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Slippery
Slippery GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
9/17/19 3:29 p.m.

In case anyone wanted to read the R&T article:

Road & Track

californiamilleghia
californiamilleghia HalfDork
9/17/19 3:35 p.m.

I am waiting for the dash cam video like Laguna seca ......

I am sure that the Porsche was not taken off the showroom floor and raced !   OK it was not even for sale when they did the Ring "record"

Lets have an April 1st race ,  2 rich guys buy a   showroom Porsche and a Tesla ,  changes tires and then drives down the  Autobahn to the ring for a  race for Pink slips  :)

Maybe even a Pay for View !

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
9/17/19 3:45 p.m.
GameboyRMH said:

Not exactly a production car, having 50% more motors than anything they sell off the shelf and all, but if they make a production version of it all will be forgiven.

Individual wheel motors at the rear would be a nice improvement over a diff. I'm guessing they made a new unit to replace the diff housing/powertrain coolant manifold piece to run individual wheel motors and fix the cooling system design flaws at once.

It's a prototype of what's coming, I think. Given the pace of development in the EV world, the Model S is a dinosaur. Heck, just look at the motors for the S vs the 3, you can see they're a generation newer. I expect we'll see a production version of the 3-motor S to keep Tesla at the top of the luxo-EV pile.

Duke
Duke MegaDork
9/17/19 4:03 p.m.
Keith Tanner said:

It's not going to be a car that's right off the showroom floor.

At our last autocross, a Tesla 3P from way down in B Street came within 0.080" of a well-driven C6 Corvette running in SSM for fastest raw time of the day.  The Vette was driven by one of our fastest guys.

 

dclafleur
dclafleur Reader
9/17/19 4:14 p.m.

Really cool, I'm curious how the lack of engine noise changes feedback, you could hear more sound from even quiet tires chasing the limits. 

Nugi
Nugi Reader
9/17/19 6:29 p.m.

Oranges to Kumquats. Not a comparison. Good marketing, and hopefully pushes tesla to fix their dumpster fire of a cooling system. A net positive, but not exactly a point for either side for carbuyers imho. 

Slippery
Slippery GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
9/17/19 6:37 p.m.
Nugi said:

Oranges to Kumquats. Not a comparison. Good marketing, and hopefully pushes tesla to fix their dumpster fire of a cooling system. A net positive, but not exactly a point for either side for carbuyers imho. 

Funny thing is that Tesla is not comparing anything, at least not advertising it. This was timed by journalists that happened to be at the track. Tesla was not allowed to do timed laps, sounds like they will do that in the coming week though.

I myself like Tesla for what they have accomplished in such a short amount of time, I do not consider myself a fanboy or own one of their cars. I am curious about them though. What drives you to say "dumpster fire of a cooling system"?

I probably see close to 20 or 30 Teslas a day here in south Florida, never seen one go up in flames ... I know it happened in Asia and maybe a few other cases, but given how many cars they sold it does not seem to be that big of a problem.

Slippery
Slippery GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
9/17/19 6:40 p.m.

Thinking more about this, maybe I am a fanboy since I want them to succeed and keep making cool cars.

Made in the US, the first to make a viable EV and really looking at making cars from -I think- a different perspective.

I will probably be one of the first ones to put a deposit for a model Y.

Keith Tanner
Keith Tanner GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
9/17/19 6:49 p.m.

The Model S has historically had trouble managing heat during track use, dropping power fairly quickly. I'm assuming this is the "dumpster fire" Nuqi refers to. Most EVs do have trouble with this.

Tesla, like them or not, has revolutionized the EV landscape. They're the ones that turned them from weird little econoboxes to legitimate cars and even objects of desire. We wouldn't have the Porsche EV without them.

Slippery
Slippery GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
9/17/19 7:00 p.m.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Ok, I see. But I don't think Tesla intended for the Model S to be a trackable car.

Porsche on the other hand came right out of the gate with a car intended to be used as a Porsche ... they even have a 2 speed gearbox. I love Porsches, but they have a way to go compared to Tesla, starting with getting their charger network setup and going. 

Nugi
Nugi Reader
9/17/19 8:48 p.m.

In reply to Slippery :

For normal driving, the cooling system is fine. On a track, it tends to overheat within a hot lap or two. But the context is track driving, so seems relevant. 

That said, I agree with all the comments celebrating any competition. I was perhaps myopic.  It does absolutely improve things, in the long run. 

My only gripe with Tesla itself, beyond some 'optimistic' marketing, is their IMHO blatant illegal attempts to prevent and deter customer and 3rd party service and repair. Meanwhile their own service and repair often leave much to be desired, with parts availability a constant issue. That alone, as a grassroots person, destroys almost all of my admiration for the tech. I freely admit bias against tech that denys what I feel is a right to ownership. /rant

My whole point is, a good stock (with maybe tires/tune) comparison seems somewhat fair, while comparing prototypes seems a bit like waving dicks in the wind. As a consumer, I cannot draw any useful data from what I have seen. 

 

 

 

Slippery
Slippery GRM+ Memberand SuperDork
9/17/19 8:54 p.m.

In reply to Nugi :

I agree that Tesla not selling spares to end users is a negative, but I am sure the aftermarket will be on it once the numbers start making sense. 

Robbie
Robbie GRM+ Memberand UltimaDork
9/17/19 8:56 p.m.

So have we talked about how the 7:23 lap is still blistering in terms of just about all cars ever?

Isn't the production car lap record like 6:45 going to some $1M hypercar?

What does a c7 zo6 do it in? M3? The Amg clkgg 453231 4 matic zomg German manliness black edition?

