Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid Has Friendly Fight with 918 Spyder
Daily Slideshow: These two Porsches may not be in the same category, but five additional years of E-Hybrid development has shown how far the technology has come.
A Hybrid Celebration
The Porsche 918 Spyder stunned the automotive world when it was finally released in 2013. Porsche used this car to showcase their technological prowess and give insight into what high-performance automobiles are likely to become in the future. In short, they showed that hybrids can be cool and extremely desirable. Fast-forward five short years and Porsche has released the new Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid, which has taken many elements of the 918, improved upon them, and is again quickly (quite literally) showing the performance advantages of a hybrid system. Fortunately for us, TopGear recently brought these two cars together for a fun little comparison.
The Savage Spyder
For those that may have forgotten, the 918 was equipped with a Le Mans RS Spyder-derived 4.6L naturally aspirated V8 good for 600 horsepower and 381 ft-lb of torque. While the internal combustion engine was impressive on its own, power output was increased with the addition of two electric motors: electric motor one works in parallel with the engine and acts as the electrical generator to drive the rear wheels and motor two provides power to the front wheels for an all-electric drive front axle. As would be expected, the biggest hurdle of this design was getting the combustion and electric engines to play nice with each other and fine-tuning the regenerative braking, but there is no denying that Porsche hit it out of the park with their 887 horsepower monster.
The Sadistic Sedan
The new 2018 Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid now sits atop Porsche's 4-door hierarchy and is clearly aimed at continuing the hybridization development that began with the 918. The Panamera uses a 4.0L twin-turbo V8 (550hp) in conjunction with a 136 horsepower electric motor placed directly in the gearbox casing for a combined total of 686 ponies delivered to all four wheels. All of Porsche's other goodies are fitted to the Panamera such as rear axle steering, Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control, Porsche Torque Vectoring Plus, and Porsche Carbon Ceramic Brakes, among others. Although it weighs a hefty 5200 pounds, the engineers worked their magic to make the heavy saloon feel light on its toes while also taking advantage of the electric motor to fill in the power gaps of the combustion engine.
Computing Power
In 2013, the 918 Spyder was the most technologically advanced car that Porsche had built. Now that the Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid is here, Porsche believes it may very well be the most complex vehicle that they will ever build. To put these complexities into perspective, the 918 uses 55 electronic controls units to function whereas the Panamera utilizes a whopping 119! Moreover, 10 million lines of code were needed to dial in the 918, but the Panamera uses ten times that amount at 100 million lines of code. Integrating the electric motor(s) with an internal combustion engine in these cars is much more challenging than even setting-up a fully-electric car, such as the upcoming Taycan.
The Hellacious Hybrids
Having over 1500 combined horsepower on hand, TopGear decided to settle the debate over which is the best Porsche hybrid of the two by the most logical way they could fathom: a good old-fashioned drag race. Although the Panamera quickly squirted out of the hole, it was swiftly overtaken by the 918 which continued to put car lengths on the sedan at an accelerated rate. That said, the Panamera was no slouch launching to 60 mph in 3.1 seconds and rapidly to 100 mph in 7.3 seconds. Perhaps what we've learned from this comparison is that not only will we see technology from the 918 trickle-down to other cars in years to come, but it will also continue to improve along the way, thus making for some great Porsche automobiles in the future.
For more advice on maintaining your Porsche check out the how-to sections of Rennlist.com.