But if you're 6'6" then you're probably very limited to the cars you can sit in. Basketball players tend to drive large SUVs, such as the Cadillac Escalade.
The only way to know what the Taycan will be like will be to sit in one. Plus you certainly don't want one of the first few model years. The pioneers always wind up with arrows in their backs.
I do wonder about the Audi charging network availability.
Tesla was forced into doing a supercharger network, because there was nothing like that out there. But it would be insane if every manufacturer felt the need to build out their own network. That seems crazy inefficient.
Price is higher than the Telsa, but you could take the view that just like Porche, they bring Volvo's experience--good or bad--at running a sustainable manufacturing business to the table.
Polestar have been racing Volvos for a decade, and Volvo have been selling Polestar editions of their cars very successfully. "Polestar" is essentially Volvo's performance branding, just like AMG for Mercedes and M for BMW.
I personally like the V60 Polestar, it's a nice little 360hp wagon. I have a Polestar engine tune on my personal wagon.
As for the word itself... Volvo is from the Nordics, and culturally the Pole Star is a significant and positive term:
A tiny Canadian company called ElectraMecchanica has over 40,000 paid reservations for their Tofino electric roadster ($1k deposit each). Does that mean they’re going to be twice as successful as Porsche?
I imagine it's because the designers wanted a shape that emulated the old cars, and everything else had to work around that.
The engine placement only made some characteristics possible (e.g. the low bonnet). If the shape and design were "dictated" by the engine placement, surely other cars with rear engine would have to look similar?
> I feel with an electric drivetrain, a new design would be needed.
Why change something that clearly works? Experiments like the i3 can go very wrong.
I would presumably think that rear-placed battery pack and drivetrain would keep the typical 911 handling characteristics.
Otherwise yeah, you end up with 930 Widowmaker 2.0 and cars spinning rear-first into a tree.
That said, if you like Porsche, the Taycan gives you a Porsche with an electric motor. That is the only innovation I can see here.
If turning a car into a crappy pc/tablet is innovative then yes. But some people just like to drive their cars (by themselves)
That sounds like a potential selling point ...
"Otherwise you should just expect nothing much more than a Porsche that has an electrical drive train ..."
For me, the killer features are the CoG and weight distributions of a "skateboard design", achieving AWD with multiple motors, and the acceleration/torque advantages of an electric drivetrain. It appears that the Porsche has all of those.