Edit: Ok looked up the Wikipedia page. 7:23 basically matches a c6 zo6. Faster than any BMW on the list. Faster than the Pagani Zonda. Faster than the non nismo GTR. Only bested by some race spec porsches, vipers, aventadors, mercedes.

Not too shabby.

Nugi
Nugi Reader
9/17/19 9:00 p.m.

In reply to Slippery :

They won't even sell you a service manual. In the one state it is required by law that they provide access, they rent access to it for hundreds a day. If parts was my only gripe, i would be a huge hypocrite. 

Robbie
Robbie GRM+ Memberand UltimaDork
9/17/19 9:03 p.m.

Hey wait - I thought only BMWs could have dumpster fire cooling systems?

TurboFocus
TurboFocus Reader
9/18/19 2:15 a.m.
Jordan Rimpela said:

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Not only that, but 20+ seconds is a healthy bit of time, even at the lengthy Nordschleife.  And some outlets are reporting that the time may have been set in traffic. Should make for an interesting official time. 

Sub 9s in traffic is balls out driving at the ring

Even in light traffic

STM317
STM317 UltraDork
9/18/19 4:23 a.m.

I like the look of the widebody/gurney flap and the larger openings in the front

Image result for tesla nurburgring

 

This is good. But it seems like they've made some significant changes too that basically make this car a ringer (pun intended).

Wider body, rear spoiler, larger openings in front, lighter wheels, much stickier tires, stripped interior, and some crazy prototype powertrain. The legitimate way to do this is to run it with nothing but safety improvements. If you have to cage the car for safety reasons that's fine, but gutting the interior, putting non-stock tires on it, custom software that the customer won't be able to buy, carbon brakes, etc makes this car nothing more than an experiment/marketing exercise. That doesn't mean it isn't cool and impressive, just that the run should have an asterisk if it's not a production spec car.

The Model S Performance already makes 762hp/723 ft-lbs, so this thing could easily be over 800hp/800tq. And that full amount of torque is always there. It will cost as much as a house. It should absolutely be damn fast with numbers like that.

kevinatfms
kevinatfms GRM+ Memberand Reader
9/18/19 11:26 a.m.

The Taycan is $150k starting with options up to $241k. If Tesla can knock 20 seconds off by the mods listed above with the interior back in it and still be 1-2 seconds faster than the Porsche then sell it for under $200k i think they have a winner.

And that picture of it looks tits. Amazing what a set of wheels, wing and arches does to a car.

bcp2011
bcp2011 Reader
9/18/19 11:36 a.m.

We all know the difference a set of tires can make on any car when it comes to lap times, and putting super sticky tires on a mass produced car doesn't make sense since such a tiny portion of the population will utilize it, so given that this is to just prove a point against a *specific competitor* they should at least equalize the tires by using the same tires (not necessarily same size).  I don't buy the argument that all cars should be run on "production" tires.  (Side note, I also get frustrated when I see lap times from magazines using OE tires, which almost never show the true capabilities of the vehicles on an equal footing, e.g., same tires).  

The other modifications - stripping the interior, etc. do seem over the top a bit if they wanted to make it have some semblance of an apples to apples comparison.  

BrianC72gt
BrianC72gt GRM+ Memberand New Reader
9/18/19 2:00 p.m.

But for Tesla, there wouldn't be a Taycan.  I love building, swapping, tinkering, modifying and boosting internal combustion engines, but we['re all going to have to get used to the smell of ozone rather than burnt fuel as the marker of a hot rod.

 

I just want to get the damn MR2 v6 swap done before it becomes completely humiliated by a souped up electric mobility scooter.

GameboyRMH
GameboyRMH GRM+ Memberand MegaDork
9/18/19 2:09 p.m.
BrianC72gt said:

but we['re all going to have to get used to the smell of ozone rather than burnt fuel as the marker of a hot rod.

If you smell ozone that means there's arcing going on inside the motor, and arcing is the EV equivalent of detonation.

FuzzWuzzy
FuzzWuzzy Reader
9/18/19 2:13 p.m.

The saving grace for internal combustion engine swaps is that compared to doing an electric conversion, it's actually achievable (see: affordable) for the majority of people out there.

Just for Tesla-sized battery packs, Rich Rebuilds priced it at what, $3k a pack? And to get roughly the same range you needed three of them, IIRC. Each motor is another couple thousand, give or take. So on and so forth.

There's the option for buying salvaged Teslas, but enjoy paying that premium and having to use the majority/all of said Tesla electrical parts.

 

Edit: I would absolutely love to do an electric conversion for my wagon if I could afford it.

BrianC72gt
BrianC72gt GRM+ Memberand New Reader
9/18/19 4:54 p.m.

And I still console myself with the notion that I'm avoiding the conveniently overlooked environmental cost of creating that expensive, shiny, new  electric vehicle.  Or even gas one.

The environmental impact of vehicle creation for my aging fleet gets amortized over many more years than most owners with a disposable mindset.  Swapping in newer drivelines (with better performance ) is an act of environmental stewardship. 

Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket.  I'm mf'ing Mother Theresea.

Saron81
Saron81 Reader
9/18/19 5:36 p.m.
Duke said:
Keith Tanner said:

It's not going to be a car that's right off the showroom floor.

At our last autocross, a Tesla 3P from way down in B Street came within 0.080" of a well-driven C6 Corvette running in SSM for fastest raw time of the day.  The Vette was driven by one of our fastest guys.

 

Same thing this weekend at my local Corvette club auto-x. A Model S (p100d?) on R71s set FTD handily beating well driven Z06s, and smashing my stock Focus RS.

BlueInGreen - Jon
BlueInGreen - Jon SuperDork
9/18/19 6:06 p.m.

I think some have missed the important point here. That being: they did a super cool track-prepped widebody Tesla with extra motor.

Those flares are sweeeet.

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